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Is your energy bill outrageously high? Are you taking things to the extreme and not turning your air conditioning on when it’s 102°F outside so you can save a few pennies? Stop! We’ve got a solution for you! WiFi thermostats allow you to be comfortable in your home and let you conserve energy while you’re away at work.
Did you know 44% of your energy bill is from your heating and air conditioning?1 And most of that energy is wasted because your home is empty half the day. WiFi thermostats learn your schedule, so temperatures are adjusted throughout your home during the day to conserve energy when you aren’t home.
Also, many cities across the country offer rebates for installing a smart thermostat so that can help offset the initial upfront cost to purchase the equipment, not to mention all the additional money you’ll save in the long run! Check with your local energy or utility company to find out if you qualify.
Find out which one of these cool temperature controlling gadgets will work best for your home in our Best WiFi Thermostat Reviews.
Nest Learning Thermostat Review
Unlike other smart thermostats, the Nest 3rd generation asks you to turn the temperature up and down as you wish and it does the rest. Nest boasts about its ability to continuously learn about your heating and cooling habits. After a week or two of use, the Nest thermostat will remember your habits and begin to make temperature adjustments automatically. You can also make changes from the Nest app, so if you forget to make a change before you leave home, you can adjust it on the go.
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Price and Tech Specs
- Price: $243.00
- 2.8″ diameter
- 480×480 pixel display
- Ring dial available in stainless steel, copper, black or white
- 2-year warranty
Ecobee Review
The ecobee4 has a motion sensor to detect when you’re home and know when to keep a room at a certain temperature. You can program your schedule into the thermostat, so you conserve energy when you aren’t home. The ecobee4 includes a remote sensor to be placed in another room to help keep the temperature even throughout the house. You can purchase additional remote sensors for $79 for a two-pack.
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Price and Tech Specs
- Price: $248.25
- 3.5″ LCD color touchscreen
- 320×480 pixel display
- 3-year warranty
First Alert Onelink Review
The First Alert Onelink WiFi thermostat isn’t as pleasing to the eye as some of its competitors at first glance, but you can turn the display screen into a digital picture frame. It features a touchscreen to adjust the temperature and program your schedule. You even have the ability to send text messages to the thermostat, although we’re not sure why you’d need or want to. Maybe you can tell us!
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Price and Tech Specs
- Price: $195.49
- Color, touchscreen
Honeywell Lyric T5 Review
The Honeywell Lyric T5 WiFi thermostat is pleasing to the eye, but unfortunately, many consumers have found lots of frustration with it. Users complain of geofencing issues (more on geofencing below) and major app issues. The Lyric claims to have unique features like Fine Tune to adjust your home’s humidity level, but the execution isn’t living up to the marketing just yet. Perhaps Honeywell will update the device and software, but for now, we’d recommend another thermostat.
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Price and Tech Specs
- Price: $109.00
- 4″ x 4″ glass face
- Touchscreen
- 2-year warranty
What is Geofencing?
Geofencing is a feature that uses GPS from your smartphone to define geographical boundaries. When you’re heading home, and you reach your pre-set geofence (say, 10 miles away), your settings will adjust to what you want them to be once you arrive home. The same occurs when you exit the boundaries (the settings will go to a more energy-efficient mode).
Learn more about Lyric’s Geofencing feature to understand how to use it.
What is the Average Residential Monthly Electric Bill?
In 2015, the average monthly home electric bill was $114.03. If you purchase a WiFi thermostat that saves about 20% of your energy, your monthly bill will drop to about $91.22/month. That’s a savings of around $274 a year. So, it’s easy to do the math and see that using a smart thermostat pays for itself in just one year’s use. I know $274 doesn’t sound like a ton of money, but over the course of a few years, you’ve saved $1,000. That’s $1,000 you didn’t expect to have, and you can use it on something fun instead of your bills!
Why are you considering buying a WiFi thermostat?
Source: [1] U.S. Department of Energy
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3 Comments on "Best Wifi Thermostat Reviews: Honeywell Lyric vs Nest vs Ecobee vs OneLink"
We moved into a new house in September and installed an Ecobee 3 precisely because of the remote sensor. We had a 3rd gen Nest in our last house and were happy with it, but it had a couple of issues. First, we couldn’t use the auto detect feature because it was located in a dining room that we rarely went into. Second, because it was in that room, the temperature had to be adjusted higher or lower to get the rest of the house to a comfortable temperature. While the learning feature seemed nice, there wasn’t enough variation in our daily routine for it to really make that much of a difference.
We bought an Ecobee3 for the new house and couldn’t be happier with it. The thermostat in this house was also installed in the dining room, but the dining room was more open so the temperature there is more reflective of the rest of the house. However, it still only gets the temperature downstairs to a comfortable level. We put the remote sensor in our master bedroom upstairs and it has made a huge difference. Now, we set the thermostat to use only the temperature in our bedroom when we are getting up in the morning or getting ready for bed at night. That way we are always comfortable at those times, instead of having to fiddle with the thermostat, like we had to with the nest. If we add more sensors, and you can have up to 32 of them, we can set it to use autodetect to base the temperature on the rooms that are or have recently been occupied. This is a real benefit that no other thermostat that I am aware of can do.
We don’t miss the auto adjustment of the schedule at all. We just set up several “comfort settings” for the Ecobee and put in a schedule that is consistent with our work and sleep schedule and there is no need to change it. Overall, we have found that the benefits of having remote sensors far outweighs any of the benefits of the Nest’s learning ability.
I have been installing ecobee 3 units for a year now and have done 40+ units. Ecobee offers the best combination of features and performance well in excess of the Nest unit. Customer service is excellent contrary to above rating. Ecobee offers a commercial line also which attests to the superior engineering they bring to the table. Ecobee is partnered with Tendril Inc for the back end and statistics and they are Apple HomeKit which offers the highest level of security in the smart home market. Google is a good browser, period.
I have a second generation nest and love the ability to control the temperature of my home from my phone but I must say, it’s not the smartest at predicting our habits and will randomly adjust the temp all over the place for no apparent reason. I feel like it hasn’t saved us that much money but it does look cool and love the idea of having a digital thermostat.