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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? Smart thermostats allow you to be comfortable in your home and let you conserve energy while you’re away at work. Learn more in our best smart thermostat review.
What Is the Average Residential Monthly Electric Bill?
The average monthly home electric bill across the U.S. was $117.65 in 20181. If you purchase a smart 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 Use A Smart Thermostat?
Did you know 44% of your energy bill is from your heating and air conditioning?2 And most of that energy is wasted because your home is empty half the day. Smart 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.
Did You Know?
“Smart” thermostats as they are most commonly known today, were previously (and to some extend still are) referred to as “WiFi thermostats” because they typically operate over your home’s WiFi connection.
Best Smart Thermostat Reviews
Find out which one of these cool temperature controlling gadgets will work best for your home in our comparison.
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: Check Amazon for availability.
- 2.8 inch diameter
- 480×480 pixel display
- Ring dial available in stainless steel, copper, black or white
- 2-year warranty
Read our in-depth Nest Thermostat Review
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.
If you’re wondering which is better ecobee vs nest, they both are comparable in terms of their features. The major difference being the design of the nest to twist to control whereas the ecobee you use the touchscreen slider. The ecobee also comes with a much lower price tag.
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Price And Tech Specs
- Price: Check Amazon for availability.
- 3.5 inch LCD color touchscreen
- 320×480 pixel display
- 3-year warranty
Our Personal Experience
After using a Nest thermostat for several years, we started to have system integration issues with it. So we switched to the ecobee 3 light. In 2+ years, we haven’t had any problems (and even had our HVAC replaced during that time). With the Nest, it often auto-adjusted the temperature to maximize efficiency. As eco-friendly as that feature is, we prefer the ecobee that allows manual temperature adjustments. With Google Home, we can take advantage of voice control, which also works to turn the unit on and off. My husband likes the large digital display that allows him to see the temperature from across the room. While the design is not as sleek and modern as Nest, this is a fool-proof, simple to install and use smart thermostat. – Sadie C., Marketing for Safe Smart Living
First Alert Onelink Review
The First Alert Onelink smart 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 in the comments below.
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Price And Tech Specs
- Price: Check Amazon for availability.
- Color, touchscreen
- 1.2 x 5.2 x 4 inches
Other Smart Thermostats
GLAS | Hive | Honeywell Lyric
GLAS Smart Thermostat by Johnson Controls
GLAS is not only a smart thermostat, but it also monitors and regulates indoor air quality (humidity, CO2, etc.) and reports on outdoor conditions like allergens and UV index. Built with Microsoft’s technology, you can program your schedule or ask it to adjust based on when you’re in the room. It also works with Alexa and Google Home. However, probably the most compelling feature of GLAS is its modern design with a translucent OLED touchscreen
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Price And Tech Specs
- Price: $222.80
- 1.2 x 5.2 x 4 inches
- Touchscreen
- 2 year manufacturer’s warranty (parts only)
Hive Smart Thermostat
The Hive Smart Thermostat works like the other smart heating and cooling systems, but is compatible with the Hive family of products including smart light bulbs, home alarm system and more. You can set up to six daily schedules, create actions (such as “when it’s dark outside, make the house 77 degrees), use quick heat or cool mode, use geolocation to automatically adjust when you are away and more.
The only downside is this is only compatible with other Hive products and requires a smart hub to connect to the network.
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Price And Tech Specs
- Price: $209.25
- 10.2 x 3.2 x 5.5 inches
- Touchscreen
- Manufacturer’s warranty available
Honeywell Lyric T5 Review
The Honeywell Lyric T5 smart 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: $109.18
- 4 x 4 inch 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.
Other Ways To Automate Your Home
Why stop at just saving money with your energy bill? Using a smart home hub you can automate other aspects of your home and make sure you’re optimizing energy usage. Another simple way to reduce your energy bill is to use efficient lighting systems using smart light bulbs.
Are you considering buying a smart thermostat?
Source: [1] U.S. Energy Information Administration [2] U.S. Department of Energy
Disclaimer: This website contains reviews, opinions and information regarding products and services manufactured or provided by third parties. We are not responsible in any way for such products and services, and nothing contained here should be construed as a guarantee of the functionality, utility, safety or reliability of any product or services reviewed or discussed. Please follow the directions provided by the manufacturer or service provider when using any product or service reviewed or discussed on this website.
I enjoyed your reviews of smart thermostats, especially the Honeywell T5. We just moved into a new build that has the Honeywell T6 and I hate that thing. I have tried multiple times to get the app on my Android to connect to the thermostat, but it fails every time.
When I finally contacted Honeywell Tech Support, their suggestion was to turn off mobile data and don’t ever use 5G wi-fi. Excuse me? I cannot use my 5G Wi-Fi connection because it will conflict with what should be a state of the art thermostat? Yeah, I don’t think so.
I had been leaning to the Ecobee, but your review and that of a very good friend is pushing me to the Nest.
Jon, glad we could help! I had the nest for years and then it stopped working with our HVAC so we switched over to the ecobee and it’s been great too. Good luck in making a decision and congrats on making the switch to smart thermostats, they are an easy upgrade to make a big difference!
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.