I’m aware there’s a huge amount of choice on the market now so I’m wondering what everyone has and rates. Want it to be a system that can be self installed as intend to fit in with my fellas help as he’s fit one in his house. Absolutely must work with apple HomeKit for automation and controls purposes. Current wall mounted thermostat just doesn’t have enough customisation and because some days my schedule varies especially now stuck at home, I’m finding I’m not using the heating because it would mean putting it on manual at a set temperature and then risk forgetting it’s on. Hopefully one exists where you can ask it to set the temp to 20 for an hour etc. At least if it’s on manual with a new smart stat and I forget I can just shout at Siri.

Hive here. Does what you need. Boost function provides that on for x hours functionality.
I’m sure Nest will do similar TBH.

I have a Hive in my new house. Had Nest in my old one

Prefer Nest, just nicer to use. Both do the same thing though

Have Tado installed in our house.

Self install. Really easy. App asks you what boiler/timer/thermostat etc you already have then guides you through install specific to what you have.
I just took plenty of pictures just in case.

Works fine with Apple HomeKit and Alexa.

Plenty of schedule options and if home and heating is off because of schedule you can quickly select a temperature and it heat to that for 2hrs by default iirc then go back to the schedule. You can adjust that time down to 5 minutes or until you cancel it or a scheduled change occurs.

Have no idea how it rates to other systems. But it’s simple. Looks nice (imo) if that matters and does exactly what we wanted.

I have Nest at work and Drayton Wiser at home. Both work fine, went for DW at home as you can use smart TRVs for zoned heating which you can’t with Nest. Also think Google have made it a bit trickier to integrate with other stuff since taking over Nest.

Don’t think either Nest or DW work out-the-box with HomeKit (although it is possibly with a 3rd party hub or by running a Homebridge server), so that may be a reason to go Tado (personally I discounted that as it’s reliant on the cloud).

Recently had a Hive fitted as part of a new boiler installation, and it’s really easy to use via the app on my iPhone. I’ve set up schedules, but it’s so easy to tweak if it’s a bit too warm, as we’re in the house a lot at the moment, partly as a result of having an unexpectedly long Christmas/New Year break. I don’t have any HomeKit stuff, so no idea about that, but I am really liking the ease of adjustment with the phone.

As above, can confirm Tado does all that you specify.

I don’t have any HomeKit stuff

Google reckons that the latest Hive hubs are compatible (although possibly not the wired one)

Hive here, including their trvs in most rooms. This allows me to only heat the room im in on the days I’m alone at home, not the rest of the house. Also allowed me to only have the en suite on high to blast my wet stuff sry the other day.

Only downside with this many zones is there isn’t a way of defining a preset across them – ie this is what I want the house to do on day type x, this is day type y, so I can easily move them around for holidays/days off etc

Personally I would go for a system with individuals controlled TRV’s

We have EvoHome which on the whole has been great.

I wish it had an option for an external weather temp gauge as the forecast it uses is never accurate for where we live.

As I sort of expected, quite a split of opinions about what works. Not sure TRV’s are necessary in my situation as I’m in a two bedroom flat and the spare room is my bike/zwift room so the rads are off in there and I’m the only person so it’s not like I have random rooms that won’t be in use, although I guess maybe it would be handy to only have the living room on when I’m sitting on the sofa but then again my bedroom would be freezing at bedtime.

I’m in a two bedroom flat

And presumably the thermostat is all of 10 ft away from you at any point?

When we had CH as we left the house we’d turn the thermoset down to 15, and then back to 20 when we came in. At night we did the same, 15 as we went to bed and then back to 20 when we came down stairs. Worse case the house was warm when we came back in.

Nope it’s in the coolest room which is the hallway. Wow you had your heating set to 20 at all times of being home? No way I can afford that heating bill! Mine comes on the in morning and is set to 16 for the rest of the day until 7pm ish and I just sit in slippers, jumper and a thick blanket!

Very happy with our nest. Was easy to fit and works well. We don’t use much of the smartness but its great at knowing we are out and shutting the heating off. I’m sure that is saving us a decent amount. It turns back on as soon as we come through the door. I expect you can make it anticipate your arrival and you can turn it on manually from anywhere if you do want the house pre-heated but as is works well enough.

When we had CH as we left the house we’d turn the thermoset down to 15, and then back to 20 when we came in. At night we did the same, 15 as we went to bed and then back to 20 when we came down stairs. Worse case the house was warm when we came back in.

Same. We have a pretty random pattern of shifts and when we’re in so leave it set to on permanently and just control it with the thermostat. It would be nice to be able to turn it on without getting out of bed in the morning though.

Being able to control different rooms would be handy tbh.

We have one of the few boilers on the not compatible with smart thermostat list so can’t change at the moment anyway.

Drayton Wiser for me – not so much smart as easy to control and program from my phone. Very easy to fit as it uses a standard UK backplate (I needed to replace mine purely because of the cable entry position but it was like for like)

my bedroom would be freezing at bedtime

What you’re looking for there is a smart electric blanket (really just an electric blanket hooked up to a smart plug). Turned on automatically at a certain time every night, or just ask alwxa to do it if you’re turning in early..

Well I do have an electric blanket and it’s a genius idea to hook it up to a smart plug! Only have four rads in the whole flat. I think just a smart stat would be enough for my needs.

Got a Hive – thermostat works fine but the phone app and other remote ways of tinkering with it have stopped working and no amount of troubleshooting has sorted them out.

They all do the same or similar thing so don’t waste too much time over thinking it. Just go for the one that you either like the look of aesthetically or can get a good deal on. all the features are nice but you wont use most of them.

Yeah I wouldn’t bother with the cost of trvs for that

We have Hive and Smart TRVs. It’s not perfect but being able to control the heating and hot water from your phone is useful. It was easy to install (similar but slightly more involved than wiring a plug). The TRVs give almost zoned heating but not quite.
One example of an issue that can happen, say the room with the thermostat is at 20 deg, but the room you want to heat is at 18 deg and you want to get that room to 20 deg. Well, you can’t do that as the thermostat is the master and it is already at 20 deg. To get the colder room to heat up you have to overshoot the temperature, to say 22 deg. This means the room with the thermostat gets even warmer.

This could be solved by a TRV in the room the thermostat is in, but in a non-smart system that’s advised against as the thermostat and TRV could work against each other. E.g. TRV is set too low so shuts off and the room can never reach the temperature the thermostat is at. However for something like Hive they could add a feature to tell it that the TRV and thermostat are in the same room, but I don’t think that exists.

I’m in a two bedroom flat and the spare room is my bike/zwift room so the rads are off in there and I’m the only person

Only have four rads in the whole flat

TBH you don’t sound like the best use case for any kind of “smart” heating, certainly not unless you’ve a very irregular work pattern and want to come home to a warm flat. Even then I can’t see a place like yours taking long to warm up even if you just switch the heating on as you come through the door.

I’ve had the Netatmo system for two years, with boiler control and 3 rad valves but I wouldn’t recommend it. The smarts are fairly good, both on the website and app, you can set times and temperatures and it can learn the thermodynamics of your home to turn on the heating ahead of time to get to the right temp (it knows the outside temp). Turning off the heating remotely when away from home and then on the way back is useful.
However, the boiler control went wrong just after two years and dealing with the support team (in France) is very slow: 5 days for an email response and then wait another 5 days (there’s no phone number). I also made the mistake of not specifying a manual control for my boiler, so when it went wrong we had no heating. I ended up buying a new control.
Secondly the TCV valves are very inaccurate with the temperature. I’ve compared them to other thermometers and they vary wildly and also inconsistently, sometimes up 2 degrees sometimes down There’s a TrueTemp function to adjust the temp, but due to the wild swings it doesn’t work.
So, the smart system is useful, but it needs to be well executed. I wish I’d gone with Google Nest.