Honeywell Evohome review

HONEYWELL EVOHOME SMARTPHONE APPS

The third way to interact with your heating is via the iPhone and Android apps. The clear interface is easy to use, telling you the current temperature and current set temperature of each room. It’s brilliant that you can turn on (or off) your heating from anywhere, particularly if you’re heading home early.

Since the system was launched, Honeywell has upgraded and revamped the app, fixing our initial criticisms of it. When launched, the app would let you set a temperature, but you could only set it as permanent, or choose a time for the override to last until, as it didn’t know when the switch points where. With the update that all changes. Now, when you set an override via the app, the default is to keep the new temperature until the next scheduled switch point, although you can still make the change permanent.

You can now also use the app to make changes to your schedule, which you couldn’t do before. Using the app isn’t quite as good as using the Controller, though, as you can’t copy a schedule from one day to another, or to another room. For wider-reaching changes, then, you still need to revert back to the Controller.

While you can use the Quick Actions, the smartphone apps can’t read a name change on the Custom one. Given that you can only have a single custom schedule, it’s not too hard to remember what it does, but it would have been nice if the name change you set on the Controller carried over to the app. Still, with the changes made, the app is now an important part of the home control system and we found that we rarely needed to use our Controller, stashing it away in a cupboard for when we needed to make bigger changes to the heating schedule.

HONEYWELL EVOHOME IFTTT

With the new App, Honeywell also introduced support for If This Then That (IFTTT). In case you haven’t come across the system before, IFTTT lets you carry out tasks based on triggers. With Evohome that means, for example, that you can set your heating to turn off when you leave the house, or to turn a room on automatically when you’re on your way home from work. As the Evohome IFTTT channel is expanded and upgraded, the possibilities are limitless, making this smart heating system even smarter.

HONEYWELL EVOHOME CONCLUSION

There’s no doubting that the Evohome outsmarts the smart thermostats, such as Nest, Hive and Tado. Its zone control gives you more flexibility and means that you’re only ever heating the rooms that you need, rather than increasing the temperature of the entire house. This is particularly true once you’ve got your head around the schedules and have tweaked them.

It’s hard to get away from the fact that this system is a lot more expensive than anything else. The starter kit, which includes one relay, the internet gateway and the Controller costs £249. Each Radiator Controller is around £50 – we needed nine, which comes in at £450. Then there’s installation, which is really dependent on the complexity of your home, but it’ll most likely take around two hours. While you can save money by not installing the Radiator Controllers, we feel as though that negates a large part of the system, so Evohome is definitely best if you go all-in from the start.

As a comparison, Nest, Tado and Hive all come in at under £200. There’s an argument to say that Evohome will save you more money, as it’s more efficient and zone-based, but it will take a long time to make back the difference over one of the smart thermostat systems.

However, Evohome isn’t just about saving money, it’s about convenience and comfort. Having individual control over each room is something that no other system offers and it’s truly different. Thanks to the thermostats in each room, they’re all perfectly controlled. As you can override at any time, you never have to worry about being too hot or too cold. If price isn’t an issue, then the Evohome is the ultimate in smart home heating technology.