The central thermostat is a fairly nondescript white square with a small button on the lower right which you use to wake it up and show you the current temperature.

In contrast, Tado was much more consistent. The flat was heated evenly, and no one ended up with a cold bedroom. The downside of this is the slightly higher energy usage.The choice is handy, as you can stop someone from dialling up the heating for too long and wasting energy. Impressively, the settings are per room, so you can have different choices for different places in your home. tado° increases the efficiency of your heating system, as well as improving your comfort at home with the help of its smart Skills: Tado is one of the better-connected smart thermostats. Apple Home support is nice to see. Control from the Apple Home app is a little basic, and changes to temperature follow the rule you have set for manual changes in the app (it’s effectively the same as changing the temperature from the main thermostat). However, you can use your Tado system in Automations – say, turning your heating up and lights down to watch movies. Explore Comet and discover a constellation of products from washing machines and fridge freezers to air fryers, 4K TVs, laptops, consoles and more - it’s easy to find everything you need for your home in the Comet universe. The system occasionally suffered with the same kinds of limitations as other HomeKit-enabled devices with button-presses sometimes failing to register. It didn’t quite feel as reliable as an old-fashioned light switch, but the breadth of the functionality meant that we didn’t mind too much.

This extension kit connects directly to your boiler and allows you to control the hot water in your home when used together with the Smart Thermostat V3+. Tado has some smart features that can help with energy saving and comfort. First, Weather Adaption takes into account the outside temperature, taking advantage of outside heat to save energy and make sure that your house doesn’t zoom past the set temperature. The central thermostat is a little unintuitive to use because of its combination of a physical button and a touchscreen. Be prepared to explain how it works to other members of your household. The same is true of the app, which takes a little getting to know. It would be great if you could set up the system to only heat up the rooms of the people who are home, but unfortunately this functionality isn’t available (this was another element that Tado assured us was on the roadmap for future integration).Tado comes as a series of components, which you piece together depending on what you need. At the minimum, you’ll most likely start with the Smart Thermostat itself. This can control an entire home, or it can be used as an external sensor if you add smart radiator valves to your system for individual room control. One of the first companies to launch a smart thermostat, Tado has proved itself as one of the most flexible and easy-to-control systems on the market. With the latest version of the Tado Smart Thermostat (V3+), there has been some consternation about the fact you now have to pay for some of the energy-saving features on a monthly subscription that you used to get for free. By using the Tado system, we found that we saved just under 15% of our energy usage through the middle of winter versus our previous non-smart heating system. In comparison, Nest saved us 45% over the same period. If you already own a tado° Starter Kit you can supplement it with additional Smart Thermostats to control your entire heating system and save even more. Failing that, as others have pointed out, there's a plethora of other 3rd party smart home devices that read room temperature (I'm looking at my echo right now which is one such device). How about integrating with these if a Tado 1st party hardware solution isn't feasable?