Review: Tado Wireless Smart Thermostat V3+

Heating your home can be expensive. With gas prices soaring, systems like Tado’s Smart Thermostat V3+, which offer finer control and insight into your heating, look increasingly attractive. Throw in a few Tado Smart Radiator Thermostats and you can create a zonal heating system that warms only the rooms you are using. You can control everything from your phone and receive alerts when there’s no one at home or when a window is left open, so you can turn off your heating to save money.

While Tado’s system provides the flexibility and control to set room temperatures individually, I was interested to see how well it worked and how the potential savings stacked up against the cost. I installed the Tado Wireless Smart Thermostat V3+ Start Kit (£200) and a bunch of Smart Radiator Valves (£200 for a 3-pack) in my four-bed detached home to find out.

Note: The Tado heating system is not currently available in the US, though the German company does offer smart AC controls stateside. The Ecobee Smart Home System (9/10, WIRED recommends) is a good alternative.

The Tado V3+ Starter Kit includes a wireless smart thermostat (available in black or white), a wireless receiver, and an internet bridge. I also installed smart radiator thermostats in most rooms in my home (nine in total). After reviewing photos of my heating system, Tado suggested a professional installation and scheduled an electrician. With some systems, the installation is straightforward enough to do yourself.

A wireless thermostat replaces your existing thermostat, and you can move it around. Then there’s a wireless receiver that connects to your heating controls (this is the potentially tricky part that required an electrician in my case). Finally, there’s the internet bridge, which plugs into your router via an Ethernet cable. You can save a little money by opting for a Wired Starter Kit (£180).

Gas central heating is the norm in the UK, where I live, but most systems are limited to a single thermostat control (usually in the hallway) and the option to schedule the heating for the whole house. Individual radiators have numbered valves that you can use to manually turn the heat up or down in most rooms. It’s not a very flexible system. Say, for example, I only want heating in my office during the day and then in my living room in the evening. I would have to schedule the heating to run at certain hours and go around adjusting the radiator valves by hand.

After installing Tado’s Smart Radiator Thermostats, I can call heating for individual rooms and run schedules that only heat the parts of the house I need to be warm. I installed the radiator thermostats by unscrewing the existing thermostatic valves (TRVs) and screwing the new thermostats on. You can scan a QR code on each one to link it to the system, and it runs through a short calibration process. This process wasn’t hassle-free for me, as the calibration failed on a couple of the radiator thermostats, and I had to put the old valves back on and twist them a few times and then restart the process. (Keep your old TRVs handy.)

With the system up and running, you can see the temperature in every room with a thermostat and set individual schedules for heating. The system will fire the boiler when needed to reach your target temperature at a specific time. (So if you schedule heating from 6 am for two hours, for example, it may turn on a few minutes before 6 am). You can toggle this Early Start feature off to limit your heating to the scheduled times. Unfortunately, the smart radiator thermostats make a wee mechanical sound that may wake light sleepers.

Heating systems always have at least one radiator without controls (usually the room with the fixed thermostat), and I was advised against installing smart thermostats in the bathrooms. Any rooms without smart radiator thermostats will also be heated whenever your heating comes on, though you can still turn them up and down with the old valves.

The Tado system offers several advantages over my old setup. Apart from turning the heating on or off and scheduling it from my phone, I can also set the temperature I want in each room with a smart radiator thermostat. Not only am I no longer heating the whole house to heat one room, but I’m also not overheating rooms that are already warm because the radiators turn down automatically when they reach the target temperature.

It took me a couple of weeks and a helpful chat with Tado support to get a feel for how Tado works and to set up schedules that work for my household. Beyond the direct temperature controls, there’s a quick-boost option to heat your whole home, and there are some smart features to save you money. Geofencing enables you to add the phones of everyone in the house to alert you when no one is at home and prompt you to turn the heating off. Open-window detection warns you when a door or window is left open, which is handy if your kids have a habit of leaving the front door open as they chat with friends.

The Tado app also contains charts and stats related to your house, showing temperature, humidity, weather, and more. An Air Comfort section displays the quality of outdoor air, tracks open windows, and provides a rating for each room in your home. You can also link your Tado system to Google Home, Amazon Alexa, or Apple HomeKit. I can ask Google Assistant how warm it is in a particular room and ask it to adjust the temperature.

Tado offers a subscription service upgrade called Auto-Assist that costs £3 per month or £25 per year. It will automatically turn the heating off when everyone is out or when it detects an open window, instead of alerting you to do it. It also gives you access to Care & Protect, which tracks your heating system to alert you to anything unusual that might indicate a fault. It includes links to arrange repairs or set up boiler servicing and cover if you don’t already have it.

The other feature with your subscription is Energy IQ, which shows your gas consumption per room and details the savings that Tado has supposedly made for you. While it is difficult to know how accurate Energy IQ is, I was surprised to find that my dining room/kitchen accounts for the lion's share of our heating; it prompted me to look at better insulation and change the schedule for that room. If you don’t mind responding to alerts or don't care to dig into the minutiae of your energy use, you can skip the subscription.

After some early tweaking, the Tado system works well for our home. We are using less gas than at the same time last year, but it was an unusually mild November, so it’s tricky to work out how much of that is down to Tado. I have encountered a few faults with the smart radiator thermostats—I had to remove and recalibrate two of them, and one needed new batteries. (They take two AAs and are supposed to last up to two years.)

For the most part, though, it has been smooth sailing with Tado, and the house is a comfortable temperature throughout without me having to think about it. What I like best is that I can turn the heat on in my office during the day without heating the whole house, I can keep the bedrooms cool for going to bed but take the chill off in the morning, and I can remotely control the heating from anywhere if my plans change and the schedule no longer makes sense.

While Tado certainly brings convenience and control, it is a significant investment. Much depends on your home, heating system, and preferred temperature, but it will likely take several years for you to recoup the cost of the system in savings. If you want to try it, keep an eye out for the frequent discounts, especially on bundles of smart radiator thermostats.