Total Connect Comfort

I replaced another brand of wi-fi thermostat with this one after the original failed. I bought the Honeywell partly because of the reviews and partly because of the company reputation. It works, but I am a little disappointed at this point. The thermostat does not update the indoor temp properly or often enough so it gets cold in the house before it turns the furnace on and then it overruns the set temperature so it gets too hot inside before the furnace turns off. I thought it was a problem with the unit so I returned it and got another. No difference. I called the support number and got someone overseas who had no idea how to understand the problem or tell me how to fix it. In addition, the unit does not have a function to give me daily unit run times. On the plus side, it is easy to set up and the display is easy to read. I would give this unit 5 stars if it would work correctly and give me some idea of how much the furnace runs on a given day. Update, one year later. The unit has settled in as far as holding temp goes, and I like the feature where it anticipates the heat time needed to meet the temp setting at a given time. Especially useful given that we reduce the house temp to 60 degrees overnight in winter. The unit senses temp drop during the night apparently and calculates the time needed to meet the warm up time in the morning. I would give it 5 stars but there is still no function to view actual run times.

Purchased a Honeywell “Smart Home” color thermostat to replace a builder installed Honeywell thermostat on our hi-efficiency (95%) gas furnace/AC unit. The original thermostat worked well, but the display was just too small to comfortably read, and programming, with no WiFi feature was extremely(emphasis on extremely)difficult. The large color display on the new thermostat is excellent. The app seems to work well, however after only a few days of use, I’ll reserve total judgement for now. I have noticed that the outside temperature reading does not seem to update very often, and the displayed outdoor temperature rarely is even close to three remote reading thermometers we have in our home. I have noticed that the furnace cycles more often than it did with the previous system, and the thermostat has no choice of temperature differential settings. There is a conventional/hi-efficiency setting, which I have set to the hi-efficiency setting. It would be my choice to have a couple of degrees differential between on and off, so the unit didn’t cycle so often. I do plan on contacting my HVAC supplier to find out if there are any adverse effects from the more frequent cycling. At this writing, I am about 3 months from using the AC part of my system, so may add to this review at a later date. Summary, to thermostat manufacturer, or app developer, this really need a differential choice.

I just installed a new Carrier high efficiency furnace in our vacation cottage up north Michigan. I had bought a $99 Honeywell RTH6580 at first, installed it and found out it didn’t have any battery backup. Since it’s a vacation home, I want the thermostat to remember the settings because I’m only there if you times per year and the power seems to go out regularly. No where could I find anything about a backup system, so I tested it by turning the furnace off for a while and reconnecting. The thermostat went to a much higher (probably a preset) heat setting than I had it. So that thermostat came off the wall and went back to the store. Then I tried a $99 Sensi. It was very difficult to set up, I never could get it to connect plus it only went down to 50° and I needed to go down to 42 because that’s the temperature I keep my cabin in the winter. So they one came off the wall and went back as well. I then bought the Honeywell RTH9585. It stores settings in permanent memory, not just limited battery back up, which is great because sometimes power is out for several hours, and no batteries to change. its goes down to 40, was really easy to set up and connect to my router, app has worked flawlessly. I love it so far. And I’m getting a $50 rebate from the electric company for installing it...awesome.

The good: I can control the thermostat remotely. It's been reliable over a couple years of use. The "air circulate" mode is very useful and helps inhibit mold and stale air. This mode circulates air about 8 hours per day even if the heat or a/c isn't on. I like that I can see system status remotely - in other words, in addition to turning it on or off, I can see if the system is actively operating at the moment. The mediocre: The "air circulate" setting can't be customized. Also, it's not intuitive. The app interface makes it seem like I have to leave the system in heating mode (but set to 55 degrees) in the summer time if I want to use the air circulate. The app should have a dedicated setting for "air circulate" that doesn't have an apparent requirement for the system to be left in heating mode. I can't see the status of my system fan in the app when in "air circulate" mode. The bad: There is a "marketplace" icon on the main screen which I don't need or want. This replaced the equally useless "contractor" icon which the app used to have. Now, each and every time I adjust the heat, Honeywell wants to present me an upsell. This "marketplace" should be buried in a submenu somewhere. Voice control is not implemented well and I'd prefer not to have it at all. There should be a way to disable voice control.

This thermostat works great when it works right. I don’t know how it reads outside temperature but most of the time is not in agreement with actual temperature in the area (does it read “official” temperature at some other location?). The other thing is that it is supposed to be a “smart” device and adjust itself according to our usage trends, but it has never changed its set preferences from the day it was installed. One thing I don’t like is that it changes the heat mode to “emergency” mode too often, seems to kick in more often above 71°F which I think it’s too much too soon. The remote works great, it even works overseas! Other than that the device works great, it keeps the house at the desired temperature, although I liked the two-degree differential the other thermostat had to kick on; this one turns itself on at a one-degree differential, so it turns on more often during the day, but I haven’t noticed a difference on the electricity bill and that is fine with me. The major flaw I think is that it doesn’t change “Modes” automatically (Cool to Heat and vice-versa), a feature I was looking for but could not find in local stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s, at least I can do that from my Iphone and don’t have to go to the actual device to change it! Hope this helps, happy hunting!