April 14, 2023

HVAC services in St. Louis, MO

The 5 Best Wi-Fi-Enabled Smart Thermostats in 2023

For homeowners these days, smart home technology offers an easy way to add new modern home conveniences to their daily lives. And among the many types of technology popular today, none offers a better return on investment than a Wi-Fi-enabled smart thermostat. That’s because they offer a potent mix of HVAC efficiency improvements, enhanced comfort, and advanced feature sets for a relatively small investment. However, with so many smart thermostats on the market today, it’s not always easy for homeowners to decide on which model would make the best addition to their home. To help, the experts here at Scott-Lee Heating Company have put together this list of the five best Wi-Fi-enabled smart thermostats in 2023.

1. The Amazon Smart Thermostat

If you’re looking for a Wi-Fi smart thermostat that offers excellent features at a fair price, the Amazon Smart Thermostat may be for you. It’s the best smart thermostat in the sub-$100 category, hands down. It’s Energy Star certified, which means it’ll save you an average of $50 on your energy bills each year. It’s also natively compatible with Amazon Alexa, so you can operate it with voice commands if you already have an Alexa product at home.

The most amazing feature included in the Amazon Smart Thermostat is a system it calls Hunches. It’s a smart-learning feature that adjusts your climate settings based on your patterns. Over time, the thermostat learns when you’re home, when you’re sleeping, and when you get up each morning. Critically, the more connected smart devices you have in your home, the better the feature works because the thermostat’s AI has more data to work with.

The Amazon Smart Thermostat is the only smart thermostat in its price range with AI learning capabilities. However, to use it, you’ll have to make sure your home’s HVAC includes a C-wire, which is a power cable wired to your thermostat’s location. If not, you’ll need to buy an adapter to make the Amazon Smart Thermostat work. In either case, it’s likely the cheapest smart thermostat you’ll find for sale today.

2. The Honeywell Home T9 Smart Thermostat

Honeywell is a name that should sound instantly familiar to most homeowners. They’ve been in the HVAC business since 1885 and continue to innovate to this day with their Honeywell Home T9 Smart Thermostat. It’s a Wi-Fi-connected thermostat with a bevy of great features that would make a welcome addition to most homes.

For starters, it’s compatible with both the Amazon Alexa and Google home product ecosystems, making it a great fit in homes with existing smart home technology. It also comes with a full-featured app that allows you to monitor and control your HVAC system from anywhere with an internet connection. And best of all, it comes with a smart sensor that allows you to further customize your home’s comfort.

You can place the included sensor in your bedroom, for instance, to add temperature, humidity, and proximity sensing capabilities there. That way, your thermostat can ensure that you’re comfortable in the room you’re actually in rather than relying on conditions around the thermostat itself. You can also purchase and add as many smart sensors to the system as you wish, which can extend your system’s functionality to every corner of your home.

3. The Nest Learning Thermostat

Nest is one of the originators of smart thermostat technology, so it’s no surprise to see their latest model, the third-generation Nest Learning Thermostat, on this list. Like the previous device, it works with the Amazon Alexa and Google Home ecosystems, making it a good fit in many homes. Plus, it’s the originator of the smart learning functionality that the Amazon Smart Thermostat works so hard to emulate.

The Nest Learning Thermostat excels at detecting the patterns of a home’s occupants. It then uses that data to manage your home’s temperature in the most efficient way possible without forcing you to sacrifice any comfort. It also includes a well-designed app to let you control your thermostat from anywhere and make adjustments as necessary.

It also works with remote sensors, like the previous model from Honeywell. Unfortunately, they only measure temperature and can’t measure the humidity or detect your presence in a room. That makes the Nest’s sensors a bit more limited than the Honeywell’s sensors but useful nonetheless. After all, there’s a reason that Nest is such a well-known name in the thermostat market—it’s because they make a solid, good-looking product that does exactly what it claims to.

4. The Wyze Thermostat

Although not as well-known as the other names on this list, Seattle, WA-based Wyze makes a variety of smart home products at extremely reasonable prices. Their Wyze Thermostat is a Wi-Fi-enabled smart thermostat that falls in the same price range as the Amazon Smart Thermostat detailed above. It doesn’t, however, cut back on features to keep its price low.

The Wyze Thermostat integrates with Amazon Alexa and Google Home products, enabling voice controls and advanced automation. However, it also comes with the Wyze smartphone app, allowing you to access the thermostat’s settings and data from anywhere. Among the smart thermostats on this list, it’s fair to say that the Wyze Thermostat is among the simplest to learn to use. It also works with available remote temperature sensors that help you to eliminate warm and cold spots in your home.

The Wyze thermostat also comes with a C-wire adapter, making it a great option for homes with older HVAC systems. Plus, it’s simple to install and configure, taking less than twenty minutes in an average home.

5. The Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium

The final smart thermostat on our list is the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium. It’s the gold standard of smart thermostats today, offering features you won’t find included in any of the competition. For one thing, it’s the only thermostat on this list that works with Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home, and Apple’s HomeKit. It also integrates with Samsung’s SmartThings and the near-universal IFTT standard. In other words, it’s the most flexible smart thermostat you’ll ever find.

On top of that, the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium also offers air quality sensors, smart humidity adjustment, smart recovery, and fan dissipation functionality. Altogether, Ecobee claims that the feature set should save you an average of 26% on your yearly energy bills compared with a conventional thermostat.

Unlike the other options on this list, however, the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium can also integrate with an optional home security system. In this configuration, it lends its sensors to alert you of fire alarms when you’re away from home, detect intruders, and more.

Consult the Smart Thermostat Experts

As you now know, there’s a Wi-Fi-enabled smart thermostat to suit every need and every budget. And the experts here at Scott-Lee Heating Company know all there is to know about all of them. So, if you’d like to add a smart thermostat to your St Louis area home, we’re the place to turn. Plus, we offer a complete array of HVAC services, including installation, repair, and maintenance, along with air quality, geothermal, and metalwork. We even handle commercial climate systems so we can tend to your business, too!

For smart thermostats, HVAC services, and more, contact Scott-Lee Heating Company today!