Infographic Smart Thermostats

The smart thermostat market is poised for significant growth. Recently, Google paid $ 3.2 billion for Nest Labs, a company that is known for interactive smart thermostats and smoke detectors. On the European market Tado is a strong contender. In the Netherlands, energy suppliers offer a range of smart products and services, including Eneco (Toon) and Essent (Icy). Boiler manufacturers offer smart solutions as well (Remeha, Nefit/Bosch and Vaillant).

Infographic Smart Thermostats

Each solution has its own pros and cons. My personal favorites are Tado and ThermoSmart. The Tado works with real-time signals (GPS). When the resident leaves his/her home, this will be automatically recorded and the heating/cooling will be automatically adjusted. ThermoSmart is self-learning and is adaptive to the characteristics of the room.

I decided not to opt for the Toon because I do not want to pay a subscription fee and share my data with the energy supplier (Eneco). For now the Nest doesn’t seem to work very well in Europe and i’m not ready yet to share more information with Google. The Netatmo (Starck) is well designed, but it is still unclear to me whether this solution will function in a Dutch household.

To save money and energy it might be more wise to choose a ’green’ energy supplier and invest in a high-efficiency boiler (or solar panels). Still, these gadgets are very ’sexy’ (app-controlled) and it may result in increased environmental awareness.

See also:
Bookmarks research
Overview by Dutch Consumers Association
Overview Dutch Energy Meters (Trouw, newspaper)
Website Tado
Website Thermosmart