Thermostats

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The first question is not which HomeKit thermostat is best. It is what your heating is, because the answer splits this category in two and buying across the line wastes your money.

A UK home with a boiler and radiators wants either a wall thermostat that switches the boiler, or smart valves that control each radiator separately, or both. A home with forced-air heating and cooling — most North American houses, and some newer flats with heat pumps — wants an HVAC thermostat with a C wire behind it. The two families are not interchangeable. An ecobee will not control your radiators and a tado° radiator valve will not run your air conditioning.

Everything below is sorted on that basis.

For a boiler and radiators

Whole house, one thermostat: tado° Smart Thermostat

The tado° Smart Thermostat Starter Kit (v3) replaces the wall thermostat and switches the boiler, and it is sold as a kit rather than a bare unit because the system needs more than the part on the wall. Its geofencing turns the heating down when the last person leaves and back up before they get home, which is the automation that actually saves money.

Check price on Amazon UK

The Netatmo Smart Thermostat is the obvious alternative: Wi-Fi direct with no hub of its own, the same geolocation behaviour, and a design by Philippe Starck that people either want on the hall wall or very much do not. Check price on Amazon UK

Room by room: Eve Thermo

The Eve Thermo is a smart radiator valve that replaces the TRV head on a single radiator. It joins over Thread with Bluetooth for setup and needs no bridge and no manufacturer account, which makes it the least encumbered thing in this category if you already have a HomePod or Apple TV. Fit them to the rooms that are wrong — the cold back bedroom, the study nobody uses — rather than to every radiator in the house.

Check price on Amazon UK

If you would rather have valves and a thermostat from one system, both tado° and Netatmo sell radiator kits: the tado° Smart Radiator Thermostat Starter Kit (Amazon UK) and the Netatmo Smart Radiator Valves Starter Pack (Amazon UK).

Underfloor heating and multiple zones: Heatmiser neoStat

Heatmiser neoStat WiFi is the one to look at if your heating is wet underfloor, or if the house is zoned properly and you need a thermostat per zone rather than one for the building. It connects over Wi-Fi without a separate hub. Heatmiser is a trade brand and the range is deeper than one product — the neoHub exists for the larger installs.

Check price of the neoStat WiFi on Amazon UK

For forced-air heating and cooling

ecobee Smart Thermostat Enhanced

The ecobee Smart Thermostat Enhanced is the one most people should buy from this range. Remote SmartSensors are the reason to choose ecobee at all: a thermostat in the hallway does not know the back bedroom is cold, and a sensor in that bedroom lets it heat the rooms people are actually in.

Check price on Amazon UK

The Premium (Amazon UK) adds built-in air quality monitoring and voice, and drives two accessories at once; the ecobee3 lite (Amazon UK) is the budget end. Our Premium vs Enhanced vs Essential comparison is the fastest way through the range.

The Honeywell Home T9 is the main alternative, on Wi-Fi with no hub and with the same geofencing idea. Check price on Amazon UK

What to check before you order

Your wiring. For an HVAC thermostat this means the C wire, the common wire that gives the thermostat continuous power. Most manufacturers supply a power extender kit for houses that lack one, and it is a workaround rather than a guarantee. Take the old thermostat off the wall and photograph the terminals before you buy anything.

Whether it needs a hub of its own. Some thermostats join your Wi-Fi and are done. Others need a manufacturer bridge on the router, which is a second box, a second power socket and a second thing to fail. The starter kits exist precisely because of this — check what is in the box rather than assuming.

Your radiator valve bodies, if you are buying smart TRVs. Most take the common M30 × 1.5 head, but not all, and the adaptors are cheap only if you know which one you need. Unscrew an existing TRV head and look before ordering six.

Hot water, if the boiler does it. Heating and hot water are separate channels on a UK system, and not every smart thermostat controls both. If yours does not, the immersion timer stays on the wall.

What Apple Home actually gets. The good ones expose the target temperature, the mode, the current temperature and humidity, and appear in scenes and automations. Some expose less than the manufacturer’s own app does. That difference matters if the Home app is where you intend to live.

A home hub. As with every HomeKit accessory, schedules, automations and control from outside the house need a HomePod or an Apple TV that stays at home.

The full list of HomeKit-compatible thermostats and radiator valves in the directory is below, filterable by connectivity and brand.