Tado Smart Thermostat

Price from £199 + £59/rad + installation / stuff.tv/tado

What’s the story? Tado has spent the last five years blossoming into a serious smart heating player. On paper, it’s the best all-rounder out there. Last year the system welcomed Evohome-style smart radiator valves, which let you heat individual rooms and can act independently of the thermostat. And now Tado’s also learned voice control via Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple Homekit.

While you can create meticulous heating schedules, Tado’s fondness for geofencing makes it particularly good at

reacting to you and your family’s unpredictable movements. If no two days are the same in your household, it could save you some serious dough (on average, about a third off your annual bill).

Is it any good? Tado previously tried too hard to be a know-it-all heating autopilot. But now it’s struck the perfect balance, letting you tell Alexa to nudge your heating up a couple of degrees without screwing up your schedules. ‡e app is simple, but dig down and you can do some serious tweaking. ‡is includes setting the size of its geofencing zone, enabling ‘open window detection’ so it turns off heating to stop wasting energy, and perusing your personalised Energy Saving Report.

‡ough pricey if you kit out your whole house, Tado’s Radiator ‡ermostats are an essential add-on for larger houses. Unlike Honeywell’s valves, they use geofencing to sense when you’re coming home. ‡e only thing Tado doesn’t do is look as pretty as Nest. But we’ll happily trade that for fancy zonal controls.

STUFF SAYS Tado has evolved into a smart heating mastermind

HOT LINK If you don’t have a room thermostat, you’ll need the £80 Extension Kit to link Tado up to your boiler. HEAT STROKES e dot matrix display lets you make manual tweaks once you’ve learned what all the symbols mean.