14.1.2018

This might be a lengthy review but hopefully will provide an insight into my less than successful experience.I took some time looking at reviews of various smart heating systems before deciding on Tado. I spent £420 on 1 smart radiator starter kit, 1 smart thermostat and 3 smart radiator valves after consulting with Tado on the best setup for my home and required usage. I retained the hot water control via my existing programmer so didn’t need the extension kit.The items are packaged in a style and branding not dissimilar to that of Apple and although are of a plastic finish seem reasonably robustThe online registration and system installation was easy and intuitive,and having a technical background I found it straightforward. I set up three zones, a living room with the smart thermostat and two smart radiator valves as recommended by Tado, a family room with 2 smart radiator valves on both radiators and 1 bedroom with a smart radiator valve. I didn’t want to invest in any more kit until I was sure that it did what Tado said it would.Connection of the internet bridge and pairing of all the components was uncomplicated as was fitting the valves, only two needed the included adapters, (on Danfoss valves.)I set the system up initially on the web interface and then downloaded the Tado App on to my iPhone. Programming the zones for different times and temperatures was simple to do either via the web interface or on the app.So with everything programmed we woke up to a cold house the next morning. The boiler had only fired for a short period. The schedule was set to warm the bedroom and family rooms before the living room which isn’t used until afternoon. Manually starting the living room by increasing the set temperature above the actual recorded temperature then enabled the other zones to warm up in line with the set-point temperatures. Thinking this might have been a one-off I left it but it did the same the next day, cold house in the morning.So it appears that the zone with the smart room thermostat in must be calling for heat before any other zone even though their smart radiator valves are calling for heat.And this is where it all goes downhill with Tado support.I tried throughout the day to call but was unable to get through, just a recording that all agents are busy and to try later (or leave a message.) So I emailed asking for help, and got a response saying that they had made changes to my system (I have no idea what, they didn’t say – and I couldn’t see any changes) to prevent the boiler short firing and not reaching full temperature on first starting and to let them know if it didn’t work. It didn’t so I replied by email but heard no more. I tried ringing but just got the same recorded message.However, they sent me a satisfaction request in dealing with the problem even though they hadn’t and still haven’t fixed it – unbelievable. I now have a response saying they are still dealing with the request for help which will take a few days more.This is not good enough Tado – I’m a new customer with a zone configuration that you recommended and it doesn’t work.Once the system does decide to start up then generally it works fine during the day although there are noticeable variations in the room temperatures before the system turns on the heating again so you can feel the temperature drop and then increase, i.e it doesn't maintain a comfortable constant temperature. You also need to check the actual room temperature with a separate thermometer agains the Tado set point temperatures and then adjust the offset on which ever device is set to monitor the room temperature.I haven’t tried the Geolocation feature yet or the relationship with Apple Homekit as I’d just like to get it working.So in summary, installation set up, programming and control in principle, very good. Functionality not so good Problem resolution and support poor.Tado if you read this I’d like a resolution please (i.d. 426017) so I can return all the items to Amazon for a refund within 30 days if you can’t fix this for me.EDIT- UPDATE.Tado have now fixed the problem remotely. I have therefore revised my rating.

1.9.2019

I have purposely left this a good 7/8 months before committing to review. I wanted to see just how well it performed during the colder and warmer months, and how stable the host servers are. I now feel in a position to give a fair and honest summary of the Tado system.The initial setup wasn’t without teething trouble. Having got the thermostat starter kit for review, I opted to purchase the extension kit in order to also control the water heating. Tado ask you to supply details of your current heating system, then provide installation instructions to replace with the Tado smart kit. In my particular case, installation was very simple barring a significant step they neglected to include in the instructions to link out some of the old thermostat wiring.Getting through to their customer service was the most difficult part to rectifying the problem as, at the time they offered no out of hours or weekend support. I ended up having to take time off work to get it sorted, which was inconvenient. They did say they were looking to extend their support hours, though I can’t confirm if this has ever been implemented.The ‘fix’ ended up being very simple, and the system was up and running. Next was to set up some schedules using the Tado app. I personally found this not especially difficult, but somewhat long winded. Fortunately it is something you only really need to do once, and the app has not changed / developed in the time I have had the system.So they were the couple of slight negatives.After all the minor installation issues, I can say the system has worked flawlessly - it truly is a set & forget. The only one time it did not operate as it should was when I lost internet connection. Obviously the system can be manually operated via the smart stat, but it did mean the house was a bit chilly as the routine had not operated due to the lost server link. A router reset fortunately restored the connection and the system reconnected with no issue.One of the reasons for picking Tado was the Alexa integration. I have invested quite heavily in home automation with lights and home entertainment all able to be voice controlled. Again this is an area where Tado has been flawless in operation, activation of the Alexa skill was straight forward, it immediately found my Tado accessories and the voice commands worked perfectly. Out of scheduled routines heating or water or both can be turned on or off with simple voice commands along with altering temperatures. It is very impressive just how well it works.To get the true benefits of this smart technology Tado offers auto-assist, offering automated skills like the geofencing, so the heating automatically turns off when the last person leaves, or Pre heats when you are close to home. Other skills include open window detection, humidity monitoring & weather adaptation - all these designed to save energy and reduce bills. The auto-assist however does come at an additional monthly subscription of £2.99 / mnth accounting for the majority of the poor reviews. It is not mandatory to the Tado system, but to get the best from it along with the potential savings a smart thermostat can bring, it is something to be aware of. I personally think it’s a reasonable price, many disagree - If it saves me on my bills I am happy!To further enhance my system, I intend to look at installing a couple of smart radiator stats, as smaller rooms in the house can get too warm. This kind of zonal heating, I believe is something currently unique to Tado - although I could be wrong.I feel the system is brilliant, I have no complaints over its operation or stability & other professional reviews like T3 & Stuff magazine would appear to agree. If you want a very flexible smart thermostat, I feel Tado is a perfect system.

22.12.2016

When I researched thermostats I concluded that the Tado was the best available, and I haven't changed my view after using it for over a year. The nerdy reason why the Tado beats the Nest is modulation: the Tado can work with modulating boilers to adjust the power output of the boiler according to the conditions, whereas the Nest is a dumb on/off switch. I have a recently refurbished well-insulated flat which typically requires only an hour or two of heating on a typical Madrid winter's day, so running the boiler at full pelt would be absurd and wasteful. In this sense the Tado works as expected; however, like other users, I'm not sure whether it accounts properly for setting the water temperature to a lower setting,because sometimes it will switch on and off several times over a short period, indicating that something is not quite right with its algorithm. I need to talk to Tado support about this. Tado support is excellent, by the way, especially during installation. I was very pleasantly surprised.The software is generally good too, although there are a couple of gripes. Reports on the web app were taken away (to be fixed) just before I bought the thermostat in mid 2015. They have not returned. So consulting the reports forces you to use the mobile app, which is much more fiddly, especially if you want to save the report for some reason. I also dislike one aspect of a recent update, which removed the concept of "away" in the scheduling, leaving you relying exclusively on geolocation to determine your "awayness". As I have explained to Tado, this simply won't work for some customers, like me. I have radiant floor heating, which takes at least one hour to move the needle on the thermostat. I take less time than that to get home from work. So it's absolutely pointless to use geolocation as a method of determining when to turn on the heating (as it happens, the Tado doesn't realise I'm near home until I'm coming out of the station around 200 meters away; but it wouldn't matter even if it could detect me getting up from my desk, or even read my mind - there isn't enough time). Obviously, if you work very close to home it would be equally useless, no matter what your heating system. Sure, you can turn off geolocation, and the scheduling problem is just a label (it says "this applies when you're at home"), but it's annoying that it doesn't make it clear that you're away if you opt for fixed scheduling only. Also, for home automation systems that receive the home/away/sleep status from the Tado, this status is now incorrect for much of the time. There seems to be a general trend in software to take options away, but it's a trend that fails to recognise that people are different and don't have the same needs or circumstances. More, not less, flexibility is required.Incidentally what I *do* use geolocation for is to signal when I'm unexpectedly away from home and will be out for several hours. Then I turn it off more than an hour before I'm due to return. This is OK, but it would be better to have an "I'll be out for two/three hours" button .I should also say that, since my house doesn't lose much heat, the heating rarely needs to increase the temperature by more than a degree, and often less than that. So it's hard to judge how good it is at anticipating the need to turn on the heating in advance (what Tado calls "early start"), but my feeling is that it could be improved in that respect. It sometimes seems to undershoot. In that respect, Nest is clearer because it tells you when it's "pre-heating". Tado should do the same, to make it easier to work out what it's doing, and why.In short, this is the best smart thermostat out there. With some more improvements it could be almost perfect.

2.12.2016

I rarely write reviews on Amazon but after reading some bad reviews on here about Tado (mainly on customer service) I would like to readdress the balance. I have had the Tado thermostat installed for over a year now, so I have had plenty of time to form a judgement.-First of all, I did a lot of research on smart thermostats, including the favourites (in the UK) Nest and Hive. At the time of my research the Nest did not offer control of hot water (it does now), so that was out straight away. There was not much to pick between the Hive and Tado, but what won me over was the simplicity of the installation. The Thermostat and Hot water control were designed to fit into the most common UK heating installation with minimum disruption,just fit them where your existing thermostat and controller is, no re wiring to your boiler required. The Hot Water controller (Extension Kit) even fitted onto my existing Honeywell Controller back plate.-From the ipad the installation procedure was seamless, no problems what so ever, all up and running within 30 minutes. The geo-fencing feature is a massive plus for me and with an email to Tado they even adjusted the distances to suit where my wife works (only about a mile from our house). You will soon be able to adjust your geo-fencing yourself from the App.-I have had a year to assess if Tado has saved me money on my heating bill. The short answer is yes, but I will never know how much was down to Tado and how much was down to the mild (ish) winter we had in 2015/16. I believe that Tado will be rolling out a better report on the App soon, which will give you a better idea of savings-My good work colleague has a Nest thermostat so I have been able to compare. We are both Engineers and (sadly!) it’s in our nature and our job to scrutinise the function of equipment. Even he has admitted that the Tado’s function, control and Tado App offer more than Nest. The report graph is far more detailed with promise of more to come. On the flip side, there’s not much wrong with Nest, but I’m a strong believer that it sells well because of its looks. The Tado is a bit more understated when it comes to looks, but for me it’s what’s under the hood which counts-This past few weeks I have added 2 Tado Smart radiator valve controllers to my system. This now allows me to add Zones to my system, something which is extremely useful for my disabled son’s bedroom. I now know his room will stay warm on cold nights. I have also added one of the Tado radiator valve controllers to the Lounge. This allows me to use the lounge as the primary temperature reading and call for heat. The normal thermostat is mounted in the hallway where no-one sits and I don’t really care what the temperature is in the hallway.-I did have a problem fitting the Radiator valve controllers to start with. My valves are M28x1.5 thread and the Tado controllers are M30x1.5 thread. After an email to Tado, they quickly replied and sent some different adapters which fitted perfectly. I hope they add this option when purchasing more in the future-There is a list on the Tado website of future upgrades coming to the Tado system and up over the next 12 months (you’ll find it in the FAQ section). Tado are constantly upgrading the system without extra cost (except the Apple home kit internet bridge, which will be a small additional cost, but free with new radiator valve kit).-So, in summary I’m extremely happy with choosing Tado as my Smart thermostat, it’s another decent piece of German Engineering. It hasn’t missed a beat since installation and the functionality just keeps getting better.

19.11.2016

I've been using tado⁠° for a couple of years now and I am generally happy with it as a product. I've been pleased the see tado⁠° improving this product over this time and because nearly all of the functionality is web based you get to enjoy all these improvements without upgrading the device. For example, it's now possible to set multiple home and sleep temperatures. I've also dealt with tado⁠° support on a number of occasions and have been very happy with their service.The basic principle with tado⁠° is that it tracks how far away from the house everyone is and adjusts the heating accordingly. If it makes any attempt to learn your habits I can't say I've noticed.I in fact bought tado⁠° for precisely this reason: I figured I didn't need a smart thermostat to figure out what time I leave for work and get home in the evening - I could easily configure that manually. What I was looking for was something that could potentially save me money when I go out at weekends, go away or work late and keep the heating on if I have a day off. tado⁠° certainly does this but there are some limitations.tado⁠° offers three settings which determine how it sets the temperature while no-one is home (away mode). These are comfort, mixed and economy. In practice what these do is change how aggressively tado⁠° reduces the temperature as you get further away from your home. As an alternative you can set the away temperature manually. However, after some experimenting I settled on economy because comfort tended result in my heating coming on in the middle of the day when no-one was home in cold weather. This is where the limitations of my central heating system come into play. As I want it to tado⁠° will allow my heating to drop by 5 degrees over the course of a day and as a result rarely - if ever - comes on while I am out. In theory the geofencing should ensure that by the time anyone gets home the temperature is back to normal. In practice a typical central heating system will only warm the house by a few degrees an hour so the 20 minutes it takes my Wife to get home from work is nowhere near long enough. It's worth pointing out the experience is similar for all away settings. It's just that the less aggressive settings don't allow the house to get as cold. To work around this I added a 15 minute block just before my wife typically gets home set to my daytime temperature - which is 1 degree lower than my evening temperature - with presence detection disabled. When presence detection is disabled tado⁠° just works like a regular smart thermostat and attempts to warm your house to the desired temperature by the time it reaches this block. This works nicely for me because it means if my Wife comes home at the usual time the house only needs to heat a further 1 degree and if she does we save money on our heating bills.Another important thing to bear in mind is that tado⁠° uses your mobile phone to detect where you are. If your journey home involves a number of areas without coverage tado⁠° is not going to know you are coming home. Moreover, you need to ensure your phone has the most accurate location setting enable for the best results.One of the good things about tado⁠° is that presence detection is optional but you don't have to completely disable it. This means if you find presence detection doesn't work for you on certain days of the week you can disable it and only use it where it's useful.The recent addition of Amazon Echo support is a nice addition too. However, if you plan to use tado⁠° with the Amazon Echo be sure to read my review of the tado⁠° skill first.

5.12.2018

Bought this to replace an old Siemens manual thermostat from a late 2000's Barratt house. You know, the sort you find on an iron that clicks on and off at random places depending on how much it's turned.....Anyway the issue I had was that the circuit is 240v to the thermostat and I read that things like Nest etc can only switch 12v. If I'd have tried one of those on here I'd have incinerated it but the Tado does indeed switch 240v just fine.Installation was fairly straightforward wiring wise (there was only 2x wires for me to worry about, being a permanent and switched live) but getting it paired to the internet bridge wasn't as easy as I'd have liked.The online install guide said to press and hold the thermostat button for X seconds to put it into pairing mode but it simply refused to find the internet bridge that was plugged into my broadband router. The answer? I had to go into my account online, into my devices and then tell the internet bridge to enable pairing mode too. As soon as I did that the thermostat found it just fine, but that process added a good hour onto the install unnecessarily.After this simply set the module under the boiler to "manual on" for central heating so it fully relinquishes control to the thermostat and you're in business.After this it was a case of installing the app onto my Android and my wifes iPhone and getting them set up so it knows when we're at home etc, and also running through the smart schedule setup so it knows what temperatures to set at what time of day, and how warm to make the house when we're out. The smart schedule needs some work - like the ability to copy and paste days for example. Get a complicated schedule on a Monday through lots of tapping and you have to repeat the process for each day - you can't duplicate the days to speed things up.Also the app enables you to set decimal degrees and the thermostat sort of handles it but not quite. So say for example you program it to be 20.5 degrees on the smart schedule. You go and press the button on the front of the thermostat and it says the current temperature is 20.3 degrees, which is fine, but it then scrolls to the desired temperature which seems incapable of handling the decimal place, so it just rounds it up to 21 degrees. Not what matches the schedule. Surely this is easily fixed in a firmware update?Aside from this the geofencing thing works well, knowing when you're out and lowering the house temp accordingly, and increasing it back to the desired temperature (as set by the schedule) as you get closer to home. Nifty but clobbers phone battery life with the GPS and data usage.Also the usual options are there to control the temp by the app and I've got mine hooked into Google Home too, so it handles voice controls etc also.I would some alerts to be available, so like if the house goes above or below a certain temperature when I'm out - that would be very nice (as opposed to having to manually check it, and I think Hive or Nest does this) but otherwise it pretty does much of what you'd expect.There are subscriptions you can get for £X a month to add more intelligence about weather prediction etc but I've not bothered with these as the basic thing does the job pretty well.I'd definitely recommend it especially for those that need to circuit switch 240v as opposed to 12v but Tado could do with tweaking things a little to make it even slicker.

15.5.2015

I purchased the Tado Thermostat in January 2015 to replace an existing manual wired thermostat connected to a regular boiler. I followed the instructions on the web site to install Tado and found it to be quick and easy to do. I already had a programer for heating and hot water and had decided not to buy the Extension Kit to control my Hot Water, preferring to rely on the existing programmer for this. With the existing programmer set to 'Always On' and the Tado thermostat installed the system was up and running in about 15 minutes.In the morning Tado calculates when to start the boiler to get to your set temperature at your set time based on a number of factors.There is a learning process at the start and I found that for the first few days Tado was switching the boiler on much to early. This quickly got much better and after about 10 days it had corrected itself and the system was working well.Tado is the only smart thermostat I know which uses geolocation based on the location of a users smart phone. If all members of the household have smart phones then Tado uses the geolocation function to turn the temperature down in the house whenever everybody is out. The 'Away' temperature is set automatically based on the distance and time spent away from home. This can be manually adjusted if required e.g. if not everybody has a smart phone.In April 2015 Tado updated the software so that you have much more flexibility when setting temperatures. You can now set up to 96 time blocks with different temperatures for any day and then apply them for the whole week or divide it into weekdays and weekends or set them individually for each day. Improvements were also made to the layout of the App and a manual override provided to the 'Away' Temperature.Prior to this software improvement I would have given Tado 4 stars, but now it is worthy of 4.9 stars. It is still not perfect but many of the criticisms you will find in reviews prior to the April 2015 software release have been overcome. However, the layout of the App is still poor and Tado could learn a lot from the British Gas Hive App which I have used in the past.If you like your heating system to manage itself once set up and every member of your household has a smart phone then I can recommend Tado. If not, it will still work well but you will not be fully utilising the system.Update - Feb 2016A further software update has been rolled out which gives Tado 'Boost' functionality. This allows you to temporarily adjust the target temperature for a specified period of time or until the next mode change or until further notice. These options are only available from within the App itself . At present, using the buttons on the Tado thermostat only allow you to change the target temperature until further notice.This is a very useful and convenient update and is working well so far. However, the revised App UI continues to be poor in my view.

5.10.2018

I had high hopes for this system. The smart wall thermostat install went OK, no problem linking. First smart radiator valve on a Drayton valve, OK. A bit fiddly, not easy to feel the click to let you know it's locked but got there. the next one was a Danfoss, a very common valve and adaptor included. The adaptor is rubbish, it doesn't grip the nut well enough. What's worse, the manufacturers know it's rubbish:"This form allows you to order a new Danfoss RA adapter free of charge if you are having an issue with the stock adapter due to a minor manufacturing issue. This typically results in the Smart Radiator Thermostat not sitting securely on the valve,even when the screw on the Danfoss RA adapter is not overtightened"So now I have to wait 14 days, they're sent from Germany surface mail. They know they're selling a duff product and yet they make minimal effort to sort it out.I've played with the schedule settings via browser. The Tado interface does not work well with a 4K laptop screen, the up-down arrows are too tiny to click on.It's all a bit naff. As I've mounted and got the wall thermostat working plus one radiator, I'll persevere, but I'm not optimistic.Update. I checked the Tado help again and it may well be more than two weeks for the supposedly improved Danfross adaptors to arrive. So, I went down to Screwfix and bought three Drayton complete TRVs at a cost of over £30. This made the job much bigger, draining the heating system, removing old valves, and radiator tail for one. Refitted new valves and from that point on the installation was very easy. The initial setup needed a laptop but once the Router Bridge was installed I could use phone to read in the barcodes rather than type long case sensitive strings in.I was pleased to find in the case of the living room where the wall thermostat is fitted, the system automatically just uses the radiator Smart Thermostat as an on-off device with the wall thermostat giving very accurate temperature control. I'm so impressed I might buy another Smart Wall thermostat for the main bedroom. I've already spent more £400 though...I've yet to set up the away from home automatic switch off and Alexa control but it now looks to be a very well thought out system. There is total flexibility on individual room control, unlimited time slots for unlimited temperature setting.In conclusion, this is a five-star system marred by a very weak solution to a major (not minor) manufacturing/ design defect (which cost me an extra £30 and 4 hours of work). I've upgraded my review of 2 stars to 4. I strongly recommend Tado if you have Drayton valves. Otherwise expect delays, more expense, or even a plumber if you can't do valve replacement stuff yourself.

25.1.2016

I bought a Tado last week via my energy provider (Hydro/SSE) as I was able to get a discount on the rental prices. Because my house didn't have a pre-existing thermostat, I was alway required to buy the extension kit, which is the bit that cables up to the boiler if there isn't existing thermostat wiring to connect to the tado.I had searched extensively for a compatibility list to ensure my boiler (Worcester Bosh 35cdi) was supported but this information is only made available after you start the setup, so I was a bit nervous going in that this was going to be a very complex procedure! I was Dead Wrong!Once I started the setup online, I was asked to enter my boiler manufacturer and search for the model (there were thousands of boilers listed,

8.5.2016

This thermostat really is amazing!Fitting was simple. There are no instructions in the box, you just go to the Tado website. There you enter details of your existing system (even my very old boiler and control box were listed) and follow the instructions. It tells you when to connect the bridge to your router and when the thermostat has connected to their servers. It all worked with my two wire thermostat system, which some other smart thermostats can't as they need more connections.Once set up you can set multiple on/off times and temperatures to suit your lifestyle. By default it has three settings – At Home, Night and Away from Home. You basically set times and temperatures for when you are in the house,

12.12.2019

So looking into competitors offerings and they were all way more pricey than the TADO system, reviews were good, so I went for that.I’m an engineer by trade and like DIY, so opted to fit myself.The package arrived and was fairly straightforward to fit the parts, although it took a bit of thought. All the instructions are online and it’s a bit difficult to follow at times. That said, I took an evening and got it all installed with not much trouble. It looks really slick and if you have white or light decoration it really looks fantastic.I thought the starter kit and 4 rad thermos straight off but after setting it up I brought another 4 rad kits straight away.The app is easy to use and helps you through the installation process well.

26.1.2018

TLDRThe reason I invested in this (and 6 TRVs) was because we live in a narrow, tall hours (three floors) and the temperatures in each room vary wildly. And we wanted to be more energy efficient (and, frankly, avoid having to go down three floors to turn the thermostat down). For that purpose, so far it has been great.To review a smart thermostat, I think there are really two distinct things: installation and usage.INSTALLATIONI would probably not give this 5 stars. They have done some clever stuff to help (the Web instructions remember where you are, so you can come back to them if you turn off your computer or even switch to another device) and the support is very responsive,

7.11.2019

I am very impressed with this. It allows me to keep one room warm (where the wife is!) and the rest of the house cooler. It takes some time to create the right schedules and I find I'm still tweaking them as I see the wife's "user patterns"(and, as someone else said - it's slightly annoying you can't copy compete schedules from one device to another).The only silly annoying thing is the way it handles manual changes. You can see the devices (say a rad valve) so that if someone comes in to a room and wants it warmer, they can manually go to the valve and up it. You can set the devices so that they stay at that new temp for either a set period of time (which you set in the app) or until the next time block.

24.11.2016

I am astounded to read some of these reports. Can't remember when I installed but it was very soon after they were announced in the UK.Installation was fairly simple but I didn't need the extension box as it was just as easy to hard wire it - I returned the extension box and was refunded for the full amount including postage.As the control box gets its energy from batteries rather than mains power , they need replacing from time to time, I have found that by using good quality batteries I get six months or more from a set. As soon as they drop below a set voltage you are advised to replace them by SMS or Email (Cant remember which),

16.1.2018

I don't care, so I couldn't tell much about the geofencing abilities, which is marketed as it's main feature. I usually move to little away from my house so I don't use the geofencing at all. I just start the heating manually before going/getting home.What I really love is:- the ability to add more time slots per day - in the schedule.- the modulation of water temperature (at least with my Vaillant boiler) - it means that the thermostat doesn't jut go on-off but regulates the temperature of the radiators. As it approaches the set temperature the water temperature in the radiators goes down.- the hot water control and schedule (although in the latest firmware - 47.9 - you dont see anymore the

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