Honeywell Home Smart Color Thermostat

I was hesitant at first, replacing my Carrier SYSTXCCITC01 which is also a Wi-Fi color programmable touchscreen thermostat and originally higher priced. The Carrier had serious problems maintaining a wireless connection from day 1 and when it did have a connection, it often could not communicate with its server. I could never depend on accessing it remotely. Lately it would never connect to the server. I have many other wired and wireless devices in my house, and all of them connect just fine to my router and their servers, so I am fairly sure my problems were not my equipment or a configuration problem. Apparently some versions of this carrier thermostat have the ability for a customer to update the software, mine did not. I suspect more current software may have gotten me connecting again (it is >5 years old: out of warranty). I opted to give this Honeywell thermostat try, which BTW will update itself when new software is available. The Carrier thermostat has a propriety interface to its furnace, so I did give up some functionality that was only available from Carrier thermostat. Specifically, the Carrier unit allows me to set fan speed to Low, Medium, or High for various situations. The Honeywell does not. The Carrier senses outside temperature and controls the humidifier based on the temperature, i.e. reduce humidity setting when the temperature drops very low that windows do not get condensation. The lack of humidity/condensation support I remedied by installing a HumidiPRO H6062 digital humidistat on the cold air return near my furnace. The fan speed options I did not consider a big issue since the Honeywell does have a circulation mode that will occasionally turn the fan on to keep air circulating if desired. It took a little homework to determine how to wire it up, since the Carrier was a 4-wire interface that did not using any of the standard thermostat input terminals (R, G, W1, W2, Y1, Y2, C.). Luckily the wire going from the furnace to the thermostat had 7 conductors and the board in the furnace did provide these standard terminals. After hooking everything up and going through the very easy registration and WiFi connection procedures, I was quickly up and running. I found that the web browser interface and the phone app interface were very easy to use, much nicer than the Carrier interface. Also there is nice scheduling support offered from the web page interface which is more convenient than setting up the schedule from the touch screen. The touch panel is adequate. The sensitivity on the touch is maybe not as good as it could be, but does job.

OK, I got this unit for the express purpose of integrating it with Alexa, and I am a very happy camper.Now for the details... I ordered this with two accessories;* Venstar ACC0410 Add-A-Wire Kit* Honeywell THP2400A1027W White Coverplate AssemblyWhile I waited, I bookmarked the appropriate Alexa skill;* Honeywell Total Connect ComfortThe thermostat and Add-a-wire kit came first, and since the coverplate goes on FIRST, I had to wait. I went to install the Add-a-wire, but discovered that there was an extra conductor in the bundle behind the wall! OK. For those of you using that, it seemed VERY well put together. There are a couple of Youtube Videos, the Factory version has a cute model, but the contractor-supplied version is more accurate and complete.The unit is smaller than you expect. It's approximately 3.5" H x 4.5" W. You will probably need the coverplate, and mine took about 5 days longer than the thermostat to arrive!The coverplates arrived, you get TWO to select from, depending on how humongous your original thermostat is. The bigger one is REALLY BIG, as you can see from the first photo in this review. The smaller one was fine for me.Installation was by the book, and easy. I'm giving them 5 stars for tech support, because they put MAN-YEARS into the docs, app, and website when they put this together. Instructions are clear and concise. None of this "refer-to-the-app" CRAP you see nowadays, advertised on websites with lots of art, and NO real information. This is HONEYWELL, folks. If you are reading this on an airplane, their stuff is helping to fly you there.The installation was straightforward, you might want to cut off the looped ends from your old-style terminals, and strip about 5/8ths of bare copper for the newer, smaller 'push-insert' style terminals.TURN YOUR HVAC UNIT OFF FIRST. The "C" wire is 24VAC, and I have NO idea what damage you could do to a modern logic board if you short the control wires to it. I blew a logic card in a whiz-bang variable-speed HVAC unit in another house about 15 years ago, and they have you over a barrel...When powered up, it has you step through an initialization sequence, and then register the unit online. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP. It's not the usual "get your name for advertising" registration, there is a web control panel (also pictured) that is integral to the entire operation. Then you can enable the Alexa skill, and it's off to the races.There is no concise list of commands the skill currently accepts, probably because it's dynamic. The bad skill reviews seem to be from early iterations. This is what I have dug up so far;Alexa, set the temperature to X degrees.Alexa, set the [group name] to X degrees.Alexa, set the [thermostat name] to X degrees.Alexa, raise the temperature by X degrees.Alexa, lower the temperature by X degrees.Alexa, make it warmer.Alexa, make it coolerAlexa, what's the temperature inside?Alexa, what's the thermostat set to?Finally, No more getting up in the middle of the night to walk down the stairs just to change the freaking temperature! Just say "Alexa, lower the thermostat by one degree" and go back to sleep! It wouldn't be so bad if my dog would stop leaving her bones on the stairs... OUCH!

I love the fact that you can adjust the temperature settings from my smartphone

I have been wanting to get a smart thermostat for a while now and was originally thinking Nest was the only way to go.However, while the round aesthetic is nice, I'd have to either patch and paint the drywall or have the silly looking rectangle mounting plate.I decided to look around and found this one. Always so hard to tell from reviews sometimes, but figured I'd give it a shot.So it was very easy to install, used the same mounting holes from the old thermostat, great!Connecting to wifi and installing the app went smoothly as well.Setup a basic schedule and just tweak from my phone as needed, it's really exactly what I wanted without fluff. I mean, you can do more with integration, but really I just wanted something simple. The display is straight forward and easily gives direct access to normal stuff without being intimidating or vague.The app is similarly simple to use. The only thing to point out is that for the email alerts, you'll need to define those from the website, not in the app. It's nice as I get notified about connectivity issues, inside temp/humidity thresholds being crossed, good peace of mind.Also, the silver and blue perfectly matches or decor, so that was also a factor!

We like it so far! Easy to use and is working fine.