Buy Honeywell RTH6580WF Wi-Fi 7 Day Programmable Thermostat, White

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List Price: $167.57
Sale Price: $119.99
Today's Bonus: 28% Off

This thermstat is outstanding. You can monitor and control the temperature, heat vs cool, and the fan auto vs on from your cell phone from anywhere. Right now there is no monthly charge for this capability.

You must have two-wire 24vac power available at the thermostat location to power the thermostat (R or Rc and a C wire). Most existing thermostats act as a simple switch and only have one hot wire (R or Rc)available. If you don't have the other hot wire "C" available, you will have to run one. The instructions don't tell you the thermostat receives its power through the Rc and C connections--my heating and A/C systems are separate systems, so I had to modify the wiring to get everything to work--it would have been very helpful to know Rc is used for power and not R.

Once I figured out how to make it work for my system, it worked great for three days. Twelve hours after I left on vacation, the thermostat wifi failed. When I got back from vacation, I determined that my home network was working fine and the thermostat wifi was the problem. Honeywell phone support was very good--I did not have to wait to talk to someone and the guy had me reset and try to reconnect it to the network. He quickly determined that I needed to take it back to Lowe's and get a replacement. I had no problem exchanging it at Lowe's and the replacement thermostat has been working great for two weeks now.

The wifi connection goes through a third party website and there is no charge for the service; however, the user agreement states that they can charge for the service in the future. If they start charging, knock off a couple stars.

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I purchased a RTH6580WF from Homedepot in Feb. The first problem I had was the wifi disconnecting within a couple of hours. This repeated and the router had to be re-booted to re-establish connection each time. Honeywell tech support was of little help, first telling me I had a weak signal and needed a wireless booster. I have been using wireless devices within 2 feet of that exact spot (and further from the router) for years without any problems. My laptops, iphone, ipad, & smart tv wireless all work fine. Honeywell tech support then said my Linksys wireless router was too old and needed to be replaced with a new router. Because I wanted the thermostat to work, I did replace my Linksys WRT54gs with a new Netgear router and the disconnect problems did go away.

Next problem was the temperature control. After sensing an obvious temperature fluctuation with each furnace cycle, I started checking with a fluke meter/thermocouple module with type K thermocouple, and also verifying with the 20 year old White-Rodgers programmable thermostat I was replacing. The Fluke and the old thermostat always matched within 1 degree. According to those devices, the RTH6580WF always displayed 3 to 5 degrees high. Further, during each furnace cycle, the RTH6580WF would remain steady or possibly show a 1 degree change while the other two always showed a 3 degree change. I had the sensitivity set to the most sensitive for a newer energy efficient house with 90+% efficient furnace which I have. I contacted Honeywell support and was told there was no adjustment or calibration for this. I re-installed my 20 year old White-Rodgers and verified that the actual temperature fluctuation during each furnace cycle was less than 1 degree. At this point, I returned the thermostat and exchanged it for another. The second thermostat was possibly 1 degree better than the first, but still was off by 2 to 4 degrees. I do not consider a 4 to 5 degree temperature error acceptable and I returned the second.

I missed the fine print about possibly being charged for the wireless access in the future. Had I been aware of that, I would have declined the terms and returned the thermostat for that reason alone. Something about not knowing the actual cost of a product when you purchase it does not sit well with me.

My final complaint was that the screen lighting and contrast is rather dim making it more difficult to read compared to the screens on other manufacturers thermostats that are available today (ie White-Rodgers blue screen thermostats). I would have also expected that as long as the RTH6580WF required the common for get the 24vac power that they would have provided an option to have the backlit screen stay on so that you do not have to touch it to turn the light on.

I really like the idea of a wireless thermostat, but it has to control temperature better than the two I tried. I also do not wish to let myself get trapped into having to pay some unknown future cost to use someone's proprietary interface system.

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I am NOT even close to the home improvement type. So if things go south I'm in trouble. I looked over the Honeywell box and Honeywell wisely stated your HVAC wiring to the thermostat MUST have a "C wire" or the new thermostat would not receive power and would not function. So being the cautious person I am I asked three wandering separate Home Depot guys "If there was anyway I could "tell" if I had a C wire. The first guy said, "oh if you have AC you have to have a C wire." I continued reading the box and another walked by and asked if I needed help. I asked him the same question. He said, "If your home is new you definitely have one". I then asked #3 and he said, "you should". And then gave me the "you could always return it".

So I took the shot and bought it. I followed the directions carefully. I saw plenty of wires going to the existing thermostat so I assumed I was safe as I saw more than 4. I disconnected the old thermostat and began to affix Honeywell's supplied wire stickers -with a lot of different letters in the alphabet that matched all the letters on the existing and figured I was safe and this would be a simple "swap out". Well guess what? My new, state of the art home had everything but a C wire. Nervousness sets in. I rip through the quick setup guide and read about "alternative wiring options for those without C wires. It was a very nicely done YouTube video that tells me I will have to use the "G" wire in place of the missing "C" wire. And by doing that I would lose the ability to only run the fan manually. No biggie. Then the video sends me down to the furnace to do the same G to C move on the main panel and then jump the "Y" to "C" with an 18 gauge wire. Yeah I have tons of those laying around my house. Now panic begins to set in. Putting the old thermostat back or worse having no heat in Northern Utah over night in end of Winter or worse, having to call an H VAC guy on a Sunday for "after hours" home service that "costs the same" while I listened to a lecture about not being trained to do this and getting a $300.00 bill did not appeal to me. To finish this long story my neighbor is an electrician. He speaks mostly Spanish but after reading the Spanish enclosed instructions and watching the YouTube video like 4 time he got it to work.

Otherwise an excellent WiFi thermostat system -which I can do and fully understand. It will help a good deal while I am traveling. I am an empty nester. So word from the now wiser, if you aren't comfortable with this stuff leave it to those that are.

Honest reviews on Honeywell RTH6580WF Wi-Fi 7 Day Programmable Thermostat, White

I picked up this thermostat at Lowes. I had expected to pay $150 for Honeywell's touchscreen wifi thermostat or as much as $180 for last year's nest. I was pleasantly surprised to see a wifi thermostat option for around $120.

I got the thing home, took down my old thermostat (which had 4 wires R, G, Y and W) and installed this one. I turned my furnace back on and... nothing. It turns out I didn't have a "c" wire. There were 6 wires coming from the furnace but only 4 of them were used. I removed the cover from my furnace and took a look. Sure enough there was a "C" spot with nothing hooked up to it so I stripped the (unused) blue wire going to my thermostat and connected it to "C", then went back upstairs and hooked up blue to "C". I turned on the furnace and the thermostat woke up. I thought I was done. I was wrong.

I now had to connect to an adhoc network called "new_thermostat_somethingorother" and the only way to force my iPhone to believe it was the real internet was to go into airplane mode before choosing it. I got to the wifi setup page, picked my home wifi ssid and entered my password. I thought I was done. I was wrong.

I went to honeywell's web site, created an account, entered my thermostat's mac address and checksum. I then got a very nice user interface for entering on times and off times. I was impressed. I thought I was done. I was wrong. The thermostat had to download a software update. I grow sick of buying stuff new and the first thing it has to do when it gets on the internet is send me away for up to half an hour while it updates its firmware. When the firmware update was over I thought I was done. I was wrong.

It turns out that in my haste to get this thing on the 'net, I skipped setting the date and apparently it doesn't figure out what day it is over the INTERNET?!? When I turned on the heat, based on the time of day it went to 62 degrees. But it's Saturday, not Monday right? So I called Honeywell tech support and they had me hold UP and FAN for 30 seconds to get into a diagnostic mode. I then had to scroll to page 39 and change the one to a zero (to delete wifi settings). I could now get to a screen to verify my thermostat knew what day it was. Whew. Now I had to go back and program the wifi settings one last time. This was dumb. Just plain dumb. Hopefully Honeywell fixes this in a future software update to allow date and time to be set through the web interface or make it simpler to set on the thermostat without having to forget wifi settings. Dumb.

This was painful. Painful, but mercifully brief. So why do I give this thing 5 stars? Because it works and works well. I don't mind an extra half hour or so of monkeying around and I'm pretty sure I'd have almost as much monkeying around if I paid twice as much for a Nest. Since my thermostat lives in a corner behind a grandfather clock, I cannot believe the nest can "just figure out" when I'm home and I'd rather have a wifi-ready, plain and simple, non-touchscreen thermostat than a Nest, because the Honeywell web site is well laid out and easy to use and there is an iOS app that allows me to get in and change settings from anywhere. Another plus for this thermostat is its shape, I don't have the paint I used in the living room and a small round Nest is going to leave an ugly white square where my old Honeywell manual thermostat used to be for people to see when they walk by the grandfather clock. In short if I bought the Nest, I had to spend up to twice as much AND worrying about matching a paint color from 10 years ago.

I think Honeywell is on the right track with this thing only I say go a little further. Honeywell needs to come up with an even more manual-looking thermostat with only 3 buttons on the thing and have ALL the programming done via wifi. I kept stumbling into programming screens when I was looking for a way to find out what day this thing thought it was. The user interface for this thermostat is just awful. The user interface on the web is great. So why not scrap those extra 4 buttons and give us nothing but up/down and hold? Let us handle the rest over the air. I already own a wonderful touchscreen. It's called an iPhone. I don't need another expensive touchscreen attached to my living room wall.

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I am really pleased with the function of this thermostat, but there were a few problems that had to be worked through before it functioned perfectly.

First, you need to know if you have a "c wire." Before buying a new thermostat, you should remove your old thermostat and inspect your wires to see if you have a "c wire." Our old thermostat did not use a c wire, but there was an unused wire wrapped around the wire bundle. We unwrapped the wire and labeled it "c" as stated in the alternate wiring video on the Honeywell website. Our heating and cooling system's terminal block already had a wire in the "c" position, so we just added the new c wire so that both wires were connected and it has worked fine.

Second, check the security settings on your wireless router. This thermostat does not function properly with mixed security mode (WPA/WPA2). If you experience intermittent connectivity problems, switch to WPA2-only mode.

When we purchased the thermostat we were using a router that used WEP security, and we had no problems using the thermostat's wifi. About three weeks after we bought it we changed internet service. To change the settings on the thermostat, you have to press up and fan for three seconds to get into the menu. Then you have to go to setting 39 and change it to 0 in order to set up the new wifi. Be careful in the menu settings. While trying to deal with the intermittent wifi issues, I accidentally changed the system type to Heat Pump. That caused the heater to come on at the same time as the AC and then a fuse blew on the circuit board. So we didn't have AC for a day. In July. In Texas. Honeywell does not make the menus user friendly, so make sure you are looking at your user manual and you have all of the numbers set correctly anytime you access the menus.

Once we set up the wifi for the new router, it worked for several hours, but then it would no longer connect with our PC or iphone app. This went on for several days. It would lose connectivity, then I would enter the menus to turn off wifi and then turn it on again to get it to connect to the internet. A few hours later the wifi would disconnect again. Then I called Honeywell. As I was explaining the problem, I was trying to explain what solutions I had already tried, when "Daniel" interrupted me with "NO NO NO, don't do that." It was apparent that he did not understand what solutions actually work (at least temporarily) with this problem. I told him that I had already tried the solution he offered several times. Then he told me that the problem was my new router. He said I should replace it. The router works perfectly with 12 other wireless devices. I was sure he was wrong. He was. I then googled "intermittent connectivity wifi thermostat." I got a hit on the Nest website. Here's what Nest says, "In some rare cases, Nest can experience intermittent Wi-Fi connectivity if the security on your Wi-Fi router is set to a mixed security mode (WPA/WPA2). Refer to your Wi-Fi router documentation to learn how to update your security to WPA2-only mode. Once the security has been updated on your Wi-Fi router, reconnect Nest to your home network." Nest was spot on. I changed to WPA2-only mode on my router and my thermostat has worked perfectly ever since. Honeywell doesn't know the solution to this problem, but Nest does.

After finding solutions to the problems I encountered I am overall pleased with thermostat. It is far less expensive than the Nest, but I'm sure Nest must have better customer service. I hope you learn from my mistakes and don't experience the same issues.