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This review is a comparison between the Honeywell RTH8580WF thermostat and Nest 2nd Gen thermostat, which I've spent considerable time with over the last two months.
With limited options on the market for a 7-day programmable thermostat with an intuitive user interface, a straightforward attractive minimal physical design, WiFI capabilities, and a reliable brand name, the Honeywell RTH8580WF thermostat has proven to be somewhat of a lifesaver, and in my opinion, the best bang for the buck in these categories.
The story begins in Christmas 2012 when I asked for a Nest 2nd Gen. It was beautiful, easy to use, and seemingly the clear choice for all homeowners looking to upgrade to a home thermostat "of the future." Nest is also highly attractive to homeowners such as myself who own an Apple device or two and appreciate the ability to view and edit schedules from an iPhone/iPad/computer remotely. Unfortunately, my love for Nest diminished very quickly. A call to Nest support within the first few days of ownership confirmed that the "set temp" is merely considered "a desirable ambient temperature." This means that unlike Honeywell thermostats, THE NEST HAS A 3 DEGREE +/SWING (sometimes more like 4 degrees)!! This proved to cause many problems with scheduling over the coming weeks with Nest kicking ON the heat when it was too cold (as it should), but then STOPPING the flow of heat through my central heating system 2 or 3 degrees BEFORE reaching my set temp! This major flaw proved to be the downfall of the Nest. Nearly all aspects of interacting and looking at Nest are pleasurable with a really fantastic web/iPhone interface, in addition to use of very high quality glass and metal components, which create an iconic design/interface that separates itself from the competition. However, with its 3 degree +/temperature swing from the set temp put in place by engineers to "help conserve energy and decrease annual heating/cooling costs" and no way to edit this rangy deviation from the set temp, well, then, I was forced to look elsewhere for a thermostat that is actually functional when it comes to heating/cooling my house to an accurate temperature.
After a few pleasant and helpful phone calls with Nest customer support (not a long wait to talk to someone) who ultimately could not resolve my issue at hand, I ended up returning my Nest 2nd Gen to Amazon and beginning my search for a replacement unit.
Finding a suitable unit after owning a Nest proved to be a very difficult task. At first, nothing seemed to compare! It took a couple of days to rule out thermostats by Ecobee and Venstar because the prices were high, the design was only okay, the name brands and reliability were unknown to me, and what ultimately swayed my decision was the worry of incompatibility with my basic heating/cooling system and possibly requiring a "guy" to come in and do the install for me. After my troubles with Nest, complicating things further with a messy, expensive install didn't sound appealing. I also considered the Honeywell Prestige HD but decided to keep searching for similar reasons as to those described above.
I finally landed on the Honeywell RTH8580WF. For $149 on Amazon and at The Home Depot, I was able to get all of the usability of the Nest with only a slightly compromised physical design. The readout is very large, clear, and easy to read/understand/use. Heck, similar to the Nest, I'd have to call it attractive. The touch screen works very well despite it seeming just a bit outdated compared to 21st century devices like the iPhone, but I really like that by default the unit continually glows a dim green color that can be read during the night or day and brightens up when you touch the screen to make an adjustment. This setting can be switched off so that the display is dark all the time unless the screen is touched, but who would want that?
The web interface for the Honeywell is VERY GOOD. I had very low expectations in this department, probably in view of the brand name "Honeywell," which doesn't exactly conjure up thoughts of a front runner company in the realm of Internet computing technology. For whatever reason though, it's VERY easy to use, pleasant to work with, and so far is quite reliable. The set up process to get the Honeywell thermostat on my WiFi network was a cinch.. very easy. After getting the thermostat on the wall and hooked up, it didn't take long at all to get the unit registered on Honeywell's website and start scheduling out my week from my computer.
The only problem I had was tracking down a C wire for my basic gas heating system using central forced heat/air. My old thermostat used four wires: Red, White, Yellow, and Green (R, W, Y, G). Even the Nest only required four wires to power up and run. However, it says all over the labeling of the Honeywell that a "C wire" is REQUIRED to power the unit. The first attempt at getting this thing to work with four wires was halfway successful. I jumped the green wire, (G), which runs the fan, to the C terminal on the unit to provide power. This powered the unit intermittently, but the screen would cut out and go completely black, return to green again, and then cut out again, etc. I FINALLY figured out that the blue wire wrapped around the bundle of main wires that wasn't being used is called the C wire! However, I had to go down to my heating unit in the basement and physically connect up the blue wire to the heater for it to work. It was just dangling there! So, after connecting the blue C wire to the heating unit, I connected it to the C terminal on the Honeywell thermostat and the unit has been working like a charm ever since.
My only gripe about the Honeywell is that the 7-day schedule for the week cannot be altered from the iPhone app. This is a minor inconvenience to me, as the Nest schedule can be altered from the iPhone app, but it's a minor complaint overall. The current temp can still be adjusted from the Honeywell app, etc. just fine, and the app itself has a nice interface and is quite basic to use. It even shows the current outside temp for my zip code along with the five day forecast! Nest didn't have this built into THEIR app. :D
All in all, I'd highly recommend the Honeywell RTH8580WF thermostat to any homeowner looking to upgrade to a WiFi unit. Even if you don't want or need the WiFi accessibility, the unit itself is very pleasing to look at on the wall and interact with. Honeywell customer support was very prompt, polite, and helpful when I called, matching the same great service I received with Nest.
If you can live with a loosey-goosey 3 degree +/swing from the set temp of your thermostat and want an incredibly beautiful piece of art/functionality on your wall, go for the Nest. However, if you're like me and want to be comfortable without constantly manually turning the heat on/off, go with a Honeywell unit that keeps your house within 1 degree +/of the set temp LIKE ALL THERMOSTATS SHOULD FUNCTION. I'd like to address some people's concerns that I've read in some reviews about certain thermostats constantly turning on/off too often to maintain a set temp and this being bad for the central heating unit. I have NOT noticed this to be a problem in my house. The Honeywell unit does not turn my heat on too often that I would be concerned anything is wrong. It just heats when the temp drops too low and cools when it's too high.. like a thermostat should.
Hope this helped someone out there searching for the end-all-be-all upgrade to a "smart" thermostat of the future.
EDIT (02/17/2013): Scheduling can now be done from the Honeywell iPhone app!
EDIT (06/28/2013): I've been having fairly frequent/intermittent problems connecting from an Internet browser and from my iPhone 5 over Wifi for about two months. This means that despite a solid Wifi connection I cannot make any changes to the thermostat temp or make scheduling changes. Furthermore, sometimes I make a change and think that it has successfully been submitted to the thermostat when in fact it has not, and I will receive an email 30 minutes later explaining how the change that I submitted did not go through on account of a connection error. This can be annoying when you're really hot and think the AC has been turned on but OH LOOK, NOPE, IT HASN'T!
I still really like the thermostat, but these intermittent connectivity issues are really unacceptable in a thermostat that touts in Wifi connectivity as a selling feature (I will mention that it's nice to be able to view and change the temp from anywhere over 3G/4G/LTE from iPhone without doing any sort of port forwarding or anything special...) Some people go into more detail elsewhere about the above-described connectivity problem. I assume it has to do with the unit itself malfunctioning though, because I have already reset the Wifi settings and the problem persists. I'm knocking the review on this thing down 1 star (and not more stars) because making changes from a web browser or iPhone does work a fair amount of the time, just not allllll the time.
EDIT (08/10/2013): I just tried someone's tip from the comments to fix the intermittent connectivity problems that people (including myself) have been experiencing on occasion: "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." The commenter reported good results with this, so let's hope for the best. I'm still loving this Honeywell overall and actually haven't been logging into it via my iPhone or web browser lately because I have the schedule dialed in so well, but I'm sure that will change as we move into fall and winter. I'm really hoping the connectivity problems are totally cured now! Thanks for the tip, commenter!
EDIT (10/08/2013): Haven't noticed any connectivity issues since changing my Wifi settings to WPA2-only. I've been using my iPhone 5s with the Honeywell app lately and things seem to be going smoothly. Changes to the temp, etc. that are submitted using the iPhone app appear to be getting received and executed by the thermostat, unlike before when I *thought* they were being submitted within the app and received properly by the thermostat unit when in fact they were not. I'm once again falling head over heels for this Honeywell setup now that everything is working so seamlessly again. It's back to 5 stars as far as I'm concerned!
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Most of you will purchase this Thermostat due to its Wifi capabilities, unfortunately that is the main reason you will not want to purchase. I have bought 4 of these for two homes after I tested 1 for about a one week period. Thermostats worked like a charm.....for about a two months. Gradually the Thermostats would lose connection to the Honeywell service until a point where they would only be connected for a day. If you disrupt TCP/IP communication from the sensor for a short period of time (about ten minutes) or unplug/plug back in, they start working again. Clearly a state issue on their end. Considering I bought half of the Thermostats from different vendors, have 2 different ISP for Internet, 2 different router manufactors (Cisco and Actiontec), 3 different wirelss setting (mainly to prove a point), 3 different wireless access points (Cisco, Cisco Linksys and Actiontec) , I'm thinking the issue is on the Total Connect side of this which Honeywell outsources to let you remotely access these thermostats. And to give some background on the end user here, I work for the largest Networking company in the world so I know how to do a little TCP/IP analysis. Even though all four of my sensors consistently show Lost Communication on the Honeywell website I have detailed wireshark packet captures and firewall logs clearly showing that my sensors are communicating every 10 seconds to Total Connect registered IP addresses.Calling there Help Desk is a joke. They don't even understand how the thermostat communicates to the Total Connect website and consistently have you go through a script on how to setup wireless. Upon asking to escalate to a Tier 2 support or to esacalate from the Honeywell Tech to the Total Connect tech, I'm told that I should return the Thermostats to where I bought them. No effort was made to fix my issue and they didn't even want to look at a wireshark capture (because they didn't know what it was). Returing would be helpful except the things worked fine for about a two months and then factor two more months of getting nowhere with Honeywell, chances are one of the stores isn't taking my return. Of course I still wanted the things to work and wanted to help fix issues for the community as a whole so with some pleading I get to a manager and offer to work on my time to show the Total Connect guys how to do a network analysis. After being told to wait for a call from them the following week, here I sit two and half weeks later still waiting and taking the next step of cutting my losses and making sure none of you run into the same issues I've seen. So a week ago I emailed the Manager on the option for some kind of refund which she said she would help me with it she couldn't get it resolved with Total Connect...unfortunately that hasn't been responded to either. Hopefully I will get it after months of highlighted Red locations and Thermostat Communication Lost for all 4 of my Thermostats (see the viewer submitted pictures).
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This control unit appears to work as the manufacturer promises.It requires minor skills to make the installation simpler. First, physical installation just follow the included guide, remove your old t-stat while taking notice of the wire placement/colors/labels, thread the wire through the base plate, mount the base, and then switch the wires to the same terminals on the new thermostat. This took no more than 10 minutes, and the thermostat was powered-up and running. You must have a system with a 24V control wire, or this will not work. If you do not know how to test for 24V, you are probably not qualified to do this install. If you know your system is newer or more modern (less than 10 years old), this install should be a very simple swap-out. You can simply take a look and see if the wires will match-up and that you have a 24V "C" wire before doing anything if you want to be sure it's a simple swap.
The unit itself It's your typical plastic thermostat. It feels relatively sturdy, but I was very careful to handle it gently while installing because the plastic case flexed and groaned a lot. Once turned-on, the touchscreen is appropriately sensitive and is easy to operate with no problems accidentally bumping other touchscreen functions. The keys are nicely spaced and easy to touch. The back-lighting is nice too not too bright, not too dim, and very easy to see in both a darkened or well-lit room.
Setting up the WiFi requires you possess some minor computer skills. The system requires connection to a wireless/WiFi network. If you've set up your WiFi router at home, connecting the Honeywell is a very similar process. You will log in to the t-stat with a computer browser, follow prompts to register with the Honeywell website, and in a few minutes, it will request an IP from your network, connect, and register itself with minimal user input required. Mine went off without any problems.
The app installed on my phone just as easily. I can log in using the credentials created during the WiFi setup, and I have control of my HVAC at home from anywhere. The Honeywell Android app works to control the system flawlessly from my cell phone (I have Verizon/Droid Razr). For now, I'm giving it 5-stars because it's fulfilled every promise it makes. If anything changes, I'll be back to edit this review. :)
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Prior to this purchase I had never installed a thermostat and had zero knowledge of HVAC systems. I spent time reading online how to determine if this thermostat worked with my existing system (my AC equipment is 20 years old so I was quite worried), and I contacted Honeywell and confirmed my wiring setup with them before purchase. Honeywell responded quickly and confirmed my existing wiring would work with this, and told me what wires to connect where to make it work.Installation was very easy, and the only difficulties I encountered had nothing to do with the thermostat and more to do with my own wall mounting issues. I had to drill holes in our plaster wall to mount it, and drilling into old plaster always is scary as sometimes it just explodes, but I was able to install the included anchors without difficulty. Then I discovered my wires didn't have much slack to them, so I had a difficult time getting a couple of them into the wall plate because the Honeywell positioning on the wall was slightly off from where the old thermostat was installed.
Once I got the wires connected I just followed the instructions and everything has worked perfectly since then. I did have to change some of the default settings, and the system they set up, while it works, is not intuitivive to anyone -it absolutely requires the manual to make changes. I needed to configure it for my radiator heat (water/pump), and the "auto" temp control (which will switch between heat/AC to keep temp in a defined range) is not an option unless you make it available through the menus. I assume they did this not to confuse people, because even when the Auto option is available, it's still just a choice next to heat, cool, and off, so it's not as if you are FORCED to use it by enabling it.
Setting up the WiFi worked but not as smoothly as I would have hoped -I used my Macbook Pro to configure it, and the Honeywell website locked up while I was trying to finalize the setup, so I couldn't tell at first if it actually worked. It turns out it did set up correctly, but I could only tell that by looking at the thermostat and seeing that it showed a WiFi connection. Also I've noticed just when walking by the thermostat it seems to randomly at times telling me that it is connecting back to the WiFi when it should never have lost its connection. I have a fairly new and high-quality router that connects by WiFi to multiple devices, none of which just randomly lose their connections. It so far hasn't imapcted my ability to use the iPhone app, however, so I'm letting it go for now.
The iPhone app is very nice, and they just pushed out a software update for it to add functionality, including a 5-day forecast. It does NOT let you program the daily schedule, but it does let you change heat/cool/off, fan, shows you current temp and set temp, and let's you change the set temp to something else.
When you change the set temp you can make it a permanent hold, or a temporary hold to a specified time at which point it goes back to its scheduled programming at the next scheduled change. There is no vacation mode option in the app, but I honestly think it is not necessary -when you're leaving you can turn the temp up at home or via the app, and since you can change it via the app you can set it to whatever you want before coming back home. I've tested the app both over WiFi at my house and WiFi elsewhere as well as around town over AT&T, and I always connect to the thermostat within 5 seconds.
The thermostat itself does exactly what it is supposed to -it gives an accurate temperature read, it has enough customization so we can program it how we want, it looks great on the wall, and it is easy to read regardless of the ambient light. I've read mention on the Home Depot website that people didn't like the plastic feeling or that you could feel a little give when pushing on it because of how it mounts to the wall plate. Unless you buy a Nest thermostat plastic is pretty much the choice of material, and and the give is VERY slight, and I have zero concern that it is not stable on the wall.
Lastly I will say I ordered this the first day it became available on Amazon -I think because of a pricing error I received it cheaper than intended, as the day after I ordered it the price on Amazon went from $99 to $199. So apparently I got this cheaper than most/all other customers, which just adds to my satisfaction. I did contact the selling company after installation because of potential problems after installation as I thought I had a defective unit (the WiFi connection issue and one unrelated thing that ended up not the fault of the thermostat). The company was responsive to my concerns and offered to ship another one out free of charge, but I ultimately told them it was not needed as I actually don't think the unit is defective.
Overall for the price I think this is as good a thermostat as you can buy, particularly with the WiFi features and the solid quality of Honeywell behind it. It does not have all the features or awesome aesthetics of the Nest (which I almost bought), but it has enough features and a good enough appearance to satisfy 99% of customers at a significantly lower price.
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August 2013 update
I've had this for a year now and am very thankful I purchased this and not the Nest. The smartphone app now lets me control everything of real importance, and the iPad app looks great. The Nest still looks slightly cooler and more futuristic, but this one does everything perfectly, and still looks good after a year of use. I've never had a single problem connecting remotely to this thermostat, and it does a great job of the core thermostat functions. Unless you have to have the Nest aesthetics, I can't think of a reason to buy it over this product.
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Installed this with a hydronic heating system which is essentially forced air heated by water from my normal household hotwater heater. Not a common system. There was no "C" wire on the old system but was able to hook one up using an extra wire in the bundle. A key point for me was that the "C" wire is the Common or neutral wire from your 24vac transformer. I did not have a terminal in the furnace labeled "C." But simply found the neutral wire and spliced into that. It was pretty straightforward once I understood the furnace schematic on the entry panel door.Regarding wifi connectivity I was unsuccessful using my iPad. Tried it half a dozen times. But took 5 minutes using a laptop. The thermostat creates its own little hotspot which you log into for configuration. Once you configure it the thermostat then stops acting like hotspot and logs into your home network.
The remote internet access is great, the reason I bought it. I have a vacation home where I want to remotely monitor the temp to make sure the pipes don't freeze. I can turn up the heat on the drive up and walk into a heated home. The online apps are very logical to use, nothing like most confusing programmable thermostats.
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