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List Price: $249.99
Sale Price: $239.49
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I am a pretty big tech geek, and the smart home stuff has become a big interest for me recently. I can control my sprinklers and garage door from my phone/PC, and wanted to do the same with my thermostat. I had looked into the Nest and ecobee smart thermostats but both had limitations that held me back from actually buying them (see below). When I first saw this new Honeywell thermostat, it finally had everything I wanted and pushed me to actually go out and buy it.
Installation -
Very easy. You just need to remove your old unit, label the wires, and connect the wires to the new terminals. You absolutely need a C wire for this unit to work, as it needs power to keep the backlight and wifi connection on (or use the G-to-C workaround). Once powered & connected, setup is a breeze. You tell it your system type, and select your wifi access point (supports all security protocols). To connect it to Honeywell's site, you need to set up a free account there and enter your thermostat's MAC address.
The Android / iPhone App -
They already had the smartphone app developed for the 8580, and it is a sleek, solid, proven app, and the user reviews back that up (search "Total Connect Comfort"). But the 8580 was just ugly in comparison, and the monochrome "sorta" touch screen left plenty to be desired stylistically, even though the scheduling and other features worked great. So with this 9580, I finally have features, functionality, and a great companion app for my phone. The app is 100% reliable, has a very quick response time from sending a command and my system responding, and never crashes/force closes.
What You Can Do from the Android/iPhone App -
Home Tab:
Set the temperature, and how long to hold that temperature for
View the current indoor temperature & humidity
View the current outdoor temperature & humidity (does not require purchasing an additional sensor, this information is retrieved from the internet)
View the 5-Day forecast for your zipcode
System Tab:
Set system to heat/cool/off.
Fan Tab:
Set fan to on/auto/circulate
Schedule Tab
Set the heating & cooling target temperature for all 7 days
Each day has four scheduling points, though you don't have to use them all (wake, leave, return, sleep)
You can also choose for each point, what you want the fan setting to be (on/auto/circulate), which is a feature most scheduling thermostats don't give you this setting can usually only be manually set, not scheduled.
What You Can Do from the Website -
Everything listed above that you can do from the app
Add additional locations, and add additional thermostat for each location (and set a name for each location & thermostat)
Edit account information, & add dealer information, if you need to save contact info from a company that installed the device
Set notification email addresses, up to 6.
Set optional notifications settings. Available notification triggers:
Temp/Humidity is higher/lower than x for y hours
Connection is lost between your thermostat and Honeywell's servers, after x hours
A change/command failed to be sent to your thermostat after x minutes
For any notification chosen, continue to remind me every x hours
Notify when thermostat conditions return to normal
View a full schedule overview (app only shows you one day at a time)
Grant access to additional email addresses for certain locations. So if you have 2 locations, you could grant a babysitter access to only one of them, for example.
The "remember me" option on the app will remember your email and password to login. On the website it only remembers your email. I wish both just had an "auto-login" feature.
What You Can Do from the Thermostat Wall Panel -
Home/System/Fan Tabs: Same as the mobile app (plus date/time display), except no 5 day forecast
Menu Tab:
Full scheduling control, same functionality as scheduling in the app
Vacation mode tell it the day/time you are leaving/returning, and desired temperature for this period
Color scheme Choose from 14 nice-looking presets, or create a custom scheme. The custom colors are in the form of: Color (0 to 359), Shade (0 to 100%), Brightness (0 to 100%), which translates to thousands of color options.
Preferences:
Reminders to change air filter / humidifier pad, utility schedule options
Thermostat Inactivity Brightness: After about a minute of inactivity, the thermostat dims to your preferred level, from 0 (off) to 10 (bright).
Smart Response: When on, thermostat turns on before scheduled time to get it to the desired temp at the schedule time, learns how long it takes to reach it and adjusts accordingly. This works well, but I'm glad there is an option to turn it off unlike most scheduling thermostats, as I prefer to have my thermostat's behavior be 100% predictable with no smart "guessing", so I leave this off.
Advanced Preferences: Programmable on/off, Fahrenheit/Celsius, System Changeover Auto/Manual, min/max temp, keypad lockout, 12/24 hour time display, temp & humidity offset (some reviews have stated their temp sensor was too high this would fix that problem)
Restore Default Schedule / Settings
Equipment Status
Temporary Schedule Change
Clean Screen (temporary screen lockout)
Security
Wifi Status & Setup
System Setup
English, French, Spanish language options
Honeywell RTH9580WF vs Nest 1 & 2 -
Now, why do I think this is better than a Nest? Some people value simplicity and minimalism, and in some cases I do too, but the Nest takes the minimalism too far. The screen basically shows the temperature, and nothing else. I was considering going from my ugly 8500 to the stylish Nest before this Honeywell existed, but never could actually do it because it seemed like it would be an overall downgrade, due to how little you can actually control from the Nest. Contrast everything I listed above that you can do from the Honeywell that you can't do on the Nest wall panel. I also think the schedule learning feature is garbage. I'd much rather tell my thermostat exactly how to be scheduled than hope it "guesses" correctly. And the Nest doesn't have a Hold Temperature option, which is a feature even a $25 thermostat has. The final Nest deal-breaker for me is the +-3 degree temperature swing. If you set it to 72, it will keep the temperature between 69 and 75, a total of 6 degree swing, which sucks compared to the +-1 degree swing of the Honeywell. The higher swing would save energy *in theory*, but I would just end up setting my temperature even lower than usual to make sure it doesn't get too hot in the summer, negating the potential savings. You can programmatically make your own temperature swing if you want to save energy, so I am not a fan of the Nest forcing it on you.
Honeywell RTH9580WF vs ecobee EB-STAT-02
I was close to buying the ecobee before this Honeywell was announced. It has most of the things I liked about the Honeywell, and none of the drawbacks of the Nest. But what broke that deal for me was 1) an even higher price than the identical price points of the Nest & Honeywell, 2) not all features available on the wall panel were available on its app (and vice-versa), and 3) it was a 2-wire solution which means setup is more of a pain, since you have to wire stuff down by your furnace to facilitate a lot of the functionality. So basically the Honeywell has all of the positives of the Nest and ecobee, but none of the negatives.
Summary -
Pros:
Great app (quick, responsive, reliable, feature-filled)
Great website
Love the ability to customize your color scheme
Indoor & Outdoor temp/humidity reads very accurately
Circulate setting
Great scheduling options & control from the app, website, and wall unit
Super easy installation
So at this point you can gather I'm very happy with this thermostat and would highly recommend it. But it's not perfect. Here are some very minor things that perhaps Honeywell could address in a future version:
Cons:
You can't save custom color schemes, 3-8 custom save slots would be awesome
You can't edit the current custom color scheme; to make a slight change, you have to start from scratch
No wifi-only mode, which would allow you to maintain remote control of the thermostat if your internet, or Honeywell's servers, are ever down (my Samsung smart TV app can control my TV over wifi without talking to a Samsung server, for example) to clarify, you are still able to control your thermostat from the wall unit if there is ever an internet connectivity issue
You can adjust the inactivity brightness on the wall unit, but not the active brightness
A great feature would be to tie inactive brightness to your heating/cooling schedules, so you could tell it to go to brightness 1 when sleeping or away, to reduce power consumption
No auto-login option on the app
No remember password, or auto-login option on the website
Web address is impossible to remember (https colon slash slash rs.alarmnet dot com/TotalConnectComfort/Home/), not usually a big deal since you can bookmark or google it, but how hard would it be for Honeywell to use a simpler address like "myhoneywell dot com" instead (just checked, it's not even being used at the moment) it would also be nice to be able to access the device through your home intranet by just navigating to the device's IP address in a web browser, like I can on my sprinkler controller, which would again reduce dependency on Honeywell's servers or an internet connection in general
The pro-install (2-wire) version of this thermostat comes in white, black, and silver. This consumer version only comes in the worst of those three options, silver (really a 2002-era color). White/black options would be great!
Ability to control the circulation sensitivity would be nice. So you can adjust up/down from Honeywell's stated default of 35%.
Ability to control the temperature swing. I like the +-1 degree swing personally, but just in case any of the Nest fans enjoy its inferior +-3 degree swings, why not just make that a user-selectable setting from 1 to 5 degrees in each direction, and let the user decide what's best?
To conclude, this is an awesome thermostat, and the very trivial cons would reduce its score to about 98/100. While not perfect, on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, this places it at a very solid 5. The price is a little high, but identical to the significantly lower functionality of the Nest, and a lower price than the ecobee. So it is absolutely the best value currently on the market for smart thermostats, and I have not regretted my purchase for even a second.
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I purchased the Honeywell RTH9580 wifi thermostat and the install was a breeze! I have a mid 2000s home and the deinstall and reinstall of this unit could not have been any easier. Basically I took the old case off, labeled the wires with the provided stickers the new unit provides, then plugged in said wires into new unit and it fired up with around a 20 minute install time. I tested the air and heat and it worked great, the unit looked amazing and was almost the same size as my old outdated white non touch screen thermo. I quickly deinstalled and grabbed some paint and touched around the edges and it was then seamless. So far so good!
There is a large yellow button on the unit that says 'Register online for remote access' i pushed that button on the unit and it did nothing so i went online to their mytotalconnectcomfort.com site to register and i filled out my information. After pushing the submit button to submit all my info the page tries to do something then after about 10 minutes it times out. I called up the toll free line and it immediate asked if i was a wifi thermo customer and i pushed 1. This made me think that something was up with the unit or the site since this appeared to be the main honeywell support hotline. I immediately got a tech which was great, gave him my info and told him the trouble of the site nor unit going online. He alerted me that it was in fact an alarmnet.com problem and it has been down since Thursday August 8 2013 and today is Wednesday August 14th. He said they were working rapidly to get this fixed and that it was in fact a major outage. I asked him that if I had been out of town and trying to control my thermo remotely (which is the whole reason I purchased the unit) that I would be unable to and he replied that was correct I would not be able to control it via the app or online.
This appears to be a major concern and I will wait a couple more days to see how it goes and so far my review of the unit is outstanding and I love the looks, functions, feel and aesthetics. With that said a whole portion of the unit still has the yellow button looking for online access so its not nearly functional.
Tech support was great, unit looks and works great however the alarmnet which is intrical to its function is the only negative i have found thus far. I would rate this 5 starts if the online/remote functionality was working.
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I will not be able to write as outstanding review as J. Van Wagenen did, but I will say I am very pleased with the Honeywell RTH9580.
I wandered into Lowe's to try and convince myself I wanted the Nest, to find they had replaced the display with this new Honeywell. Having read Wegman's review, I felt it was worth an installation and I could always return it if I didn't like it. I have no plans to return it and -in factreturned to the reviews here to see if he discusses whether or not additional thermostats can be controlled from the app (he says they can). So, after submitting this, I'm heading back to Lowe's to get one for my upstairs pump.
I rated it four stars only because it does not seem to be actually activating on the set schedule. I can set the schedule on the unit, website and the app but the unit doesn't appear to actually respond to that schedule. However, I'm certain there is just an issue I need to to resolve and I'm happy (for now) with being able to adjust it via my app (from which it responds within seconds). I'll uprate and update this review if/when I can get it to mind the set schedule.
Follow-up (12 August):
Okay, a few notes, now that I've had this for about 5 weeks (both are now installed). I'm going to keep it at 4 stars, though I will say it verges on receiving a 5th. I went on vacation for two weeks and the power was apparently disrupted, resulting in alerts to my inbox informing me the thermostats had lost connection. However, the downstairs one (closest to the wifi signal) quickly recovered and I was able to monitor it remotely again. The upstairs one never did recover the signal (which was odd...I guess it stopped looking after a certain point). However, because it had the vacation schedule, it was fine and apparently stayed the course (it just couldn't tell me its status).
One irksome issue: The connection with the wifi is frequently lost (I'll say once every two weeks). The system is NOT dependent upon the signal and more often than not, it will reacquire it. However, on the unit itself an orange alert box will inform you that the signal was lost (at some point). Unless you reset the connection (whether it needs it or not), typing in your router password again, the orange alert will only go away if you tell it to remind you of the past signal loss at a later date (defaults to 7 days). Often, I'll do that, rather than root out my router password. I /suspect/ that getting on the web (via your PC, not the app) and updating the schedule itself will resolve it too, but I wish I could acknowledge the 'lost signal' event (especially if it self-recovered) directly from the unit and move on.
One other quirk: these thermostats are trying to learn when to turn on the AC so that the desired temperature is reached at the time you've set. I have to admit I was rather concerned when my upstairs AC was trying to reach my nighttime temperature hours (close to 2.5 hours) before it was set to, but I just recalled that -unlike 'dumb' thermostats that come on at the pre-arranged timethe Honeywell unit wants the space to be at the correct temperature at the pre-arranged time. I've been playing around with temperatures so much since I got it, it hasn't had time to learn this, so I'm training myself to leave them alone in the late afternoon. Hard to do when the app on your phone allows you to constantly monitor the system from anywhere.
Note: the thermostat does have a vacation calendar. You can set it it up well in advance, so that it's set and you can forget about it. I found it to be reliable. The downside is that, once the unit is on vacation settings (i.e., operating within the dates and times set), you cannot remotely change it, only monitor it, not even via the web. You can only take it off vacation setting or change the the temps from the unit itself.
In conclusion, I'm satisfied with these units. I haven't had them long enough to say whether or not they're more efficient than our previous method of manually changing the temperatures when we left the house or when we felt uncomfortable, but I really do appreciate how easily customizable (up to four settings each individual day of the week) the schedules are. I'm thinking if they show they do save us money (when I stop fidgeting with them), it will probably earn that 5th star.
Honest reviews on Honeywell Wi-Fi Smart Thermostat
Fill your thermostat wire hole!!! I had a problem with this thermostat overshooting by 5 to 6 Deg F. I had been blaming the unit and had replaced it three times with a new one. Honeywell customer service just kept sending me new ones... Yesterday I found a small draft coming out the thermostat wire hole blowing air into the back of my new Honeywell Thermostat. Filled the hole with wadded up toilet paper and the issue was solved. Other units have more of a solid back plate which is why I hadn't experienced the problem before. This unit has an open back plate where the wire comes through to allow the spreading of the conductors for termination, allowing that air from the wire hole to affect the measurement. After putting this unit in, my AC was running excessively and keeping the house way too cold. Now after filling the wire hole, this thermostat is ON THE MONEY. Now, if I have it set at 74 degrees, the AC comes on while the unit still reads 74 degrees and shuts off while the unit still reads 74 degrees. Probably has a half to 3/4 of a degree dead band. Far cry from the 5 or 6 degree overshoot I was seeing before. Hope I can help other people resolve this issue and not incorrectly blame this unit for overshoot. This turned out to be an EXTREMELY nice thermostat!!!
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At least have the Nest send an email alert like HONEYWELL'S new color display wifi thermostat. I have a nest and a new Honeywell Wifi color display thermostat. I purchased both to see which one I like better. I'm probably going to return the Nest because it doesn't have the email alerts like the Honeywell. With the Honeywell, you have options of being alerted if the temp reaches a certain level that you set, it will email you when the unit resolves the temp, will alert you if the humidity reaches a certain level that you set, and can email you when it's time to change the filter. Now that alone is awesome. Those simple little email alerts is what will make my decision. I live in Florida where it's hot and humid almost all year round. We rely heavily on AC. So if for some reason the unit goes out or stops producing cold air, the Honeywell will email me. With the nest, I would never know unless I was constantly looking on my phone or the internet for changes, I like that the Nest will automatically figure out your user schedule and I like the design of the nest better. The Honeywell has only 4 set points to make temp changes throughout the day. That's the only drawback with this thermostat. The nest would be the BEST thermostat on the market if it had the other options like the Honeywell does. The Honeywell also displays the current date and time, outside temp, outside humidity, and inside temp and humidity. Plus you can change the color of the display to match what ever color wall you have. Pretty cool, but the Nest is smarter in that it does all the programming (scheduling) for you. I like that the Nest gives you a time on how long it will take to reach a certain temp, but with the lack of other important features that everyone else seems to be chatting about, and wishing the Nest had, I'm going to return it and buy another Honeywell. I'll buy buy the Nest when these other features are added.
