Tado review: I’ve brought my home into the future and I’m not going back
SMART thermostats have become increasingly popular since they came onto the scene around 10 years ago.
So I decided to get hands-on with my Tado review, to see if the smart appliance can improve my home and save me money in the process.
Pros:
- Save money by self-installing
- Easy to use
- Helps save money on heating
- OpenTherm compatible
Cons:
- Expensive upfront
Rating: 4.5/5
Tado review: quick summary
I've quickly come to rely on my Tado smart thermostat and my only regret is not testing it out earlier in the winter!
The main unit was pretty easy to install and the radiator thermostats were a walk in the park to get set up.
Now my home's temperature is controlled smartly, remotely and easily.
The units are fairly expensive upfront so if I was spending my own money, I'd gradually build up my smart heating appliances as I worked out what was useful for my home.
But now I've got them, I'd be very reluctant to ever go back to non-smart heating; this way is much, much better and will save me money in the long run.
- Tado starter kit from £129.99 -
- Tado radiator thermostats from £74.99 -
- Tado factory refurbished products -
Tado Review: full review
As I started writing my Tado review, I was offered the chance to review a smart kettle which would have saved me 60 seconds a morning by having my hot water waiting for me when I woke up. It was voice-activated too, so I could hook it up to the smart speakers I don’t own.
The price for this convenience? £90. That’s rather a lot, isn’t it!? Sadly, I don’t value my time at £ 5,400 an hour, so I’ll continue flicking the switch on the kettle by hand and scrolling on my phone while I wait for my morning coffee.
All this got me thinking that maybe we’ve gone a bit far with making things ‘smart’; do I really need Siri to check the weather for me when my phone is never out of arm’s reach?
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But then I remembered my smart thermostats from Tado and decided no, let’s keep this smart revolution going a while longer.
In my housing experience (primarily flats that have ranged from ‘really quite nice’ to ‘I sleep in a living room cut in half’) thermostats are rubbish.
They’re impossible to operate unless you read the 50-page instruction manual. And even then, you have to enter the secret combination of buttons, switches and smoke signals to set a program (and God help you if you want to turn it off while you go on holiday).
- Tado starter kit from £129.99 -
- Tado radiator thermostats from £74.99 -
- Tado factory refurbished products -
So I was delighted to learn that the smart revolution has changed thermostats immeasurably for the better. Having the option to change the temperature in your home from your phone has made me irrationally happy and I barely use my heating 10 months of the year.
But making your wall thermostat smart doesn’t necessarily fix your energy efficiency issues; it won’t solve the issue of the radiator in your bedroom blasting when it’s 25 degrees upstairs because it’s draughty in the hallway where the thermostat lives.
Enter smart radiator thermostats, which sense the temperature in your chosen rooms and adjust your radiators accordingly. Now my flat (really quite nice) is kitted out with a Tado smart thermostat and four smart radiator valves and I solemnly swear I’m never going back to the old way of doing things.
And that’s not just because these thespian hands are too delicate to turn a valve manually; having a smart thermostat setup like this can save you a lot of money in the long term by ensuring you’re not heating rooms you don’t need to.
Tado’s app includes open window detection to let you know if you’ve forgotten to close a window and you’re currently heating the street outside, as well as Geofencing, which will automatically turn off the heating if no one is home.
Basically, Tado is a great way of reducing your heating bill over time as you focus the heat in your home to where it needs to be at the right time.
The downside? My new set-up would set you back the better part of £500, so it can be a hefty upfront cost and any monetary savings would be a long-term proposition. Although, if your home has a large heating bill, you definitely would claw it back eventually, as Tado gives you advice about how to save money by altering your timings and temperatures (some of those features are part of , which is an optional extra).
Tado's Auto-assist currently costs £3.99 a month, or £29.99 a year and you can find out about all the included features .
If you don’t go all bells and whistles, Tado’s prices start from £129.99 for a smart radiator thermostat with a starter kit and you can buy additional thermostats for £74.99, allowing you to build up your smart armoury slowly if you wish.
If you just want to replace your naff wall thermostat to something that doesn’t take two weeks and an engineering degree to program, the smart thermostat starter kit costs £179.99.
Honestly, I think it’s worth it. I don’t know how many hours I’ve lost in my life kneeling in front of a two-button thermostat trying to make it sync up with my schedule, but I won’t be losing any more thanks to Tado.
- Tado starter kit from £129.99 -
- Tado radiator thermostats from £74.99 -
- Tado factory refurbished products -
Can a smart thermostat save you money?
The answer to this question is: probably. Having the ability to set smart heating patterns at the touch of a button, along with geofencing (turning the heating off when you're not around) means that your heating use while using a smart thermostat will almost certainly get more efficient.
The addition of smart radiator thermostats means you'll spend a lot less time heating up rooms that have already reached your preferred temperature.
The only drawback to smart thermostats is that they're expensive upfront, with Tado's gear starting at £129.99 for the cheapest option.
Because of that, a smart thermostat will eventually save you money, but how quickly that happens depends on your heating use, the size of your home, and the number of smart thermostats you get.
The more heating you have to do, the more quickly a smart thermostat should save you money.
- Tado starter kit from £129.99 -
- Tado radiator thermostats from £74.99 -
- Tado factory refurbished products -
Is Tado easy to install?
This depends on what you've got installed currently, but for me, it was pretty easy (and I'm no DIY expert).
Tado has a comprehensive and easy-to-follow set of instructions for installation in its app which helped me along the way.
In my case, installing the Tado thermostat was simply a case of taking my existing thermostat off the wall by unscrewing it and disconnecting the wires.
Once that was done, I re-connected the wires to the Tado thermostat and stuck it to the wall with the adhesive strips that came included. You can screw it in place, but I opted for the easy (lazy) option.
You'll also need to install an internet bridge so your Tado devices can connect to one another, so you'll need a spare ethernet port in your home that's close to a plug socket to power it.
Once the thermostat was wired up and the internet bridge connected, getting it to sync up to my iPhone was easy and I was able to start controlling my heating from my phone right away.
It took me around an hour to get everything installed and synced up.
The radiator thermostats were an absolute breeze to install and I had each one done in five minutes or less, but your experience may vary if you have non-standard valves.
I have no idea how easy it would be to install Tado if you needed to mess around with your boiler, but Tado's app was very good at walking me through instructions for everything else, so I'd guess it would be easy enough.
Remember to be safe when installing any electronics and turn your fuses off before beginning. Following Tado's installation guide is a good way to go as that should ensure you do things properly throughout.
- Tado starter kit from £129.99 -
- Tado radiator thermostats from £74.99 -
- Tado factory refurbished products -
Will I be able to use Tado in my home?
It seems that no two heating systems are the same these days, but Tado has a helpful compatibility checker to see if its appliances will work in your home, which you can find .
What alternatives are there to Tado?
There are a couple of rival brands to Tado, notably Hive and Google Nest.
You can find all of Google Nest's features and all of Hive's features .
Tado and Google Nest are compatible with OpenTherm, which is a more efficient type of technology in more modern boilers, which gives them the edge over Hive at the time of writing.
It's worth checking what comes with the smart thermostat you're buying when comparing prices as some come with an internet bridge/home hub so prices aren't always as straightforward as they seem.
- Tado starter kit from £129.99 -
- Tado radiator thermostats from £74.99 -
- Tado factory refurbished products -