11 Must-Have Smart Thermostat Features

Smart thermostats offer some cool features that make it easy to control your home’s temperature. Plus, these are incredibly clever – they can learn from your habits, so you save both energy and money while still keeping the house cozy.

No need to fiddle with the thermostat all day long – these intelligent devices can automatically adjust temperatures based on different conditions. Those may include a time of the day or when you’re at home or away, and even depending on outside weather changes.

With bonuses like geofencing, presence detection, plus multiple room controls, having full control over how hot/cold things get in your place has never been easier.

You can integrate them with other smart home devices and control them through voice commands using Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. Additionally, you can optimize your energy consumption and get helpful insights into how to improve.

Let’s go through the most important smart thermostat features for your home.

1. Automatic Scheduling

One of the most outstanding qualities of having a smart thermostat at home is its ability to schedule itself automatically, making managing temperature easy.

Gone are the days when you had to remember to change your smart thermostat settings manually. With automatic scheduling, the device can remember individual temperature preferences throughout the day – like when you’re asleep or away from home. Based on this info, the thermostat adjusts itself to optimize energy efficiency in your house while keeping things nice and comfortable throughout.

You may find enabling certain settings within the smart thermometer’s app helpful.

By doing that, you can give it more accurate instructions about how often and when adjustments should be made based on different circumstances. Plus, these settings are always adjustable if you want something else (in terms of improvements).

2. Self-Learning

A smart thermostat (e.g., a Nest thermostat) can teach itself your schedule and preferences. This self-learning ability helps save energy by adjusting the temperature automatically. Think about returning home to discover that your house has been set at an ideal temperature simply because your smart thermostat figured out what you like!

Smart thermostats manage this by keeping tabs on how often you leave home each day, then automatically boost or lower temperatures to preserve energy while you’re away. So, for instance, if it notices that you leave the house every day around 8 am, it’ll adjust accordingly as soon as those moments arrive.

A great thing about self-learning thermostats is that they can adjust the temperature back to your desired level before you even get home. That way, it’s already comfortable when you walk through the door.

They also can adapt to seasonal changes. No matter what time of year or crazy weather outside, smart thermostats understand this data and make necessary adjustments so that your house stays comfortable all year round.

3. Geofencing

Geofencing is an amazing feature in many advanced thermostats – including popular models like Nest, Ecobee, or Honeywell. It uses the GPS location of your smartphone to intelligently tweak settings according to whether you are at home or away from it.

Think about it as if there was an invisible border surrounding your house.

When inside this perimeter, the smart thermostat recognizes that it’s your home and adjusts the temperature to preconfigured. But when you go outside this area, your smart thermostat will detect that fact and switch up its settings to save energy and lower bills!

Using geofencing, you don’t need to do anything manually; everything happens automatically.

Here are a few key advantages of geofencing:

Energy savings: Automatically changing the smart thermostat settings when you’re not around can lead to major energy cuts and lower utility bills.

Convenience: Forget about manual adjustments – with geofencing taking care of temperature management tasks, you’ll be able to save time and money.

Personalized comfort: Geofencing knows exactly when you will arrive home so that it can adjust the temperature accordingly, thus making sure that each arrival has a cozy temperature in your home.

4. Presence Detection

Presence detection, in short, automatically adjusts the temperature depending on whether someone’s around or not.

To ensure the smart thermostat knows if anybody is at home, many high-tech models come with remote sensors that can be placed around the house and communicate occupancy information back to the main unit. This way, temperature adjustments are done more precisely as only those rooms where people are present will get heated or cooled – making sure everyone in your family is comfortable no matter what part of their living space they inhabit!

It can be especially useful in bigger homes, where the thermostat may not have enough built-in sensors to detect presence in every room.

Here are some great advantages of using occupancy detection:

You’ll save energy costs: By heating or cooling only the rooms when someone is there, you can reduce your consumption and significantly lower your electricity bills.

You get a personalized feel: An occupancy sensor allows your smart thermostat to maintain the right temperature inside people’s rooms. Plus, it also automates processes- so there is no need for manual intervention anymore! Your thermostat will automatically adjust its settings based on how often those spaces are used.

In a nutshell, presence detection on smart thermostats is an invaluable asset. It doesn’t just help you save money but also ensures that your home remains cozy and comfortable.

It can be tailored to fit perfectly with all temperature settings in any part of your house using built-in sensors, remote systems, and automation.

5. Multi-Room Controls

A Smart thermostat provides us the luxury of creating customized environments for every space separately.

At first, multi-room controls help optimize energy use by heating or cooling just the parts of your home that you’re using. This means lower bills and still having comfy temperatures in important areas. Configuration is also simple with app-based management; there is no need for complicated programmable thermostats whose little buttons are hard to press! Smart thermostats have user-friendly interfaces, so each room’s temperature can be controlled from a smartphone or computer.

Traditional central heating and cooling systems use radiators to spread the heat throughout a house. Each has a thermostatic radiator valve (TRV) that can adjust how hot water passes. With smart TRVs, homeowners can program and customize temperatures in different rooms.

Smart radiator valves are linked via WiFi, so they become controllable remotely through your phone or voice assistant. Homeowners can then set current temperatures and schedules in each room where the valve is installed.

6. Energy Tracking & Reporting

Most smart thermostats gather hourly or daily energy consumption data from your home’s main HVAC system. Doing so allows the thermostat to observe how much power is used for heating and cooling over time.

With the help of a smart thermostat app, homeowners can access reports that show historical information on temperature settings, runtimes, and kilowatt-hours (kWh) utilization.

In general, such reports extend days, months, and even years.

Comparing monthly/yearly utilized energy usage makes it easier to detect trends like whether certain temperature adjustments helped cut down bills. It also helps highlight any odd fluctuations regarding the amount of electricity consumed.

You may also get recommendations on how to save money based on a home’s energy use patterns. This helps you find the best settings for keeping costs down.

Energy reports show homeowners how changing things like nighttime temperature or lowering it can decrease expenses. It also encourages better temperature management habits over time.

7. Voice Control

A great thing about having a smart thermostat is that you can easily talk to it and get what you want. With voice commands, controlling your home’s temperature has never been easier.

You only need virtual assistants such as Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri. Setting up this feature usually isn’t complicated; follow directions on the mobile app provided by the manufacturer.

This allows homeowners to use voice commands to adjust the temperature, switch modes, view the current setting, or get energy reports without touching the thermostat. For example, you could say: “Hey Google, set the thermostat to 22 degrees,” or “Alexa, make my home cooler.”

Ecobee has built-in Alexa and Siri so that you can control the device directly via voice without an additional Smart home hub device.

Finally, voice control integrates easily with routines and scenes and can control other smart devices. For example, you could say “goodnight” and have lights, locks, and thermostats change automatically.

8. Away and Holidays Modes

When going on holiday vacation, smart thermostats provide away and holiday modes to help save energy while still ensuring your house remains at a comfortable temperature. These are designed to replace our usual settings so that the warmth in our homes stays consistent during times away.

Away Mode is particularly beneficial for shorter absences.

It modifies the smart thermostat setting and lowers energy consumption while maintaining a comfy home environment.

And then there’s the Holidays Mode, which should come in handy when you’re away for a while, like during vacations. It helps save energy by keeping your house at lower temperatures than usual.

Turn on these two modes through your thermostat’s interface or app. Set an energy-saving temperature that’s still comfortable but significantly lower than your normal settings. Pay attention to energy use reports to observe how much you save.

9. Reminders and Alerts

Fast temperature change alerts: If the smart thermostat senses the temperature in the home rising or falling rapidly, it will send an alert to notify you in case something is wrong with the HVAC system.

System Malfunction Alerts: When anything abnormal starts happening within the unit, our smart thermostats will notify us immediately so it won’t get any further than it already did.

Regular Maintenance: Smart thermostats notify you of general maintenance needs and breakdowns. This involves cleaning your HVAC system, changing worn-out parts, or inspecting for leaks.

Energy Conservation Alerts: Monitoring energy use and giving warnings help you make wise decisions to lessen extra energy usage. These notes could suggest the best heating and cooling routines or offer advice on optimizing effectiveness.

Customizable Warnings: Many smart thermostats have adjustable settings that let you decide what notifications come up regularly and how often they appear. This gives you full power to manage them based on your requirements.

10. Compatible with Other Smart Home Devices

When selecting the best smart thermostat, it’s wise to consider its compatibility with your other home automation gadgets. Working hand-in-hand together can give you a better integrated smart home experience.

When looking for an ideal smart thermostat to get for yourself, check if it’s supported by some of the most popular platforms like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple HomeKit. Perhaps you already have Alexa at home, so you want a thermostat that is compatible with that.

If you have a more advanced smart hub like SmartThings, there may already be an integration for your smart device, or you can browse forums to see how other people manage to integrate.

11. Humidity Tracking

Another cool perk of certain smart thermostats is their ability to monitor humidity levels.

Too much indoor humidity can make your house feel stuffy, while too little could lead to dryness problems. Smart thermostats have built-in sensors that detect these moisture levels and adjust the home’s heating or cooling systems to keep the air balanced.

Regularly track the interior air to tune settings or utilize additional devices like humidifiers or dehumidifiers if necessary.