Tado has unveiled its latest smart thermostat which prominently boasts a new LED touchscreen.
Tado is a smart home heating system that lets you control the temperature from afar, through your phone or through an online portal. The main idea behind this, as with all other smart heating systems, is that you can have your home gently pre-heated for when you get home from work, therefore saving you money.
This new thermostat is aimed predominantly at new customers who want to manually control the heating when they’re at home, but don’t have an iOS or Android phone.
As Tado’s previous thermostat didn’t feature a control panel, it was impossible for customers without smartphones to turn the heat down at home without cracking out the laptop and logging in.
The new model features a simple LED touchscreen panel that lets you manually change the temperature accordingly.
In keeping with Tado’s minimalist design ethos, the LED controls discreetly recede from view after a few seconds of you tapping away.
Jens Pohl, head of design at Tado said: “When starting the design we knew that our customers did not want a full featured display on the device that would draw too much attention or constantly light up a living room.
“By placing the display behind the main surface and having the LED matrix shine through, we have been able to meet this challenge in an elegant and fascinating way.”
As well as bridging the gap between those with compatible phones and those without, the new thermostat will work with over 5,000 different heating systems. Tado will work with systems that use radiators, underfloor heating, gas and oil heating systems and heat pumps and boilers of virtually any age and type.
One of the plus points Tado is keen to stress about its smart heating systems is how is uses geolocation data from phones to make sure the heat is turned off when the last person leaves the house and comes back on when the first person to arrive is nearby.
Tado’s learning algorithms also allow it to get a sense for how long it takes to heat up your home, taking into account things like window surface area, insulation and building materials used to make your house. This means it will reach the temperature more efficiently even if you don’t have a compatible phone.
Founder and CEO of Tado Christian Deilmann said: “We believe people shouldn’t have to deal with their heating but let the Tado assistant do the work for them. Tado simultaneously allows for increased comfort at home as well as savings of up to 31 per cent on heating costs every year.
“With our new Tado smart thermostat, we’re able to spread that lifestyle to even more homes.”
Finally, the new Tado thermostat is also the first stepping stone to Tado launching zoning.
Zoning – where you only heat the rooms you want to instead of the whole house – is not possible on the first generation of Tado. This new model doesn’t let you set up zones yet, but the idea is eventually you’ll be able to buy more thermostats for different areas of your house.
“This is another great feature of the new product. Right now, Tado will treat the whole home as one zone. With this you’ll be able to add more thermostats, so you can have separate zones,” Deilmann added.
Zoned heating has been on the cards for a while now, but this is the first indication that the company is starting to make a move in that direction.
The new Tado Smart Thermostat will go on sale for £199 to buy or £4.99/month to rent. Households that do not have an existing thermostat can get a Tado extension kit to set up a wireless connection to their heating system. The extension kit costs £79 to buy or can be rented for £1.99/month.
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