Earlier this week Honeywell revealed its new smart home Wi-Fi thermostat in the USA.
The ‘Lyric’ controls heating and cooling from its LED-illuminated ring. The built-in proximity sensor turns on the display as you approach and shows the current temperature along with the current heating or cooling status. Its ‘halo ring’ glows orange for heating, blue for cooling and of course green for savings.
The Lyric certainly looks similar to that other well known round smart home stat. Nest’s recent acquisition by Google raised questions over potential privacy issues and Nest also suffered a recent embarrassing product withdrawal. Wether those issues concern you or not, the new Honeywell stats will give buyers a big brand alternative to Nest.
RELATED: Nest Learning Thermostat Review
Famous podcaster Leo Laporte removed his Nest stats questioning the effectiveness of their learning ability after his energy usage went up. Honeywell are keen to differentiate their product stressing the way it works is different…
“Most people don’t have a predictable pattern to how they live their lives; why not have a thermostat that adjusts based on your real-time schedule?” says Beth Wozniak, president of Honeywell Environmental and Combustion Controls. “With the Lyric thermostat’s geofencing capability, my house returns to my preferred comfort setting when I’m within a few miles from home. Quite simply, the Lyric thermostat offers me the ability to keep my life in tune – delivering comfort when I’m home and savings when I’m gone.”
Lyric has the ability to pair with multiple smartphones and tablets (Android / iOS) and employs your mobile device to setup actions based on geofencing. The system knows if you’re home or away (providing your phone isn’t down the back of the sofa) and can act accordingly, shutting off the heating / cooling when you leave or turning it on as you head home.
Honeywell’s stated aim is to create an entire Lyric smart home platform, with a range of products in the works currently. Revealed as one of Apple’s HomeKit partners just last week, it will be interesting to see what Honeywell come up with for the smart home over the coming months.
“We’re thrilled to be developing thermostats that will work with Apple’s new HomeKit Accessory Protocol. HomeKit will allow us to provide a simple and easy experience for our customers, with the ability to securely pair and control devices throughout the house including integration with Siri.”
The low voltage version of the Lyric Wi-Fi thermostat is available to buy now in the USA through HW installers (DIY outlets will follow in August).
We asked Honeywell what their plans are regarding the Lyric on this side of the pond. It looks like we’ll have to wait until next year for a UK version to replace our mains wired stats here as Honeywell would only say ‘2015’. Check out the video and the links below.
lyric.honeywell.com : Honeywell evohome Zoned Heating System
I sent them an email to see if it was compatible with evohome as I was just about to order it and I have yet to get a reply.
Not sure I want to wait until next year either.
Sounds like a lot of what Tado does and that’s available now in Europe.
When is the UK launch?
I sent them an email regarding this they said:
We have no information we can give out right now about this.
The EU market is significantly different from North America and Honeywell will continue to deliver the best solution possible, where possible for our European customers.
Have they changed their mind about launching the product in the uk?