Packed full of features, tado° lets you add smart, bill-saving technology within your home. But, is it any good?
tado° was founded in Germany, a country that continues to lead the way in heating, birthing industry leading brands such as Worcester Bosch, Viessmann and Vaillant.
Munich based tado° first entered the world of the smart home over 10 years ago and in 2015 released their very first smart thermostat in the UK.
Yet unlike rivals such as Nest, the tado° isn’t just a smart thermostat, but offers you the ability to create a whole house smart heating and cooling system
What does the tado° V3+ Starter Kit include?
The tado° Starter Kit: Wireless Smart Thermostat V3+ including Programmer with Hot Water Control includes the smart thermostat, wireless receiver and the internet bridge.
The Starter Kit on its own provides a range of energy-saving and comfort-related benefits to customers, however, optional add-ons are also available from tado°, such as smart thermostatic radiator valves, which allow you to control the heating of your boiler, as well as the radiators in each room, letting you adjust the heating output in every room that has one installed. These can be purchased when you get your Starter Kit or at any point afterwards.
Zone your home
This allows you to take advantage of the concept of zonal heating i.e. instead of heating your entire house, only heat the zones or rooms you are using.
This is an effective way to reduce your energy use and make some substantial savings, whilst still achieving your desired temperatures in the rooms you’re using.
Standout and unique features of tado°
If you are thinking, why choose a tado°, here are a few of the major unique features offered by the device:
Whole-house heating and cooling control
Open window detection
Air quality insights (both inside and outside your home)
Boiler incident detection, notifying you if you have a boiler breakdown so that you can get help more quickly
tado app's impressive interface and features
Setting up the tado° V3+ Smart thermostat
The tado° Starter Kit includes the smart thermostat, which is controlled and used much like a Nest Learning or Hive thermostat, allowing you to easily modulate the ambient temperature of your home.
The tado° allows you to control it remotely using a smart device such as your mobile phone or tablet, or from the device itself, providing all the versatility you might expect of a smart device in the current year.
tado°'s exterior and build aren’t quite as show-stopping as the Nest, yet the contemporary exterior offers something new - a device that seamlessly blends into its surroundings.
With most other smart thermostats paired with a regular central heating system, you would need to manually go to each room and adjust the radiator valves in order to modulate the room's temperature.
Yet with tado°’s Smart Radiator Thermostat and add-ons, this can be avoided completely, as with these both the boiler and radiators can be independently scheduled and controlled from the tado app.
PS you can now read our complete review of the best thermostatic radiator valves in the UK.
How is tado° Different?
tado° offers many innovative features neglected or completely absent in rival smart thermostats:
Zonal Heating Control
tado° allows you to expand on the Starter Kit, with a range of clever add-ons, such as their smart radiator valves.
These valves allow you to create a truly smart way of controlling your home's temperature, by enabling you to set up zones, where individual room temperatures can be adjusted, allowing you to avoid the never-ending task of cycling around each room making adjustments.
The radiator valves are equipped with smart sensors that detect external temperatures and adjust based on the signals received from the central command center i.e. the thermostat.
They turn the radiator valves so you don’t have to and can operate completely independently from your main heating schedule, meaning you can have one or two rooms heating without the rest of the house being on, or you can boost the temperature of the Living Room while you’re all watching TV for example, without wasting energy increasing the temperature in the rest of the house.
The valves are operated by an internal motor and are battery powered. Each one requires two AAs. When adjusting themselves, the motor is audible, but it’s nothing too bothersome and literally lasts a few seconds.
Maybe the best part? The DIY installation! -That’s right, you don’t need to hire a plumber to install them, you simply unscrew your current valves and screw your new tado° valves back on in their place. Each device comes with 6 adaptors and are compatible with over 90% of UK TRVs.
Set-up with the App
Once your Starter Kit is incredibly easy to follow. To get started, simply download the tado° app, create an account and click “Add device” when prompted.
From here, if you scan in the QR Code of the Internet Bridge, all tado° devices paired with the Bridge will pre-populate in the app.
If you have only purchased a Starter Kit, your heating is controlled from one heating zone tile in the tado° app.
You simply click into here and can set your Smart Schedule, turn your heating on/off or up/down and also view your Climate Report for your home.
The tado° Climate Report shows you when the heating and hot water have been on, the temperature and humidity of your home and how quickly your home heats up and cools down.
If you are also purchasing tado°’s Smart Radiator Thermostats, you can name each zone/room, within the tado° app and set up independent schedules for each room, as well as see a Climate Report per room.
If you have multiple tado° devices in one room (for example, if you have the main smart thermostat, as well as a radiator valve in the same room), from the tado° app, you are then able to select the sensor within the room you wish to take lead for thermostatic control - i.e. so that the thermostat sensor can take the lead on regulating the heating in that room.
The tado° App - Notable Features
Smart Scheduling
Nothing new for a smart thermostat, but certainly worth mentioning.
From the app, you can set a schedule to suit your lifestyle, plus with tado° the Schedule is only active when someone is Home (unless you set it otherwise).
tado offers three scheduling options: you can set the same schedule for all the days of the week; set one schedule for the weekdays and a different one for the weekend; or set a different schedule for every day of the week.
In addition, you can divide your days into multiple time blocks and specify custom settings, such as temperature, for each of these blocks, based on your daily routine. You can then easily adjust this remotely should your plans change, which is always handy.
Read all about how to use a smart thermostat and see what temperature you should set your thermostat in winter.
Geofencing
Are you ever in a rush and forget to turn the heating off?
With tado° you can invite multiple people to be part of your tado° home and each can access your home’s heating and cooling via their own tado° app and login details. tado°’s geofencing feature can then track anyone with the tado° app based on their smartphone’s location, so when the last person leaves the house, you will be notified to turn off your heating so that you can easily avoid wasting energy and money.
The same goes for when you are returning home, this feature will detect the first person heading home, allowing you to get your home to the temperature you like before you arrive.
It is worth mentioning that both their geofencing and open window detection features are not automated unless you pay for a monthly subscription.
You still use and benefit from the features, but they must be adjusted manually, in which case, tado° sends you a push notification so that you can activate the heating going on/off with a few clicks.
Related thermostat guides:
Smart reporting
Perhaps one of tado°’s most innovative features is smart reporting, which you can access from inside the mobile app.
It provides a range of useful data that you can use to monitor your heating use and modify your behaviour to make further savings if you desire.
The reports present the data in a colourful and easy-to-understand format, which includes heating and weather activity, how much you have saved to date and even when you had the windows open.
Check out how the Nest and Hive smart thermostats are compared in our Nest vs Hive guide.
Smart Home Integration/Compatibility
Integrating tado° with the rest of your smart home is seamless due to its versatile device compatibility and connectivity.
tado° can be controlled via an application that can be accessed via PC, tablet, or mobile phone.
With regards to connectivity, you can connect to some of the most popular virtual and smart home assistants including the following:
Amazon Alexa
Apple HomeKit (unlike Nest)
Google Assistant
Essentially, tado° is compatible with all of the most frequently used virtual assistants.
In fact, tado° is more compatible with the common smart assistants than Nest (which has no Apple integration - obviously, a big miss when Apple is the most popular smartphone).
Using a virtual assistant you are able to turn the heating on or off, change the temperature in single or multiple rooms and also integrate tado° into routines with your other smart devices.
For example, you could say “Alexa, please turn the heating off” or “Alexa set the Living Room to 22 degrees”.
Related thermostat reading:
Our Verdict
The tado° V3+ has some extremely unique and innovative features that set it apart from the competition, including multi-room control, open window detection and air quality insights.
As of February 2021, they had the highest rated app of their competitors in the App Store and Google Play, plus a Trustpilot score of 4.1 (Great), exceeding most rival devices.
Overall, tado° is a brilliant smart device, offering you the ability to create a whole-house heating and cooling system with an easy-to-follow DIY installation process.
By utilising the smart thermostat, together with the smart radiator valves, you are able to take advantage of zonal heating and reap the financial rewards and added comfort these bring immediately.
tado° devices are aesthetically impressive and not only is their application probably the best offered by any other smart thermostat but contains a wealth of genuinely useful data and heating options.
