Hi! The past few years, I’ve been happily using my Honeywell EvoHome heating system. It’s always worked perfectly, but recently tado° sent me their new tado° X system, which I couldn’t resist trying out. So, is it better than Honeywell Evohome? And can it be controlled through Home Assistant? You’ll find out in this video!

• Buy tado° X on the Tado° website: https://shop.tado.com/en
• Buy tado X° on Amazon DE: https://amzn.to/4hFYFKJ
• Buy tado X° on Amazon NL: https://amzn.to/4fJbO3X
• Buy tado X° on Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/4fJbP81

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Ed

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Introduction

These are all my Honeywell thermostat knobs that have been in service in my home over the past few years. As you can see, I have quite a large setup with no fewer than 16 thermostat knobs. They were centrally controlled by the Honeywell Evotouch, allowing each room to be heated individually. This can make a significant difference in energy consumption. I’ve always been very satisfied with it, though I found the design somewhat unattractive. Then tado° approached me with the proposal to test their new tado° X system. I’ve always thought the tado° radiator thermostat knobs which are directly mounted on the radiator looked better than Honeywell’s, so I definitely wanted to give this a try!

The devices

tado° sent me a wireless receiver to connect to my boiler. This wireless receiver is the central unit that all radiator knobs and the wireless temperature sensor connect to. You hang this unit near your boiler and connect it with two or three wires, depending on your boiler type. This wireless receiver supports Matter, allowing you to connect this heating system to external systems like Home Assistant.

They also sent me the thermostat knobs to install on my radiators. As I mentioned, the thermostat knobs communicate with the central wireless receiver. If a room gets too cold, the thermostat knob in that room sends a signal to the central unit to start the boiler. The thermostat knob in that room then automatically opens while the other thermostat knobs in your home remain closed, so only the rooms that need heating are warmed. This is an excellent system because, for example, only your child’s room needs heating if they’re home, without heating the living room unnecessarily. The thermostat knobs feel solid and have a nice design. The matte display looks high-end and shows the current temperature, the set temperature, and whether it’s actively heating or not. You can also see if it’s connected to the central unit. The thermostat knobs themselves also support Matter, making it easy to control them via Home Assistant. I’ll show you how in a bit.

You can adjust the temperature directly on the thermostat knob by turning the ring around it and you can adjust them virtually using the tado° app. The thermostat knob has a rechargeable battery that you can unscrew and charge via a USB-C cable. The thermostat knob is said to last up to a year on a single charge. I haven’t tested it that long yet, but it’s a relief compared to the Honeywell knobs, where I always had to replace AA batteries. Of course, I never had batteries on hand when I needed them… tado° has solved that problem for me.

The wireless receiver also came with a wireless temperature sensor that you can place centrally in a room with multiple radiators. I have four radiators in my living room, making it tricky to heat the room evenly. With this wireless temperature sensor, you can ensure the room heats until the set temperature on the sensor is reached. For most rooms, there’s only one radiator, so a separate wireless temperature sensor isn’t needed, as each knob has its own temperature sensor. And, of course, this wireless temperature sensor also supports Matter.

Connecting the Devices

Setting up the devices was very simple. I had to connect the wireless receiver to the OpenTherm connection on my old Remeha Calenta boiler with two wires. But if you don’t have a modulating boiler, you can still connect it easily. The tado° app guides you through this process step-by-step, so you don’t need to be very tech-savvy to do it yourself. After connecting the wires, I could add it via the app by scanning the QR code. The entire installation of the wireless receiver took me about 15 minutes.

Installing the thermostat knobs was easy because they fit the same radiator valves I used for Honeywell. But if you have different radiator valves, each thermostat knob comes with various adapters to fit almost any type of valve. The app guides you through the setup step-by-step. First, you add the thermostat knob to your tado° system, then mount the knob on your radiator, with the app showing you exactly how to do it. It’s just a matter of twisting it on, and you’re done. Then you indicate in the app which room the knob is in. Each knob comes with a card containing the Matter QR code. It’s a good idea to keep these cards and label each one with the corresponding knob. The QR code is also inside the knob itself, but it’s much harder to scan once it’s mounted on the radiator.

The same applies to the wireless temperature sensor as with the knobs. You scan the QR code and then add the sensor to a room where you have multiple thermostat knobs installed. Once it’s assigned to a room, it immediately acts as the central sensor for the entire room, and all the thermostat knobs in that room will sync to the central temperature sensor.

The tado° App

Once everything is connected, you can control the tado° system through the tado ° app. The app offers several simple options to manage your heating. First, there’s a page showing all your rooms, where you can easily set the temperature per room. You can also set a daily schedule for each room’s heating needs. This schedule can be copied day-to-day, or you can copy a complete schedule from one room to another.

With the history button, you can see the temperature and humidity trends in your room over time.

There’s also an “Air Comfort” option where you can check the air quality per room, though this feature is somewhat limited. If you want to measure air quality per room accurately, you can watch my two videos on air quality sensors. The links are in this video‘s description. The geofencing option lets you automatically turn the heating on or off as you approach or leave your home, but you’ll need an Auto-Assist subscription from tado° for this. With this subscription, the system will also detect if a window is open and automatically turn off the heating. Without the subscription, the tado° App will still notify you that you left your home or that a window is opened so that you can take appropriate action manually on it.

Later in this video, I’ll show you how to do this for free with Home Assistant. The subscription also includes a “Care & Protect” feature, where tado° alerts you if something unusual happens with your heating system, and you can work with tado° to resolve the issues. This way, you can quickly detect and anticipate flaws, often avoiding high installation costs.

The Energy IQ option shows you how much energy you’ve used and what it costs.

On the settings page, you can assign your thermostat knobs to rooms and enable the child lock so the rotation ring on the knobs no longer works. You can also adjust the temperature offset so that the knobs display the correct temperature. Since the knobs are close to the radiator, they may often display a slightly higher temperature, which you can adjust using the temperature offset. You can also enter your Home Details and invite household members to access your tado° system.

Other options include setting up the Open Window Detection and entering your energy meter readings and energy rates. I don’t use the latter myself because I have a dynamic energy contract, and gas prices vary hourly. It would be great if tado° added an option to link your system to Nordpool prices, for example, so that energy rates could be fetched automatically.

The “More” page gives you the option to seek help and manage your personal data settings.

Heating performance

Now that we’ve reviewed the app, it’s time to see how the system performs. Initially, I was confused because it seemed like the system wasn’t heating properly. But it turns out that tado° heats more gradually than my previous Honeywell system, which is actually a good thing. My Honeywell system would occasionally heat up intensely, whereas tado° heats more steadily and thus uses less gas. It took a bit of time for the system to fully adjust, but I have to say that my home now feels very comfortable throughout the day. If I set a radiator very high, tado° will heat it up as expected, but if I just want to increase the temperature by a degree or two, it does this fairly gradually. It took me a little while to get used to, but now that I’ve been using tado° for a while, I find the way it heats my home very pleasant. When I leave the house, the geofencing option activates, and all radiators are set to the away temperature, which I have set to 15 degrees Celsius. As mentioned, you do need the Auto-Assist subscription for this feature.

It’s important to know that the knobs will still follow the schedule even when the internet is disconnected. So, the schedule is stored locally on the knobs and you do not need an internet connection to keep them functioning.

Connecting tado° X to Home Assistant

The tado° X can be connected to Home Assistant since it supports Matter. So make sure you have the Matter integration installed in Home Assistant.

Go to the tado° App and open the settings for the specific thermostat knob. Click on Device Linking and select Copy Code.

To connect a tado° knob to Home Assistant, you’ll need the Home Assistant Companion App on your phone. Open the Home Assistant Companion App and go to Settings > Devices & Services.

• Click Add Integration.
• Select Add Matter device.
• Select Yes. it’s already in use.
• Select Other Controllers.
• Enter or paste the code provided to you by the tado° App.
• Click Add Device.

Your tado° knob has now been added to Home Assistant. Let’s check if the knob indeed appears in Home Assistant.

• Go to Settings > Devices and Services.
• Open the Matter Integration.
• Click on the Devices link.
• You’ll find your device in this list.
• Open the device and you will see that you can control the thermostat knob.
• Next to that, you can see the Humidity readings for this knob.

So now you can create a dashboard like this to control the knobs. Even better, you can create your own automations to enable geofencing without needing a subscription. Check out this video, where I explain step-by-step how to set this up. The link is in the video description.

You can also set up automations to lower the heating automatically if a window or door is opened. For this, you’ll need a window or door sensor, like this one from Aqara. I’ve created an automation that turns off the heating when a patio door is opened. Once the patio door is closed again, the thermostat knobs return to their automatic status. You can download the blueprint for this via the link in the description of this video.

In addition to installing the knobs through the Matter integration, there’s also a tado° integration in Home Assistant, but it doesn’t support the individual knobs. You can read some data, but you can’t control any settings. I don’t use this integration further.

Price of tado° X

The prices for the tado° X can be found on this page. You will need the Wireless Smart Thermostat X, which costs €199.99, including the wireless temperature sensor. The thermostat knobs are priced at €99.99 each. If you buy them in sets of four, it’s cheaper. You can find links to where you can purchase the tado° X in the description of this video.

The optional Auto-Assist subscription fee is €3.99 per month, or €29.99 yearly, and can be canceled every month easily in the tado° app.

Conclusion

And now my conclusion. The tado° system looks fantastic. In my opinion, it is much more aesthetically pleasing than my old Honeywell Evohome system and fits perfectly into a modern interior. However, tado° is more expensive than Honeywell, even though it essentially does the same thing: heating your home. Still, there are differences. It seemed to me that the tado° X heats my radiators more gradually than the Honeywell did. I expect to save more on my energy consumption, but I won’t know for sure until I’ve used it for several months. tado° has the Auto-Assist feature, which provides the geofencing option and window detection, but you do need a subscription for that. In contrast, the open window detection comes standard with Honeywell Evohome without a subscription, but Honeywell lacks the geofencing option. If you use Home Assistant, it doesn’t matter much, because you can program these features yourself in Home Assistant without needing a subscription. The user interface of tado° is much simpler than that of Honeywell. Every time I wanted to adjust something in my Honeywell Evohome system, I had to look up how to do it again, while everything in tado° is very intuitive.

Would I buy the tado° X? Regarding design, user interface, and gradual heating, I would definitely purchase the tado° X. However, if I wanted to save money on the purchase, Honeywell Evohome would suffice. That said, Honeywell Evohome is less user-friendly. Whether you save money in the long run is questionable due to how Honeywell manages the heating. Based on my testing, tado heats rooms more gradually than Honeywell, which will likely save money over time.

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