Nest or Hive

Puntoboy

We currently have Hive thermostats in our current house, H HW downstairs and H only upstairs (two zones). We are moving house in a few months and we've been told we would need to buy new thermostats for the new house but take our existing hub, lights and sensors with us. The thermostats are the most expensive part of the system!

Because of this, I am looking into what other systems are out there. We had Tado in our previous house but I wasn't happy with their customer service and prices so won't be going back to them. We have a Nest Hello doorbell so I was thinking about their thermostats, they seem to be better than the Hive ones as they learn about your boiler and room heating time which the Hive doesn't appear to do. It seems to be the better system.

Any thoughts on this?

mushii

Honeywell Evo Home would be my choice starting again. Currently have nest, which works well single zone.

Puntoboy

Any particular reason?

mushii

Evohome allows direct control over individual TRVs, so individual room temps can be controlled on their own schedule. It isnt the cheapest solution. but it does allow much more granularity of control

stonedcamel

Got tado and it works very well in a house without routines etc

Puntoboy

I'm pretty sure Hive can do that as well.

jossy lena

I'm not saying that Hive is bad but if we comparing two things then Comparison makes differences. Go with Nest Thermostat 3rd Generation. Cheap in price with the installation. Also compatible with other boilers, water tanks, Air/Ground heating pumps, therm-technology systems and many more.
Thanks

neilball

What are your ultimate aims for the system? Do you want individual room control or just basic 1 or two zones plus hot water?

I’ve no experience of Hive so cannot comment on it’s abilities, but have used/installed Nest and Evo (a few hundreds of Evo).

With Nest, in my opinion, unless you are flooding the house with Nest sensors (stats, Protect fire alarms etc) then the self adapting occupation is not that useful as it’s not going to have enough feedback to genuinely reflect your real usage in the house, so you’ll probably end up using normal schedules most of the time or manual adjustments for non-schedule events (just like any other smart system). Best does have useful integration with its smoke alarms though, so automatically switches off boiler demand if there is a CO alarm activation for example. However it does not lend itself easily to full room zoning, and having to power the stat (and maybe use wired feedback to the Heat Link) can limit retro-fit options.

Evo is different to most systems in that it is a truly modular system with most common applications covered - wireless TRV controllers, wireless room sensor options, underfloor heating manifold controllers, hot water kit including HWS sensor, single relay modules that can be configured for a number of uses etc. So it can be installed as a simple 1 or 2 zone heating controller with or without hot water, or be fully room zoned irrespective of heating type. However this also makes it more expensive than Hive and Nest too.

You might also want to consider Heatmiser Neo, as they have both wired and wireless options that may be suitable if you only want basic zone valve level control (rather than individual room zoning).

In terms of operation they all work in a similar fashion so will achieve similar levels of comfort/accuracy of temperature control. Their apps are very different, and the setting up/configuration and backup/suport are also different (in particular, Evo is seen as a pro-installer product, so tech support to end users/DIY installers is limited), so you may want to download the apps first and try them out in demo mode.

chrisgeary

And it works offline, no Internet required. Not sure if any of the other offerings support that these days.

neilball

All but app-based control works offline, so full control/operation from the Evo touchscreen when wifi/intnernet/cloud is down - there is no direct access to the Evo system via wifi from the app though, this still requires the Honeywell/Resideo cloud servers/internet access/wifi to be working for you to access Evo from the App.