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Just moved house, and need a new thermostat, so Hive or Nest, both similarly priced and do the same thing.
They both get good review, anyone got anything negative about either, to help me choose?
Ta P.
You can plug more stuff into the Hive system (cameras etc).
Nest looks better, is marginally easier to use, and supports Opentherm.
Nest is fine; but you'll probably want to buy the additional remote sensor to make it more accurate at measuring the temperature in the room (not inside the wall)
I went for Nest at ours purely based on me finding a very cheap 3rd generation one on eBay. It does the job perfectly well and the OpenTherm seems to be saving us some gas.
I have a Nest 3rd gen and no complaints here (plenty of gizmos work with the Nest ecosystem to, actually one complaint - the price of the smoke detectors...). I must admit though I turned off all the learning stuff and disabled presence detection so it's basically a standard thermostat that I can control via alexa.
I found the learning thing didn't really work for me, although my routine is pretty standard even after 3 weeks it still seemed a bit haphazard (would come home from work and it was freezing cold or would pop home at lunch and it had stayed on all morning). Other people seem to have better experiences with the learning side though.
I went for Hive as I spoke to friends who had Nest and they said the learning function doesn’t really work that well.
At the time I got it I also preferred the other items that could be connected to Hive and I got a free pack of bulbs and sockets when signing up with British Gas.
They don’t seem to want to integrate Hive with Apple HomeKit but I think it connects with one of those popular (but in my eyes really stupid) smart speaker things.
I’ve got a few of the Hive bulbs and sockets which are useful as you can dim the lights remotely and the sockets are great for inaccessible areas (I have my seperates system connected to one and you can’t reach the wall socket easily without it).
You can make actions up and link devices so I have connected the lounge lights together and they all switch on with one macro and have another which turns everything off including the heating when we go to bed.
I’ve got a couple of the proximity sensors but haven’t used them yet.
I’ve noticed they do a GU10 bulb now so I’m going to install some outside lights and use them instead of a light timer or sensor, just have them coming on when it gets dark which you can set up I think.
Batteries in the controller of the thermostat seem to last a long time as you tend to use your phone most of the time to control it. If your internet goes down then you can still turn the boiler on with a manual switch, same with the bulbs and sockets.