Must Have Thermostats for Smart Homes

Thermostats are, in their own strange way, a key to your home's ability to comfort you. They keep you warm when it's winter, and cool when it's summer — and they give you that awesome feeling of being in control of your surroundings.

Smart homes now allow you to have programmable thermostats that you can alter from afar, and many of them do a lot more than just that. If you want to add a new level of comfort to your home this year, you should check out this industry-approved list of must have thermostats for smart homes of every size.

Any list of must have thermostats for smart homes will feature at least one Nest product on it. Why? Because Nest was one of the first companies to ever make smart home thermostats, and remains one of the most highly regarded companies in the field.

A Nest Thermostat isn't just a thermostat. It's a smart home accessory that allows you to program your thermostat via a smartphone app, happens to be Alexa-compatible, and also will lower thermostat levels when you're not home so that you can save money on your electric bills.

The newest generation of Nest thermostats also will light up with a weather and temperature display the moment you enter the room with them, and also comes with optional thermostat plates to help you decorate your home.

Additionally, Nest also made a line of smart cameras and carbon monoxide detectors — so you can fully protect your home using their smart technology if you so choose.

Perhaps the biggest competitor to Nest thermostats are Ecobee thermostats — and frankly, Nest has every right to be concerned about Ecobee's major gains.

Often considered to be one of the more affordable must have thermostats for smart homes, Ecobees are all about saving big on electrical bills using a smart, programmable thermostat that schedules out your heating for you.

Much like Nest's thermostats, Ecobee thermostats allow you to pre program your temperatures, offer easy readings of your in-home temperatures, and also can change the temperature based on outdoor weather, too.

Also very similar to Nest, Ecobees also work well with Alexa and are able to connect to wifi in a pinch. Indoors, they can sense when you're in certain rooms and adjust everything accordingly.

However, unlike Nest, the Ecobee 3 is one of the first home kit-ready smart thermostats in the world. So, installing this will be way easier, and way cheaper, too.

The only issue? Aesthetics. Nest is prettier.

Let's say that you're not looking for a seriously expensive smart thermostat, but you still want to have all the functionality of most must have thermostats for smart homes. Though this would have been impossible a couple of years ago, there are now affordable smart thermostats available for families on a budget.

One of the best budget-friendly smart home options you can check out is the Sensi Smart thermostat. The Sensi Smart Thermostat gives you just about all the functionality you'd see with a Nest or Ecobee 3, but with a much more reasonable price tag.

This thermostat is wifi-compatible, allows you to preprogram your thermostat with a quick touch of a mobile app. It's compatible with Amazon Alexa, works with almost every HVAC option, and also reads out local weather information with ease.

Did we mention that this comes with an optional home kit for DIY-ers? We should mention that, too.

If you want just a little more flash and a bit more functionality than the Sensi Smart, then you might want to check out Honeywell's Wi-Fi 9000 smart thermostat.

This beautiful little flat panel thermostat regularly gets called one of the most budget-friendly options among must have thermostats for smart homes. Despite being budget-friendly, the Honeywell packs a lot of functionality into a very small interface.

The Honeywell Wi-Fi 9000 is wifi-compatible, as you probably also guessed. It also comes with a totally customized display that tells you the current temperature in your home, the goal temperature you set, and allows you to preprogram your home's temperatures with an easy-to-use mobile app.

Of course, if you want to use the touch screen to set things up, you can do that, too. This smart device is all about bringing flexibility to the smart home veneer.

Of all the smart thermostats we've found, Schnieder Electric's was the only one we found that actually calls itself a "Wiser" choice. Honestly, we can't disagree.

Between its beautifully futuristic tablet-like appearance, the intuitively designed app that lets you toggle the thermostat's temperature, and the fact that you can program the thermostat according to your schedule in advance, Schneider Electric's Wiser is a great option that delivers a lot of functionality.

While this thermostat is not Alexa-compatible to our knowledge, it does offer the benefit of being incredibly easy to install. It's also capable of integrating with a lot of IFTTT devices, so that's a good perk to consider as well.

If you're sick of seeing the prices of AI devices for your home, then this is one of the best must have thermostats for smart homes on the market.