At CNET, we’ve been testing smart thermostats for years, so it’s always a little surprising to hear, “What’s a smart thermostat?” But only a fraction of American households, around 17%, actually use smart thermostats. That’s too bad, because they’re one of my favorite smart home innovations, and offer handy advantages for almost everyone. 

So, what’s the difference, aside from flashy new touchscreen designs? I’ll take you through what’s new with these thermostats and how your heating and cooling will never be the same (neither will your energy bills).

Scheduled heating and cooling

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Both smart and traditional thermostats have programmable settings, letting you set temperature thresholds for specific hours and specific days of the week, and changing them as seasons change. The biggest difference is that smart thermostats make this much easier.

With old programmable thermostats, you’re mostly stuck doing programming with the thermostats’ manual controls. Smart thermostats allow you to set schedules from the app, no matter where you are, and you can usually save and switch between schedules on the fly, making the process significantly smoother.

Read more: Don’t Put Your Thermostat In These Places

Costs 

You can find a standard programmable thermostat without any bells and whistles for under $20 from brands like Honeywell Home (although those with fancy touchscreens will cost more), so they’re an easy way to save money if you need a replacement. Smart thermostats, with all their added features, cost significantly more. Amazon has one of the cheapest for under $100, but for something like Nest’s 4th-gen Learning Thermostat, you’ll have to pay close to $300.

Energy savings

Programmable thermostats will save you money, as long as you stay within strict temperature settings at certain times of day and night. Smart thermostats don’t necessarily save more, but they make saving money so much easier that houses tend to save more as a result, since very few users have time to constantly adjust a standard thermostat for maximum savings.

With settings like eco modes and monthly reports on energy savings, smart thermostats tend to save the average household significant amounts of money. Google Nest studies have estimated the average user saves around 15% on energy bills annually, while Ecobee says users can save up to 26% at the high end. That’s easily enough to cover the initial costs of a smart thermostat in a year or two.

Remote operation

A regular thermostat doesn’t have app connections and will, at most, have a remote control you can use from across the house. Smart thermostats, meanwhile, have Wi-Fi connections and apps. That means that as long as you have your phone and a connection, you can make thermostat changes.

For some people, this is an important feature — they can adjust the temperature while on vacation or if they forget while away from home. Others are fine making changes only when they’re at home.

Automatic learning and adjusting

A regular thermostat will heat or cool your home exactly when and how you tell it to. So will a smart thermostat — unless you enable its smarter features. Smart thermostats include learning algorithms and sensors that study activity in the house, like when people get up in the morning and start moving around.

With basic data like this, smart thermostats can start making adjustments about when to raise the heat or start cooling off, and when to hold back because there’s no one at home. Essentially, they can schedule themselves and respond to significant changes in habits.

Also, many new smart thermostats come with satellite sensors that you can place in specific rooms that traditional thermostats may not be able to “read” very well, increasing their temp-sensing accuracy. 

Energy savings

Programmable thermostats will save you money, as long as you stay within strict temperature settings at certain times of day and night. Smart thermostats don’t necessarily save more, but they make saving money so much easier that houses tend to save more as a result, since very few users have time to constantly adjust a standard thermostat for maximum savings.

With settings like eco modes and monthly reports on energy savings, smart thermostats tend to save the average household significant amounts of money. Google Nest studies have estimated the average user saves around 15% on energy bills annually, while Ecobee says users can save up to 26% at the high end. That’s easily enough to cover the initial costs of a smart thermostat in a year or two.

Installation

Both smart and standard thermostats are installed the same way — by connecting various wires to the thermostat’s base plate. Both offer professional installation services as well, so there’s not much difference here.

The biggest difference is that smart thermostats won’t work as well with every home system. For example, smart thermostats won’t make a huge difference if you use radiant floor heating as your primary heat source (it’s slower to respond and doesn’t affect thermostat sensors the same way), so you may as well save money with a simpler thermostat.

Connections to other devices

Smart thermostats can often connect to other smart home technology, including security hubs and customized triggers, through platforms like IFTTT or Controller for HomeKit. Since smart thermostats tend to have extra sensors for humidity or air quality, they can trigger things like air purifiers, fans, dehumidifiers and more. Some smart thermostats even come with built-in voice assistants, while most at least support voice assistant control through Alexa, Google’s voice assistant and more.

Regular thermostats don’t have any of these connections, so you can’t usually connect them to home routines or set temperature triggers for other devices.

Bottom line

Smart thermostats make saving money much easier than regular thermostats and come with plenty of extra bells and whistles, including opportunities to connect them to voice assistants and other smart home devices. They’re also sleek, smart devices that display personalized info about your home and weather, while learning your habits and automatically adjusting heating or cooling — no micromanagement needed. Plus, unlike regular thermostats, you can control them from anywhere.

In return, the big drawback of smart thermostats is that they cost a whole lot more than a regular thermostat replacement would, although they do tend to pay for themselves within a year or two. However, not everyone is comfortable using an app for scheduling or letting a smart thermostat make changes itself, so some users may find themselves uncomfortable with the change.

Ready to learn even more? See our guide on the best settings to use on your smart thermostat for the season, the easiest steps to save on heating and cooling bills, and the best smart home devices overall. 

Evan Monsma started with a viewfinder built for a professional broadcast camera. Inside sat a small monochrome CRT, the kind camera operators once relied on for precise framing during live shoots. He wanted that same screen to work on its own, showing ordinary video signals without the rest of the camera attached.

The original equipment came with an eight-pin connection that not only provided power but also transported video and control signals back and forth between the viewfinder and camera body. There wasn’t a publicly available pinout, so Monsma decided to get his hands dirty and open it up to see what was inside. He used a multimeter to map out each and every wire, and voilà! He discovered that a yellow conductor supplied around 12 volts of power, the black and red wires served as ground, and the video signal was transmitted via a grey line, and it turned out that just three connections were sufficient to operate the tube.

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He cut the factory wire and built a simple adapter, allowing the viewfinder to be powered by a wall power supply or a suitable battery via a regular DC barrel socket. He also installed an RCA jack to accept composite video; both connectors are now mounted on the rear of the enclosure, securely fastened using sticky adhesive and heat-shrink tubing to prevent them from coming away during regular operation. He cleaned up the old harness by attaching heat-shrink coverings to the unwanted wires and storing them out of sight.

The focus-peaking switch still works flawlessly, and you can adjust the brightness and contrast to achieve the ideal image. Monsmas also tested the side panel using an HDMI-to-composite converter and was pleased to note that even with the contrast turned down, text remained visible, and the dark part of the movie had more information than you’d see on many laptops under similar settings.

A wooden base is what gives the finished piece its proper shape. Monsma carved several channels into scrap wood to hide the cables underneath, painted the screw locations, and then secured the metal viewfinder body to the board with little machine screws. A application of Danish oil on the base and a fresh coat of white paint on the housing transformed it from a Frankenstein’s monster to something that looked like it belonged there.

The original sunshade now flips over to provide a flat surface on top of which you can place another small gadget. You can have the viewfinder up and running in seconds; when the tube warms up, the image appears and remains solid. Monsma ran games via it and watched a variety of video clips; the analog approach produced none of the scaling artifacts commonly seen on low-cost contemporary displays.

The finished product takes up very little desk space while delivering a respectable image. Its analog input is compatible with antique cameras, game consoles, and any device that can output composite video, and a cheap converter makes it simple to connect to current sources. The hardwood mount keeps everything organized and the unit rock sturdy. The controls continue to respond as expected.
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Apple’s home hardware is about to get a shake-up this fall. While the Apple TV gets a bit of a performance boost, the HomePod mini will get a bunch more Siri functionality.

Apple has long been rumored to be working on a new HomeHub, but other household tech will get updates soon. That includes the Apple TV and the HomePod mini.

According to Mark Gurman’s “Power On” newsletter for Bloomberg on Sunday, Apple has sat on new hardware for the two models for months. Indeed, they’re already being actively used by Apple employees at Apple Park.

The refreshed hardware has been held back from launch because of software. Apple apparently wants to ship them alongside the long-awaited revamp of Siri and new Apple Intelligence features, making them destined for a fall launch.

That said, the HomePod mini is suffering from limited availability, both online and at retail.

As for what’s changing, the Apple TV won’t get much of an update. A chip upgrade is almost certain, possibly with a slightly improved remote, but the Apple TV enclosure won’t change.

The HomePod mini, meanwhile, will go through a similar internally-facing glow-up. Outside, it will look pretty identical to the current spherical model, but the S5 chip will be updated to something much newer.

While they will chiefly be spec-bump updates, the changes should also allow the models to work with new Apple Intelligence and Siri features.

Being able to cook a main and a side at the same time in one appliance – and have them both hit the table together, without one going cold while the other catches up – feels like an obvious idea, but most kitchens still can’t pull it off.

Well, the Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer looks to change that, and it’s currently down from £269.99 to £196.99 at Amazon, a saving of £73 that makes it the cheapest it has been since launch.