- In today's video, we're
gonna be taking a look at the very affordable Amazon thermostat. We're gonna be taking
a look at its features and see if it is worth
the price, so stay tuned. (upbeat techno music) Hey, everybody. Welcome
back to another video. My name is Steve from the
YouTube channel Steve Does, and I wanna thank you for
joining me here at reviews.org. So the Amazon Smart thermostat. This just came out last
month at an incredible price. I think it's about $60 for
this thermostat right here. This is Amazon's first
attempt at a Smart thermostat, but they didn't do it alone. If we take a look here on the box, this was actually made in
collaboration with Honeywell. Now, Honeywell has been making thermostats and HVAC systems, everything
for, I think, 120, 130 years. So they have got a lot of technology and a lot of smarts coming in
and making that partnership. Now, the interesting thing
with this thermostat right here is that even though it
is a Smart thermostat, you're not gonna be able to control it like some of the other,
more expensive thermostats, but we'll be covering
that a little bit later. Now, I also wanna mention, as far as the installation of this thing, I'm gonna be doing a separate
video on the installation, and that will be posted several days after I get this video up. So if you are interested
and you did pick this up and you want some help
with the installation, make sure you're subscribed
so you are notified when that video is posted. Now let's go ahead and
take a look at what comes in the box with this device. Okay, so something I do wanna mention before we take a look is
that this is the bundle that does not come with a C-wire. If you have an older house, you
might need to get the bundle that comes packaged with a C-wire. There is a questionnaire
that you can take on the site that will ask you some questions
to determine if you do need that package that comes with
that extra piece or not. But here's what comes
in the box with the kit that does not need the C-wire. We have got the thermostat itself. On the back, this is gonna plug right into our wiring kit right here. Here is the wiring kit. This is going to pull down, and then all of your wiring
is going to plug in there. We've also got screws and wall anchors. We've got a plate that goes on the back, so if you do need to
cover up more of a space than this thing right here,
you can put the wall plate on. We've got our instructions
that come with it. And then, we also have
this tool right here, which is going to be
Phillips head on one side and a flat head on the other. Okay, now that we've seen
what comes in the box, I'm gonna get this thing
installed and set up, and then let's test it out, Right, the thermostat
is set up and installed. It is pretty basic if you're just looking here at the device. So we've got the small little
dots. Can you see those? There's a dot there, a dot in the middle, and a dot on the side. Those are gonna be the
three buttons for this. So this one is going to be up. We've got this one down, and then in the middle
is going to be for mode. So if we tap mode, we've got fan on. And then, here we are
turning on the device. So we've got auto AC. So this is gonna be our
hot, or I'm sorry, our cold. We can adjust it from there. Tap it again. We're gonna adjust our heat.
This is gonna be in the middle. What we want it to do, tap it again. This is going to be AC
on with the fan on it. We've also got if we want our auto heater on with the fan on. We've got just cool. Can adjust
it from there if we want. Cool with the fan on,
heat, heat with the fan on, and then off. So those are the basic
functionality you are going to get out of this thermostat
from the thermostat itself. But let's go ahead and dive into the app and see what kind of features it has. Okay, now let's see what kind
of functionality we're going to get out of the app. So I've got my Amazon Alexa
app loaded up right here. Up at the top, I'm gonna swipe over, and we're gonna click on thermostats. So one thing to mention
with this device right here, it does not have a microphone
or a speaker built into it, but you can control it with
any of your Echo devices. So whether you have an
Echo Dot, an Echo Show, anything that has Alexa built into it, you're going to be able to
control this device right here. Nope, I do not want that to be activated. Okay, so here is what it
looks like when we load it up. Currently, it is off. We can go ahead and click on
the off button right there, and it's gonna give us the options for selecting heat, cool, and auto. I'm gonna go ahead and select
auto for this demo right here. So it's loading up right
now for our auto settings. So the auto settings means
it's going to keep it between these temperatures right here. Now, typically what I like
to do is I'm gonna go ahead and put mine to 78, so
if it gets warmer than 78 in the house, it'll turn on the AC. If it gets colder than,
we'll say 68. 68 right there. So it's gonna keep it between
68 and 78 in my house. It is currently 76. You
can see that down below. We are in eco mode, meaning
that we are saving energy. Below that we can see the humidity level, so it is 51 in my house
and it is being controlled by a schedule. You can click on the view
and edit schedule down below. We're gonna click on that. This is gonna show you
your different schedules and if you want to set those up or not, but we'll take a look at that in a second. I'm gonna back out here. Up in the top right corner,
you see the gear icon. So that is going to bring
us into the settings of this device, so you can
name your device right here. It's nice to have it named as thermostat so that way, when you're
talking to your Smart assistant, all you have to do is say,
"Adjust the thermostat," because that is what it's named. So set thermostat to 68,
set thermostat to 82. You know, whatever you want it to do because it is named thermostat. So that does make it
easy. Fan is set to auto. We have got the Alexa automatic control. So what that means is that Amazon is going to control the device for you based on their own automatic evaluation. So if we click on that. I do currently have it disabled right now, but you can turn that on. It will actually set your
sleep and away times, so you can set that up if you want to. I don't like when the device automatically sets my temperature for me. I have the Nest Learning
Thermostat downstairs, and that thing is always
changing the temperature when I don't want it to. So that was something that was a little frustrating at first. I thought my wife kept
changing the temperature thing, and I would ask her like, why
are you adjusting it so much? Or why is it so hot? Or why is it so cold? And she's like, "I haven't
touched it at all." So with the devices, it says it needs to learn your schedule, but there are some
learning curves with that with it auto adjusting
when you don't want to. So I like to leave that off, but you can set up a
schedule if you want to. So with this schedule right here, this was something that
we looked at previous. You can use the thermostat schedule. Now, that's something you
could turn off if you want to. But if we take a look at
the schedule down below, we have got 6:00 AM. It's going to set it to home mode. At 8:00 AM, it's gonna
set it to away mode. 6:00 PM, so technically I guess
when I got home from work, it would go back to home
mode, and then sleep is when I go to bed and those are
all pre-defined temperatures. So if we take a look right
above the days of the week here, we can click on preferred temperatures. So let me click on that, and
here we're going to be able to set our heat mode, our
cool mode, and our auto mode. So if I tap on heat mode, this is where I can set away temperatures, sleep temperatures, and then
active at home temperature. So here you can do all of
your adjusting through there. And then, if we go back here
to the days of the week, if I want to say that, you know what, I don't leave home at eight o'clock. I actually leave home at 7:00 AM, so switch it to away mode at 7:00 AM. I can go ahead and make
that adjustment here in the schedule, but you can also turn off the
schedule if you want to, too. I know a lot of us are working from home. I'm always at home now. I
don't go anywhere anymore. So, I mean, for me, maybe I
wanna turn that schedule off, set it to auto, and just let it ride. We've also got the energy dashboard. So the cool thing about this is this is going to give
you your energy usage. So at the very top, you can take a look. We're looking at all devices right now that are connected to my Amazon Alexa. But if you wanna look at
just HVAC or just lightings, or just plugs, you can do that. Let's go back to all devices.
We can look at energy. We can look at time, so
how much this stuff is on. We can look at weekly. We
can look at monthly stats. So a lot of cool things
that you can check out in that energy dashboard, and maybe I'll even do
a dedicated video on it. If you guys wanna see that, let me know in the comments below if you'd like a dedicated video on that. Next we've got thermostat configuration, so here's where we're gonna
set our configurations. We've got our temperature
units, temperature ranges. So if I click on here, we can set our maximum heat temperatures, our maximum cool temperatures, in addition to our minimums, too, meaning that you are not
gonna be able to go higher or lower once you set that. That might be good as a parent
to not let the kids mess around with the stuff
and set it into an area, like you don't want your heater
to go above 90, you know? So to set limits on that. Display brightness, this is
going to be the brightness on the actual device itself, so when we were using the
device and tapping on it, it was active, and we
have a slider right here to adjust the brightness on that. And then inactive, which I
think is about 20 to 30 seconds after not touching it anymore, it'll go into inactive mode and dim down. So if, you know, for me,
I've got it in my bedroom, so it could be too bright at
night, even in inactive mode, so I can drop it all the way down two if I wanted to be not be able to see, or it looks like I can
go all the way to zero, and just turn it off completely. But let's go ahead and leave it at three, which was the default. So you can set the brightness on there. We have got our wifi network connection, so you can adjust it to a different wifi if you wanna do that. Here, we have got our HVAC types. So during the setup process, which was in the separate video
of the install and set up, it asked me questions on my unit. So here, we've got forced air, and then we've got our fuel source. So here is where you can
go in and make changes if you need it to do that. Connected wire map here
is also some changes that you can make, and
that's something that we did in the set up there, too. And then we've got our thermostat icons. So if you do need a refresher
on what these icons mean, you can bring this up, and
then as you tap each one, it'll tell you down below
what each one means. So here we've got a notice icon so you'd have to go into the app and find out what the notice icon is. So if we back out of that,
back out of configuration, we've got our energy saving incentives so you can save money on your energy bill. We've got to air filters,
notification, and reorder, so that is pretty cool. So in here you can set up a notification of when you are going to
need to replace your filters in your house, so that is pretty cool and a nice reminder to
do for your air filters. So here we have got our connection type, our description of the
unit, what type it is, a thermostat, energy estimates, and then general below is going to be, you know, setting up time
zones, and then below that, it's got things like my
serial number and manufacturer and all that kind of stuff,
which we won't show you. So do I think this
device is worth the cost? Absolutely. For $60, I don't
think you can beat this deal. You are going to be able to
get all of the Smart features that you can from any of the
expensive units out there. The only difference is
that you're gonna have a little less control
at the device itself, but frankly, and for my use case, I mean, I've got a Nest
thermostat downstairs, $250. I've got the Ecobee
thermostat upstairs, $250. And once I've set them, and once I've got my
schedule kind of honed in, I don't really touch them anymore. I don't go up to the actual unit itself and make any adjustments. I usually just either
bring it up on my phone or I bring it up on my Smart display and control them from there. So to be able to kind of take that out and drop the price so drastically, I think this is a good deal right here. I definitely think it
is worth checking out and looking into, and if
it fits your current setup, I think it's worth the purchase. But what do you think? Is
this something that you like? Are there other options out
there that you want to see? Let me know in the comments below. If you wanna know more
about any thermostats, check out the link below to reviews.org. If you guys wanna see more from me, check out my YouTube channel, Steve Does, where I do a lot of
other cool tech reviews. If this video was helpful,
give it a thumbs up. Let me know that you liked it. As always, I wanna thank you for joining me here at reviews.org, and I'll see you guys in the next video.
