Nest has been the only real name in automated thermostat design thanks to their heavily influential product. But now Honeywell, which has been in the automated home device game for years, is jumping in as their first real competitor.
The news is more surprising than you might think. While they have been offering smart home devices for quite some time, they didn’t make their intentions to take on the Nest clear. Not in the way Apple has, with their announced HomeKit in the iOS 8 release. With Google’s money now backing Nest, they looked like a real force to be reckoned with.
But while Apple has a powerful brand and innovative spirit, Honeywell is a well established marketshare holder in smart home technology. Now that they are in the game, it looks like Nest’s star might be dimming a bit.
Lyric is two things: a smart thermostat that learns through your routines and adjusts through your smartphone, and a platform for future devices. That’s right, Honeywell isn’t just launching their first thermostat of this style (which is a blatant rip off by sight of the Nest itself), but an entire line of coming products under the Lyric name.
The Lyric is round, as expected, with a dial around the outside to change the menu on the large front display. Two buttons allow you to move from Home to Away. You can turn up and down your heat from your smartphone or other mobile devices, and it provides added features like weather forecasts to help you plan ahead.
It is being marketed partly as an energy saver device, just as the Nest was. But truth be told, it isn’t likely to have that much different on the usage of your home’s resource use unless you had been intending to monitor it, anyway. Making that element about as effective as setting the max-heat on an old thermostat without any digital capabilities.
All in all, this looks like a good product from a solid brand based on an idea that has already been done. While is about what you can expect from Apple when they launch their device, or Google when they inevitably launch the post-buyout revamp of the same thermostat.
At least it seems like a good addition to the home automation trend. And at only$279, it isn’t that bad of a price for a Honeywell.
Source: Honeywell