Drayton by Schneider Electric, White, Radiator Thermostat

I have just had Gas central heating installed and I was looking to make the Gas Central heating smart. It took weeks of looking into it and many different products...In the end I went with Drayton Wiser because of the reviews and the supposed flawless ability to control every radiator individually. Well I am pleased to say i am glad I went with this product.. Friends of mine have different systems and they do not have the control that i have...The plumber fitting the central heating system insisting this system will not pull water from the boiler directly it will have to go to the main thermostat first...I said to him we will agree to disagree...The next day he told me that his fellow tradesmaen had stated the main thermostat will control the radiators..I again said we will agree to disagree...Well it was me that was correct and left the gas engineer Gob smacked. I have eight radiators and the radiator in the hall is the open all the time radiator as a fail safe so if you are pulling water to any other radiator you will get this radiator on as well so fit that one without any smart TRV into the hallway as this is usually the coldest room and the wall thermostat will control that one only....The other seven radiators all have Drayton Smart TRV's and I have total control....I give you an example...If i want just the kitchen to heat up I can...The smart phone app is brilliant showing a list of all my rooms with the radiators...lets say i changed the temperature for the kitchen radiator from say 18C to 24C and the app will show a flame telling you the radiator is powering up and calling water and around ten to thirty seconds you hear the smart TRV on the selected radiator make a little noise as it opens the valve then the boiler fires up and about ten seconds later the radiator starts to get hot.All the other smart controlled radiators are still off because they are not requiring heat. You can then set the scheduling for any time for each radiator to come on and off and at what temperature....complete control...Example the kitchen may be set to 21C and the Lounge at 23C while the bedrooms are off...that is until later if you so wish...This is total control and I cannot believe how good it is. I have the room where my cats are on most of the time but the rest of the system is just set to frost protection until i need them on and they fire up on the time I have requested....Lets say the scheduling is due in an hour but its cold instead of changing the scheduling just set a thirty minute one hour or three hour boost to whatever radiator you want. Its total control and it is already saving me money....Two other settings of interest...a COMFORT setting brings whichever radiator you want on earlier than the scheduled time so the comfort temperature is there when you want it...I don't use this because I think it would use more gas..I do use however the ECO mode, well this setting monitors the weather outside and how quickly your house heats up and cools down and assists in saving you money......This is an excellent product easy to install and operate, eventually your schedule will run the house without you having to do anything.....My cats love it...Highly recommended

Update 2021-01-18 - I've had this system for some years and I'm still satisfied. Otherwise, the app has been improving over the last year or so and has a few more features which are quite nice.There ARE some issues with individual radiators and it is worth doing some annual maintenance on the valves - they have a "nipple" that controls the valve (you can see this when you remove the TRV top) - use some silicon lubrication on this and work it up and down a few times at the end of the summer when the heating is coming back on. I've also had it recommended to replace the valves with Drayton ones if you have to drain your system at any point. Not because they work better with the Drayton Wiser system but because they are the best valves and a lot more reliable long term.The other occasional issue is that the controller sometimes crashes and it can take some time to restart. I tend to think that it may be because I'm also polling the controller every 60s from a home automation system. Either way, it is only a minor inconvenience given that this system is so much cheaper than its main competitor, the Honeywell EvoHome.----Excellent. Provides good control, simple to use and very quiet. The Wiser TRV's are around 1/2 the price of competitors - partly because they have no screen on them. No screen is good! These are really simple to use and easily pass the family test.Unlike some TRV's, these are quiet enough not to disturb any but the lightest sleepers.

Originally had a 2nd Gen Nest thermostat, but it became problematic and was always losing connectivity to the Heat Link box by the boiler despite being installed practically right below it. Problem was when the thermostat lost connectivity, you had no heating which occured a few times. Also disliked the fact that despite the thermostat being wireless, it needed to be constantly plugged into the mains meaning portability was lacking (wasn't like you could easily carry it from room to room for e.g.).Being that the product cost alot of money and also wasnt that old, was very disappointed. Rather felt as though it was all show and no go.In the end decided to rip and replace for the Wiser Heat system and on the whole couldnt be happier with it. Had some initial niggles with the control box losing connectivity with the WiFi but it transpired it was a WiFi problem (or not enough of it!). Once that was sorted its been pretty rock solid.The system is pretty easy to set up (though the control box really needs professional installation), easy enough to configure and by and large does what it says on the tin.We bought the pack with the single TRV included and used it in our main bedroom. To begin with I was disappointed as it didnt seem to fit the valve properly and subsequently failed to control the rad properly......several months later after trying it again have found that I hadnt installed it correctly and now seems to control the radiator OK. They arent the quietest things (if you are a light sleeper the opening and closing process could wake you) but do the job. Only issue I have encountered is that the TRV set temperature has a few times dropped down from what it was set to (was 18, falling back to 15 degrees) meaning we've woken cold a few times but having disabled Eco mode now seems OK.I will probably eventually install the TRV's in all the bedrooms, but at 40 quid a pop it's not really a cheap exercise (though far cheaper than Honeywell's offering) but it'll be nice to have temperature control in the bedrooms in order to run the house a bit warmer and the rooms cooler for comfortable sleeping in the colder months. Test will be whether a range extender will be required as our house is fairly large....time will tell I suppose.In summary, I imagine the Honeywell system is probably better but at the cost it ought to be. For the money this seems very good value for money as whilst arguably not quite as polished as the likes of the Honeywell offering it offers nice, reliable functionality at a relatively low price. Certainly knocks a single Nest thermostat into the weeds in terms of reliability and overall functionality, from my own experience anyway.