One thing I get asked often when it comes to reviewing a Wireless Room Thermostat is, why do I need one of these items? I have a Smart Thermostat like the Nest, Honeywell or Ecobee already?
Quite a good question! So the three 1 Million Dollar questions might be: Do You need a wireless room thermostat like the ISTABAI Smart Heating Solution anyway? Does it provide you with more convenience? Will it save you additional money? We tested it in detail for you during the last 4 weeks! Let´s jump right in to find good answers!
Who is ISTABAI?
We did some research for you: The ISTABAI – Team is a bunch of people addicted to technology and geeky minds. They describe their mission to make you feel even more comfortable at home by providing very simple, easy to use Smart Home Solutions. The company is quite new and they only provide a small variety of devices for home automation and wireless control right now. Additional to our setup they have a Motion-Sensor and a Multi-Switch which can be attached to their system.
Wireless Room Thermostat
– The Test Setup –
We tested a setup with their wireless room thermostat, their wireless device to measure the temperature in a room and their Base-Station. To make it realistic and test it under normal use, we tripled this setup as a 3 room solution. 3 wireless thermostats, 3 Temperature Controller and the base station.
What the system can do for you in general: The Smart Heating Solution from ISTABAI can measure & control the temperature plus measure the humidity in each single room in your home individually. This is the biggest advantage to the classic Smart Thermostats. With the App you can control and/or schedule individual times for heating and off-times. You even can define additional Eco-Settings for tweaking your possible savings for heating costs.
Installation – could not be easier. At least you attach the wireless Thermostats (regulator) by unscrewing your normal thermostat from each rooms heater and screwing the new device. Then you place a Temperature Measure Device in each room. Connect the Base-Station, download the app and you are already good to go. The App is available for Android and iOS in the specific market and installed in a minute. That`s really it! It took us about 5-10 minutes.
Then you let the app search for the devices. If you want you can give each device an individual name like (Office, Kids-Room, Living-Room) so you always will identify the item you are controlling.
Functionality / Possibilities / Product Overview – Within the App you can control each device individually with an easy to use graphical interface. Setting temperatures and schedule heating times is a breeze. You can drag & drop additional on or off times in your daily scheduler.
The biggest Pro feature is exact that. Being able to schedule the heating more individually and controlling each room, instead of the more overall settings of a “normal Smart Thermostat” like Honeywell or Nest is the key feature of this product. If you want to have additional info´s about Smart Thermostats you can read our comprehensive article with reviews HERE.
Base – Wireless Regulator – Temperature Sensor
Controlling the devices – For example if your older kids arrive at home by noon and will go to their rooms at about 2 p.m. their rooms should be heated. Your own room or home office which you may use if you arrive at home late could “save you money” as your wireless regulator is turned off. You can turn them on or off on your way home or from anywhere. Coming home from holidays in winter and your apartment was set to colder temperature? No Problem: Just make a few taps within the app of your wireless room thermostat you want to turn on and it will be cozy and warm when you arrive. Of course this could be done with a Smart Thermostat like the leading Nest, Ecobee or our recommended Honeywell-Thermostat as well. One Big thing we were missing in all day use was a way of manually turning the device on or off; for example when you want to open the window for a short time. You ONLY can use the app to do so!
Compatibility – right now the ISTABAI system is a kind of island solution as you need their own Base-Station and App to control the devices properly. What we liked is that it did not interfere with any of our other devices and we really have a whole bunch of them running at the same time. The App itself only can control the ISTABAI devices and even other apps could not control the ISTABAI System. This in mind you should know what you want from your system. If you want individualized control – this system is great.
Saving Heating Costs – as we already have installed a good Smart Thermostat in our Smart Home Environment we did not expect to save any additional money. The system surprised us: we saved additional 2% which does perhaps not sound much, but over time it surely can compensate it´s cost. If you would use it in a home where no Smart Thermostat was installed previous you will surely save up to 15-20% or your heating costs, as we measured about 13-18% saving potential in our Smart Thermostat Guide.
Conclusion and our own all day experience – everything this device is designed for works easy, intuitive and really without any issues. But the general possibilities of a wireless room thermostat are quite narrow.
If you do not have a Smart Thermostat for your home right now and are thinking of buying one, this can be an interesting solution. Compared to the classical Smart Thermostats mentioned above you get more detailed, individualized control and a much more easy setup. If you compare price tags you have to pay about $230 for the Nest 3rd Gen on Amazon and about $170 for the Honeywell WiFi Thermostat on Amazon. The 3 room setup we used for our test will cost you about $490 but you get 7 devices instead of one and a highly customizable multi-room solution.
You can buy the system directly on the ISTABAI´s Homepage .
Any further questions? Please let us know in the comments! If you have your own experience with any Smart Heating Solution please share to let our readers benefit.
I hope the article was able to help you for a good decision.
If you need a good overview on Smart Thermostats just click here.
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ISTABAI Wireless Room Thermostat
Pros
- Easy to Install
- Build Quality (Siemens)
- Easy to use
- Saves Energy
Cons
- Narrow Possibbilities
- Price compared wit a Smart Thermostat
2 comments
ISTABAI Heating is so cool!
Hi 3434,
yep – worked seamlessly in our review. All the best.
Let us know if you have any wishes for future Reviews!
Best,
Greg