Despite the fact that Honeywell has been in the connected thermostat game for years, It’s taken a back seat to Nest ever since the company’s iconic Learning Thermostat stole the show. But Honeywell hasn’t been resting on its laurels — it’s quietly been preparing for a comeback, and today the company announced a new thermostat that just might make it king of Smart Home Mountain.
Honeywell’s new Lyric thermostat is like Nest on steroids. It’s got all the same functions (smartphone connectivity, learning abilities, etc), and a strikingly similar design, but under the hood it’s got a number of intelligent features that make it considerably more capable than the competition.
Fist and foremost, it doesn’t try to predict your schedule with complex learning algorithms, or force to you program in specific dates and times. Instead, it tracks your movements and anticipates when you’ll be home. Every member of your family can be linked to the Lyric through their smartphone, and then, by using a technology called geofencing, the thermostat can accurately determine when the house is vacant, and when somebody’s headed home. The first fence is a 500 foot perimeter around your house. When you leave that 
bubble, Lyric will shut off your heating/cooling system to conserve power. The second fence, however, is a 7-mile perimeter. When you go outside of that bubble and then reenter it, the thermostat will assume you’re headed home and start bringing the house up to your desired temp.
Second of all, the Lyric will prod you when it’s time to change your HVAC filters, and even shoot you alerts when your furnace is about to crap out. While it sits on your wall, the thermostat constantly gathers data on the temperature in your house, when the heating/cooling system kicks on, and how long it takes to bring rooms to the proper temperature. With this data, it can begin to spot efficiency trends that happen over long stretches of time and would generally be hard to notice — like if your A/C takes 40% longer to reach the right temperature than it did last year, for example, or your heater is behaving erratically and might die soon.
Additionally, Honeywell designed Lyric to account for human subjectivity. Depending on the weather conditions, 72 degrees might actually feel hotter or colder, so Lyric tries to adjust the temperature so it feels just right at all times. Thanks to it’s internet-connected brain, it knows the relative humidity outside, and takes that into account when adjusting the temperature.
Honeywell might be a little late to the game, but with features like this, Lyric has a solid chance at stealing some of Nest’s thunder. The new thermostat is available now through licensed professional contractors, but if you’re you’re the do-it-yourself type, you can pick one up for $279 at the beginning of August.
Find out more here.
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