Tado’s new app provides advice, as well as energy-saving thermostat controls

Looking for help keeping your home comfortable? At IFA 2018 in Berlin, Tado — an up-and-coming competitor in the smart thermostat market — introduced a revamped lineup and a redesigned app that not only controls settings but offers advice on how best to improve the comfort of your home climate.

The V3 line builds on the energy-efficiency technology in the Tado Smart AC Control (for people with legacy air conditioners), Smart Thermostat, and Smart Radiator Thermostat, all of which work with popular smart home managers such as Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, and Google Assistant.

This time around, the spotlight is on the V3’s new Air Comfort Skill, which processes information on your home’s temperature, air freshness, the number of people present, and the weather outside to offer suggestions for improving the environment. Some involve changing thermostat settings, but others address less high-tech tasks.

For example, the Air Comfort feature can tell you when to open windows and how long to keep them open in order to keep comfortable when air pollution or pollen counts are high. Other suggestions can help reduce humidity. The app will even suggest when to air specific rooms.

Tado says following this sort of advice can not only make you more comfortable, but reduce health risks such as exposure to mold, improve productivity during working hours, and help you sleep better at night.

Air Comfort joins a set of features already available in Tado products, including geofencing (the ability to manage settings in specific locations), weather adjustments, detection of open windows, scheduled adjustments, and reports. Tado says you can customize the app to activate only those features you want to use.

Tado customers can also use the app to order boiler repairs, schedule annual maintenance, get a quote on a new boiler, or subscribe to a service that offers additional automation features.

Tado is introducing its new V3 Smart Thermostat and Smart Radiator Thermostats in Europe, where they can be ordered on Amazon. The company says its products can reduce heating bills by up to 31 percent, and offers a money-back guarantee if they don’t pay for themselves within a year.