Hive Smart Home Thermostat, Works with Alexa & Google Home, Requires C-Wire & Hive Hub

UPDATE: They no longer serve N.America. This will NOT WORK IN YOUR HOUSE unless you live in the UK. DONT BUY.So I opened it up and was surprised to find two smaller boxes inside the larger one. One of them contained the wall-mounted control interface and the other had a “hub”. I immediately found this to be a bit annoying: none of my other smart devices require a separate hub connected to the modem... not even my roomba, plugs, Echo, cameras, none of them... just odd.The unit is big and bulky and is not, in any way, sleek or small on the living room wall. Once I got it wired, updated, and ready I walked through the setup and found the scheduling part to be confusing. This should be intuitive. I hooked it up in December in Indiana, and for the first week I couldn’t get it to stay on a schedule and my whole family would wake up freezing. Once I finally figured it out, it’s still unreliable; inexplicably cranking up out of nowhere.It’s integration with Alexa is non-existent. I’ll ask Alexa to tell me the thermostat setting and she will tell me (normal setting). But I’ll personally check a few minutes later and it’s randomly set to 63 with an internal temp of 66... what the heck??? THEN, if I ask Alexa to change the thermostat setting, most of the time she will simply say “hmm zone 1 is not responding.” So I’ll pull the unit off the wall and put it back on and it will reconnect. For a while, this worked for a couple days, MAX. Now it never works, no matter what I do.I have NEVER been able to control it remotely from my phone. It also worked for a couple days, but now nothing; not on my home network not through my LTE. Every other smart device on my home does this with no problem.I’m seriously considering reinstalling my old device and selling this trash in a garage sale.

After looking at the NEST (and a few other 'smart' thermostats), I decided to go with this less expensive option when Amazon emailed me a special one-day deal. Installation was a breeze and I've never installed a thermostat before even though I'm pretty handy and can figure most things out. Word of advice: take a few photos of the wiring set-up of your OLD t-stat BEFORE you start pulling apart the wires. This helped tremendously as there are several wires that I was unaware of. Luckily most of them matched up perfectly with the HIVE unit (even though some of them are labeled slightly different on the HIVE diagrams, ie: some might have an extra letter or there might be more than one spot for only one wire, don't worry. The main wires (especially the 'C' wire) will match up and that's the important one.)After installing the hub (router) for the wireless setup (as instructed), it took a while to do a software update after connecting to my network. I let it do it's thing (also as instructed) then I went to install the t-stat. As I mentioned, installation was actually pretty easy. The old unit came off the wall quickly and simply. I pulled the wires through the hole on the new HIVE unit and used the enclosed screws to install it. There's also a handy 'level' built-in to the unit so you can level the stat (under the cover; it sits at the top of the frame mount). After mounting it, I installed the wires to where I thought they should go based on the HIVE diagram(s) and instructions. One note: in the HIVE manual, they include some handy small label stickers with letters so you can label your wires BEFORE you remove them from the old stat. DO IT! It will help immensely.I have an android phone (LG g6) and installed the HIVE app and created an account. The only issue I had after installation was getting the unit to connect to the hub/router. Have patience: it took longer than expected but after about 30 minutes of me leaving it alone it finally connected. The wall unit will prompt you upon initial setup to use the manual controls to distinguish what type of furnace you have. If you're not sure, you can change it. (I know my type of unit, but if you're not sure, call your HVAC person that works on your unit and they'll tell you, OR....google the manufacturer/model number and look it up. You should also be able to call a local HVAC company and they can tell you over the phone if your unit is a heat pump, etc. by giving them the manufacturer and model number.I was able to use the phone app almost immediately to control the stat (which was the entire reason for me buying this unit). It's been connected for several weeks now and is working perfectly. I'm happy with all facets of the system, from the style and appearance of the stat itself to the performance of the unit.I don't have an Alexa or Google Home (yet) so I can't attest to the compatibility to those units, but I would recommend the HIVE to my family and friends as a less expensive alternative to the NEST system but one that seems to work equally as well (after also seeing the NEST in use at several friends' homes.)

Had my HVAC genius friend install it in early January for me, and install looked very straightforward. Thought the thermostat was working fine until I checked my bank account around April/May to see the last four electric bill payments were off the charts. My house is only 1250 sqft so prior years my bill has averaged around $120-150 from Dec through March and then drops to $90-$110 in April and May. With the Hive thermostat, my bills in Feb and March were OVER $400, and January was well over $300. I started "troubleshooting" with their tech support in April, but since they don't even actually have an HVAC technician on staff (at least at this time), they insisted they could still help me. Long story short, after several calls, online chats, and MANY of weeks of "wait and see if that takes care of it", I was out even more money in insane electric bills. The icing on the cake: after spending over an hour on the phone with tech support (again, NOT a licensed technician), I followed his instructions while on the phone, and within 5-10 minutes of hanging up with him my heat was blasting 40-45 degree-air (yes-Fahrenheit). At that point I was losing my mind from being so cold for so long I pulled the thermostat off the wall and reinstalled the old thermostat myself and everything went back to normal with warm (and MUCH less expensive heat) literally immediately. This was by far the worst purchase I have ever made in my life. And despite my multiple months of Hive thermostat hell, they did absolutely nothing to try to improve my experience whatsoever--they wouldn't even refund the price of the thermostat.

El producto vino incompleto, en la publicidad dice que incluye el HUB y este no venia en la caja