The Drayton Wiser smart thermostat lets you control your central heating room-by-room at a more affordable price than Honeywell’s Evohome.
Drayton Wiser is a smart heating system that offers zonal control, so you can heat the various rooms in your home independently. This not only saves energy-saving but also benefits the bill-payer, who will save some hard-earned cash by heating only those rooms that are being used. It’s currently only available in the UK. Working in the same way as the likes of Honeywell’s Evohome and Tado’s smart thermostat, a module – or Heat Hub – connects to your boiler, with smart radiator thermostats replacing any existing TRVs (thermostatic radiator valves) on your radiators, allowing you to control each radiator individually via the Wiser app. However, unlike its rivals, there’s no-way to view the current temperature of a room from the thermostat itself; to do that, you’ll need to open the app. This does mean the system is more affordable, however, with radiator thermostats costing around £50, which is around £20 cheaper than its rivals. With each radiator requiring a thermostat to achieve the most efficient results, this can add up to a substantial saving, if you have a number of radiators in your home. As well as letting you set a schedule for your heating through the Wiser app, you can also turn on any radiator for between 30 minutes to three hours to boost the temperature in the room at any point, either via the app or through the thermostat itself. The system also offers a range of handy modes, which after learning how long your house retains heat for, will switch the boiler on or off earlier than scheduled to ensure rooms in your home are at the temperature you want, when you want them. Open Window Detection also helps put a stop to energy wastage by switching the heating off if a draft has been detected from an open window. The smart heating system supports both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, so if you have a smart speaker with either voice assistant built-in, you can increase or decrease the temperature in a specific room using voice control. Depending upon the type of boiler you have (one that controls hot water separately or at the same time), the Drayton Wiser starter kit costs from £219.99. This includes a Heat Hub, smart thermostat and two smart radiator thermostats. Extra thermostats cost £44.99, making this the most affordable smart thermostat with zonal control on the market, although it’s not the most stylish with a plain white plastic design. The Drayton Wiser starter kit is available in two variants. Wiser Multi-zone Kit 1 works with combination boilers and costs £219.99. Wiser Multi-zone Kit 2 is designed for boilers that use a programmer to control the heating and hot water separately, and is priced at £229.99. Both starter kits include a Heat Hub (a module that connects to your boiler), a smart room thermostat and two smart radiator thermostats in the box. Additional radiator thermostats can be picked up for £44.99, while extra room thermostats cost £84.99. Drayton also offers a smart plug that enables control of any electrical appliance connected to it from the Wiser app, priced at £42. The Drayton Wiser components are all made from white plastic, so they lack the stylish metal and glass found on rival smart heating thermostats. However, on the plus side it means they remain affordable. The Heat Hub is a rectangular box with two buttons. One button activates the set-up process, while the other starts the whole system heating. LEDs above the buttons glow green when these options are active. The Heat Hub should be screwed to the wall next to your boiler. The square smart thermostat has a two-inch screen that shows the current temperature of the room it’s in, as well as the desired temperature. It also displays the relative humidity and battery level, and features a flame icon to indicate if the heating is switched on. Powered by two AA batteries, the smart thermostat can be freestanding on a table or shelf, or mounted on a wall. It has three touch controls on the front. The plus and minus button allow you to adjust the desired temperature of the room, while the middle button boosts the heating in said room by two degrees. The screen automatically goes to sleep after 15 seconds to conserve the battery, but pressing any of the three touch controls will wake it up. The final component, the smart radiator thermostat, is a white plastic cylinder, which fit to the radiator once the existing valve has been unscrewed.
