Best Smart Thermostat for Alexa in 2023 [UK Guide]

Smart thermostats have been saving homeowners money and improving their convenience for years now. But several generations in, as smart devices integrate more to automate your home, it’s important to have a thermostat that fits into your ecosystem.

I’ve done the hard work for you. In this article, I’ve found all the best thermostats that work with Amazon Alexa and shared the pros and cons of each to help with your decision.

Can You Connect a Thermostat to Alexa?

Yes, you can connect your smart thermostat to Alexa provided the brand supports this integration. Luckily, most major brands allow you to connect your thermostat and Alexa together as you’ll find out in this article. Here are some of the benefits of doing so:

• Ask Alexa for the current temperature
• Turn up/down the temperature with your voice
• Ask Alexa to turn on/off the hot water
• Change the temperature of individual rooms using Alexa (with supported thermostats and smart TRVs)
• Add temperatrue changes as part of Alexa routines, such as when you wake up in the morning.

Best Smart Thermostats for Alexa

The best smart thermostats that work with Alexa are:

• Best Overall: Tado
• Smartest Thermostat: Nest
• Works With Hot Water: Hive
• Best for Zones: Honeywell
• Best Without Subscription: Drayton Wiser
• One to Watch: Amazon Thermostat (coming soon)

Below are my full reviews of each recommendation along with the pros and cons that make each device different.

At the end of the article, you’ll also find a side-by-side comparison table with the key specs of each.

Best Overall: Tado Starter Kit 

In my opinion, Tado is the best thermostat for Alexa integration currently on the market. Not only can you use a range of heating and cooling commands, but it also integrates with hot water and has zoning for setting different temperatures in different parts of your home.

The starter kit helps provide more than just the basics with full control over your heating and hot water, using either Amazon Alexa or tado’s own app from anywhere to help reduce power use and save money. Alexa support means you can ask the tado to turn your devices on or off across one or multiple rooms, find the temperature and adjust it among other features. 

Tado’s thermostat looks like a sleet white pebble, with a pixel-style display, primarily controlled by the smart-looking app, the developers are going for the simple approach to managing your home with plenty of advice and alerts. The Tado range is clearly for users who want finer control over all aspects of their home heating, pushing it above the other options in terms of flexibility, but at some cost. 

Smart features: 

• A Heating Boost mode to heat up all rooms for 30 minutes with a single click in the app
• Smart Schedules for the desired temperature in each room
• Smart alerts such as if no one is home or an open window is detected, the app can remind you to turn off the heating (it can do so automatically too via Auto Assist). 
• Individual room control through the use of extra Smart Thermostats
• App delivers air quality information, energy savings and frost protection alerts

Note, the Auto Assist skills are part of a £2.99 subscription.

Smartest Thermostat: Nest Learning Thermostat V3

Nest was the original smart thermostat brand, long since acquired by tech giant Google. They came up with Nest Learning Thermostat to give it its full name, a feature and fixture in well over 11 million homes, demonstrating the success of smart home technology. Now in its third generation, Nest has plenty of features to keep your home at an ideal temperature when people are in, and will smartly control the temperature as they come and go. 

If you’re always finding yourself too hot or cold, the Nest works by taking control of the central heating, with a typical temperature set at 17-20 degrees for comfort. The Nest Thermostat features a smart display with an integrated dial to turn the heat up and down, as needed. 

To install, you connect the Heat Link to the boiler (some wiring required) and then install the Nest Thermostat somewhere convenient. The Thermostat is a thing of beauty, looking sleek and dark until needed when its bright display pops up and can be read from across the room. 

Smart features:

• Farsight shows the temperature or weather in a convenient size wherever you are in the room. 
• Amazon Alexa has a Google Nest skill so you can talk to the thermostat and set a target temperature or turn the settings up and down manually. 
• The key feature of the Nest is the 
• Eco Temperature mode that aims to operate at the most efficient settings. after it senses that nobody’s home to help save energy. 

Works with Hot Water: Hive Thermostat 

Hive is an off-shoot of the British Gas brand, and is heavily promoted by them with discounts, monthly payments and free installation. The Hive Heating Plus Subscription service costs £3.99 a month and provides a budget cost tracker to better manage your heating bills plus a heating efficiency monitor and extended warranty among other benefits.  

The Hive models are compatible with most gas and LPG boilers, and oil or electric boilers with an existing standard room thermostat/programmer. It comes with a thermostat, Hub and installation guide. 

To install them, you connect the Hub to your existing broadband router. Connect the receiver to the boiler, some wiring work is required. Note, there are two types available, a single channel receiver for combi boilers and additional plumbed heating zones, or a dual-channel receiver for conventional boilers with hot water tanks. 

Finally, place the new thermostat somewhere that’s typically on an interior wall in the middle of the home. It is wireless using 4 AA batteries, with two buttons on top for heating and water boost. 

On the front is an LCD screen with a protruding dial to adjust the temperature settings, with recessed buttons to adjust the program and create timers. Compared to the super-smart Nest, the thermostat doesn’t look that smart with too many buttons, but offers many of the same features. 

The Hive app looks better and provides alerts while Alexa voice control makes it easy to operate from the sofa or anywhere else in the home when you are not near the thermostat or your phone. 

Smart Features: 

• Supports voice control with both Alexa and Google Assistant. 
• Hive can know your current location using geolocation and remind you to switch off your heating when you have gone out and left it on. 
• You can buy Hive Radiator Valves to control each room individually if required.
• If your home has multizone heating, it can turn the upstairs heating off if everyone is downstairs or vice versa, or turn off the heating in empty rooms. 
• The system can be controlled through the Hive app, wherever you are. 

Best for Zones: Honeywell Home T6

Honeywell is a traditional thermostat brand that brought out its own range of smarter thermostats including the T6 range – snappy name there, guys, for the digital age. These products used to be called Honeywell Lyric but are now the plain Honeywell Home brand. 

Installation is relatively simple with the receiver box connecting to the boiler, including combination and system boilers, either gas or oil-fired, and the thermostat replacing the original unit. The Honeywell thermostat looks a little blocky, but is a well-put-together unit. 

In use, it has a touchscreen interface to manage scheduling or changing of the temperature, with various levels of backlight so the display isn’t too bright at night. Using Alexa, you can manage home comfort from the couch to easily set the temperature, or turn the heat up or down using voice commands through Amazon Alexa.

Some clever voice commands include phrases like “Alexa, set my thermostat to seventy degrees until 9 pm” giving you more nuanced control of the thermostat, which through that and the geofencing to determine when you’re home or away will help save energy and ensuring a comfortable environment for your return. 

Smart features: 

• Pairs with the Honeywell Home app for control over home heating
• Geofencing knows when you are away to save energy and has the home nice and cosy as you arrive home. 
• Optimisation features and smart controls for more efficient boiler operations. 

Best Without Subscription: Drayton Wiser Smart Thermostat

Drayton is another brand with a long history in home heating, and it has an offering to cover most types of home heating environments, including this smart thermostat for heating only to cater for the smaller budget. As such, it is instantly more appealing compared to the Nest or tado, and still pulls off good looks with the Wiser thermostat. 

Easy to install on any existing standard thermostat plate, you will be up and running quickly with the Drayton Wiser. The app is the primary method for control, allowing you to save energy through personalised control. It can also provide economising insights and a heat report to show your actual use. 

If you want to expand your control over the heating you can add extra radiator controls over time, but this is a great way to start small with your smart home heating. Primary modes include a Comfort Mode for when you want it warm and cosy, or Eco Mode to maximise efficiency, while Away Mode turns everything off when you leave the house.

If you don’t want the snazzy smarts of a Nest but perhaps plan to expand your smart home heating in the future, Drayton offer a great starting point.

Smart features:

• Amazon Alexa support to control the heating without getting up
• IFTTT compatible to work with other smart home devices 

One to Watch: Amazon Thermostat

I’m including the newly announced Amazon thermostat as it promises to be a low cost device that works with Alexa (as you’d expect from Amazon).

The thermostat launched in the US in late 2021 and I’m hoping that it will eventually make it’s way to the UK, although no announcement on a date as yet.

What sets this device apart is it’s no-frills approach. There’s no hot water integration or zoning, but the advantage is that it’s less than half the price of it’s nearest rival. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

Comparison Table

Here’s a comparison table with side-by-side specs for each of these Alexa-compatible thermostats.

	Tado	Nest	Hive	Honeywell	Drayton Wiser	Amazon Thermostat
	Best Overall	Smartest	Great for Hot Water	Great for Zones	Best Without Subscription	One to Watch
Multiroom	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Price	££	£££	££	££	££	£
Subscription?	Optional	No	Optional	No	No	No
Subscription Price	2.99	-	3.99	-	-	-
Control Hot Water	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Geofencing	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Where to Buy	Amazon	Amazon	Amazon	Amazon	Amazon	Coming Soon