Honeywell has unveiled its new Lyric Thermostat ($279), a direct competitor to the now Google-owned Nest Learning Thermostat ($249) and a partner of Apple’s HomeKit program. The thermostat is the first in a range of smart home products from Honeywell, a major industrial player that might form the backbone of Apple’s growth in the smart home sector ‘ as Apple has yet to announce any hardware itself, relying on its upcoming HomeKit platform.
Honeywell’s thermostats are found in 150 million homes globally, according to the company. The multinational conglomerate, which manufactures a range of consumer products and aerospace systems, has been in business for 125 years with annual sales of $39 billion and 2013 net income of $2.9 billion.
Its latest model is designed with two key features in mind. The first is geofencing, which allows the thermostat to track the user’s smartphone to determine its behavior, turning down the climate controls when the user is away from home and preparing the home for their return. Multiple devices can be synced with the unit, allowing it to keep tabs on all members of the family, not just the one who is in charge of the heating.
The main feature is the ‘Fine Tune’ mode, which factors indoor and outdoor ambient temperatures, humidity and weather forecasts into its predictive software, in order to automatically adjust to environmental conditions. This is a different method than the Nest, which ‘learns’ a home’s patterns over time, which Honeywell says can provide savings from the first day of installation.
‘Most people don’t have a predictable pattern to how they live their lives; why not have a thermostat that adjusts based on your real-time schedule?’ says Beth Wozniak, president of Honeywell’s Environmental and Combustion Controls. We are more inclined to think that there are rather prominent patterns to be found in our day-to-day comings and goings, but a predictive and automatic management program can help eliminate wasteful human behaviors, with a back-up manual interface should it need to be overruled.
Communicating via WiFi, users can use an iOS or Android app to directly control the unit too, or physical controls on the circular wall-mounted unit. The white plastic thermostat will be available from stores in August, costing $279, but is available from some HVAC contractors today. Honeywell hopes that the unit can be easily self-installed, a matter of swapping wires from the existing thermostat and plugging them into the correct port of the Lyric. In addition to the thermostat, Honeywell has announced that it plans to introduce a whole range of smart home products as part of the Lyric platform.
The unit is not the first WiFi controlled thermostat made by Honeywell, but it is the first model that can take on the Nest in terms of functionality and aesthetic ‘ it also costs almost the same as a Nest unit. If Honeywell’s claim that it is compatible with 97% of US homes is true, it will be interesting to see the response from Google.
So what does this mean? Well we want to avoid any air of tech snobbery here or elitism, but for a long time before the Google acquisition, Nest was a rather geeky way for the well-informed tech-enthusiast to automate their homes. Other customers included the affluent, but now that it is owned by an internet giant, Nest may become something of a household name.
However, Nest does not have the brand recognition enjoyed by Honeywell ‘ at least not immediately. This gives rise to a showdown of sorts, between the new kid on the block with the trendy brushed aluminum Nest, or the old familiar incumbent with the fresh white plastic. Both units are similarly priced, but it’s likely that the Lyric might outpace the Nest in terms of deployment thanks simply to Honeywell’s dominance in the home market and consumer faith in the brand ‘ as well as consumer unease in trusting a search engine provider to heat their home.
For both companies there’s the bigger obstacle to overcome of convincing the average home owner that they need to spend $279 to upgrade their current system. The smart thermostats are not small purchases, and so the quickest route to market may be abandoning the DIY ethos and pursuing partnerships with utility providers. We’re a little skeptical of Honeywell’s claim of a maximum saving of $220 per year, but if that is an accurate boast then the device will pay for itself rather quickly ‘ a compelling commercial argument.
Lyric product manager Kevin Werich said ‘our philosophy is building this platform in bite-sized solutions. We know that consumers will buy these when they’re ready. So if they replace a thermostat we give them that opportunity. When they’re ready for that next piece, they can try something else.’
The extra bites will undoubtedly be connected extensions of Honeywell’s existing product lines, which include security cameras, home alarm systems, space heaters, air conditioners and lighting. Being a partner for Apple’s smart home plans will also help Honeywell engrain itself inside a successful device ecosystem with an extensive deployed user-base in iOS devices and Apple TVs.
Here at Rethink, we saw the value in the Nest acquisition ($3.2 billion) arising from Google getting a foot in the door of the smart home before any of its rivals. In so doing, it could leverage its position to construct an entire smart home ecosystem on the back of Android. But Google’s thinking, if that was its initial plan, did not count on the old vanguard of HVAC stepping up to the plate to take a swing ‘ and the looming showdown will be interesting to watch from the sidelines, not so much from the boardrooms.