C-Wire Required Smart Thermostat, YoLink 1/4 Mile World's Longest Range Thermostat Button Control Remote Control Schedule ECO Controller Works with IFTTT, YoLink Hub Required

The Yolink products rock! Long range, no-WiFi technology is awesome. LoRa is a much lower power and longer range wireless link than WiFi, designed for IoT. It just works. Scan the bar code and push a button, and their products sync with no hassle.This thermostat works great, for a basic, no-frills, internet thermostat. Fabulous price too. Easy to read screen. Program schedule via front panel or app. Only negatives on this thermostat: 1. loud beep every time you touch a button on the front panel. Just use the app instead. 2. Needs a C-wire, and according to Yolink customer support, cannot use an external transformer like competing models. So you need 3 wires coming from the boiler for heat, another for A/C, and a 5th if you have a fan. For just forced hot water, need 3 wires. 2-wires will not work. 3. Cannot program a sleep time after midnight - not great for night owls. But overall, this is another great Yolink product.

After reading my review, YoSmart has been proactively reaching out to better understand my concerns. They're working on a firmware update, and once it is released I'll give them 5 stars. Way to go, YoSmart support!I really wanted to give this product 5 stars, but some usability glitches are forcing me to bump it down. This is a new product and I will cut them a little slack, but come on, this is a thermostat. It should just work.I do see that the firmware continues to be improved, perhaps my issues will be fixed in the future. If so, I'll revisit the rating and hopefully be able to provide more stars.First the good:Installation is straightforward if you've ever replaced a thermostat before or have the skills to trace the wiring back to your control panel. Just make sure you have enough wires to support the 5-wire installation.YoSmart has a great platform for their devices. The process for adding a new device and connecting it to the network is always flawless. This is no exception.You can see and set the thermostat from anywhere. Very cool and handy when you are away from home!Setting a run-schedule is really easy. I love the copy and paste feature.Now for the not-so-good stuff:A thermostat should just work but I find myself thinking way too much about this. This thermostat frustrates me on a daily basis. Perhaps my expectations are out of whack? I don't think so but please let me know.Here is what I mean:I dislike that they use the word "auto" for both the fan setting and temperature control... this is confusing. Can't one be auto-fan and one be auto-temp or something?I hate the mobile interface has icons that toggle from grey to green while changing the icon and related text. It confuses he heck out of me. Green should be on. Grey should be off. Of course, that's not how this works. Here is an example: Toggling from "run" (green) to "hold" (grey): Is "hold" off because it is grey? Nope, "hold" is on and holding the temperature. After a while you get used to it, but it is confusing and certainly not up to best practices for a user interface. Just have a simple toggle switch and be done with this.More examples with the mobile user interface: "cool" can be green or grey. "heat" can be green or grey. If they are both green, it means we are in auto/climate control mode, not to be confused with the auto fan-control mode.... If they are all grey, they are off.... So NOW grey means they are off.... confusing! Haven't they heard of a multi-way toggle?These are just little nits that I can live with. Now for my biggest 2 gripes.1. I set a schedule. Let's just say that for all four set times (wake, leave, return, sleep) we have the cool temperature set for 74 and the heat temperature set for 66. I have it running in auto mode. 2 weekends ago it was really cold, so I wanted to hold the temperature at 70 for a few minutes to get the chill out... Nope, can't do it! The hottest I can set the dang thing is 68. Maybe because it is in auto mode? NOPE! I put it in heat-only mode... Same thing. It only goes to 68. The only way I could figure out how to temporarily hold the temperature to 70 is to bump the cold temp up to 76 or higher. Then I can set the thermostat to 70... but when the schedule kicks back in, we are back in the same situation. I guess I can handle this but I don't expect my wife or inlaws to need a phd in yolink thermostats to operate it... So you need to adjust the schedule to increase the cool temp permanently (I bumped it to 84 so I could easily remember to put it back to 74 next spring), but of course pretty much ruins the ease-of-use of having an automatically run schedule in the first place... see what I mean?The other thing I just noticed is there might be some quirkiness with respect to the thermostat damper control. Last weekend we had a heat wave and I wanted to turn on the AC. It was 80 in the house and the AC did not come on because I had to adjust the schedule as described above.... argh So I set the thermostat to cool mode and turn the thermostat down to 74 and hold my breath, expecting to feel the AC come on... it did not. Zone 2, upstairs was getting nice cool AC because it is using and old, standard thermostat, but the downstairs was not calling for cooling! This time, I got the AC to work by removing the "cool" setting and putting it directly in auto. Then all of a sudden the damper to zone 1 opened up.... this is driving me nuts.OK, enough ranting. Can you see what I mean about thinking too much about this? I can deal with the user interface quirks, but really hope they figure out a better way to handle my last two issues. If they fix them in a firmware patch, I'll be sure to update this review.

This review is about the THERMOSTAT. It works. Sort of. Not well calibrated, but it offers offsets so not a total waste of time.With the app, it kind of works. Odd.With Alexa... NOT AT ALL. Ive delt with very nice people at Yolink with another product, but come on guys!Update: the folks at YoLink reached out to me and they are working on improvements. I have to say, their customer service is very hands-on and friendly.

I can't speak to how this works because it wouldn't work with my system. I don't have a "C" wire, which is required for this thermostat. I'm writing this review for the sole purpose of letting others know what the C wire is, because I didn't until I got this and tried to install it.The C wire is a wire that provides electricity to your thermostat. If your existing thermostat runs on batteries only, this will NOT work for you.I needed it for in my garage, where there are only 2 wires running to my thermostat. (You need at least 3 for this to work).I have quite a few yolink products and like them all. If they end up making a battery operated version of this thermostat, I will likely purchase it.I do wish yolink had better instructions.

I used a 24v transformer and a 24vac relay to bridge the YoLink Thermostat to a millivolt heater. John over at YoLink gave me the idea to use a relay when he hinted that a YoLinK Relay is also coming. After searching online I found a few "how-to" pages for other thermostats that worked perfectly with this one. I look forward to more devices and hopefully a windows app to go with the android app. Thanks John!

This thermostat works great and so simple to use. I bought a bunch of YoLink stuff and will be buying more. They are all so simple to hookup.

It worked great, when it worked. Features are kinda basic yet sometimes difficult to fully understand. Overall I thought it was a good unit for the price. Failed on me after about 2 weeks. Returned and refunded. Probably the least thing I liked with Yolink because they have so much cool stuff.

Very easy to install and looks nice with different option of LCD color background, my favorite is the black.It pair seamless with the app and work great from my phone. I cam control the unit from anywhere from the home and outside!