Honeywell's Lyric brings geofencing to smart thermostats

The Nest got people to look at formerly mundane appliances like a thermostat in a new way, as something that should be smarter and could stand to get better-looking too. We loved the last Honeywell Wi-Fi Smart Thermostat that we tested, but dinged its design compared to the circular elegance of the Nest.

Now the company that invented the Round thermostat back in 1953 is back with a new line of smart home devices called Lyric. And first up is, you guessed it, a smart thermostat. It looks familiarwhich is to say, beautifulbut it takes a different approach to saving you money than the Nest. Instead of trying to learn your patterns over time, the Lyric thermostat doesnt worry about patterns. Instead, it uses your phones geolocation features to start conserving energy as soon as you leave your house.

The Lyric thermostat assumes that if your smartphone is at your house, so are you. You can register your familys phones with the app, and itll use the geofencing features in iOS and Android to tell when everybodys left for the day. Once you get within a few miles of your house, the thermostat springs back to life, heating or cooling your house so its at your preferred temperature (or at least getting there) as you stroll through the door.

Looks familiar, works a little differently.

The Fine Tune feature is pretty smart too. You know how sometimes the weather forecast has two temperatures: the real air temperature, and whatever it actually feels like, adjusted for the wind chill or the heat index? The Lyric is programmed to make those same adjustments inside your house. Fine Tune factors not just the indoor temperature, but also what its like outside, and the humidity (the Lyric houses its own humidity sensor), so it can make adjustments like running your systems fans more or bumping the temperature up or down a degree.

A proximity sensor lights up the Lyric when you walk up to it, showing you the temperature and status. LEDs around the outside of the Lyric cast a glowing ring on your wall: blue when its cooling, orange when its heating, and green if its in energy saving away status.

Glanceable weather on your way out the door? Nice touch.

You can twist the ring to make adjustments to the temperature, or press one of the touch buttons. One button sets the Lyric to away, which can be handy if youre leaving your phone behind on purpose. The other button shows you a brief glimpse at the weather forecast for the next 12 hoursenough to see if you should grab an umbrella on your way out.

The Lyric app is as smart as the thermostat. First, it walks you through every step of the installation process with videos and even interactive guides. For example, when you remove the front of your old thermostat, youll see different colored wires attached to lettered connections. Since most people dont have a lot of thermostat-installing experience, it can be intimidating.

Lyric's app for iOS and Android lets you set up profiles for various activities.

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Honeywell's Lyric brings geofencing to smart thermostats