Honeywell Wants You to Talk to Its Thermostat Like it’s A Friend

The Nest thermostat may have entered the market several steps ahead of its more established competition, but those days are behind it and the likes of Honeywell have some classy, Wi-Fi-enabled thermostats with some tricks of their own. The latest is the Honeywell Wi-Fi Smart Thermostat, which the company is showing off at CES 2014.

Honeywell Wi-Fi Thermostat, which competes with the Nest.

The feature that caught our attention is the voice control. Say “Hello, Thermostat,” and the device is ready to take your verbal instructions. You don’t need to use stilted ‘I’m talking to a machine’ speak, either: just say something like “Make it warmer,” or “Make it much cooler,” and it complies. Honeywell servers handle the heavy lifting (the thermostat connects to them via your home network, hence the “Wi-Fi” in the name) to decipher your commands. Of course, it also has touch capabilities and apps for Android and iOS.

Oh, and here’s something interesting: your five-year-old probably can’t cause as much havoc with the thermostat’s voice commands as you’d expect: the device tends not to hear the high-pitched voices of young children.

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