Wiser Smart Heating Controls Review

If you’re from the UK, I’m sure you’ve heard of smart heating controls by the likes of Hive before, they have that catchy jingle that doesn’t leave your head. Anyway, there are many more smart heating products on the market, from a number of different brands, offering the same service. One of those being Wiser from Drayton, which forms part of the Schneider group. Wiser offer product solutions for heating & hot water control, plus smart radiator valves for individual room control and smart plugs. They asked if we wanted to try their system out, we said yes.

Product Selection

Wiser offer a control system that should cover most domestic heating & water installations, but it’s important to ensure you purchase the correct kit to suit your existing installation. If you have one heating circuit in your property, you can go for Kit 1 or 2. 1 being just the heating side, 2 controlling both heating & hot water. If you have 2 heating circuits, then you need to go for Kit 3, which will control both heating circuits & the hot water. It’s unclear if they offer a solution for anything more than 2 circuits.

Depending on which kit you go for, will depend on the kits contents but for Kit 1 & 2, you will receive the control unit with wall fixing, a remote thermostat controller and all associated instructions. If you went for a multizone kit, you will also receive 2 TRV’s, other wise the Thermostat kit has just the hub & controller.

Features

The Wiser control system is packed full of smart features, to help bring your home into the 21st century and help you have easier/more control over your energy usage.

– The Wiser Room Thermostat enables you to wirelessly control your heating from anywhere in the world via your smartphone with the Wiser App. This includes Eco & Away mode, plus Alexa integration and Geo-fencing.
– Wiser Radiator Thermostats provide room-to-room heating control, the ability to set different temperatures and schedules in each room. Add up to 32 devices for ultimate comfort.
– With the smart plug, set schedules for your electrical appliances for complete convenience and extend your system’s signal range.

Installation & Set Up

Wiser advise that installation is easy, can be done by yourself and shouldnt take more tha 10 minutes. It’s a case of removing your existing controller, install the new wall plate, wire your existing cabling into the new controller and clip into place. You then need to set up an account on the free Wiser app, follow the on screen instructions and it should all be up and running. There will be 230v at your controller, so please remember to turn the fuse off at your consumer unit.

Now for me, I had two heating circuits and the hot water, so a Kit 3, but my original system had three seperate controllers, in very different locations. This meant I wasnt able to do the installation, easily anyway, as those 3 existing points, with those 3 existing cables, needed to be overwritten and thus making them void. Fortunately, Wiser do offer an installation service across the UK and the guy that showed up at my house, did an excellent job and ran through everything with my wife. He had to reroute/rewire the circuits where my heating manifold was, to cater for the new Kit 3 controller. It took him a couple of hours all in to get the system up & running.

Setting up your heating & water profiles was a breeze and is all done from within the Wiser app. When you are in the app, you will see your heating zone, and/or your water, depending on which kit you installed. For me, I had up & downstairs heating, plus hot water. Click one of those and it brings up a large display with the current temperature for that space. On this screen you can swipe between the other services, quickly adjust the temperature or turn the water on, and also hit the little calendar button & enter edit mode. Here you can then set the times you want the heating & hot water to turn on & off, and also which temperature (heating only). You can set different timings for each day to suit your schedule, or simply copy your edited day across all seven days.

Taking it a step further and adding an increased level of optimisation, you can install WiFi enabled TRV’s onto your radiators. By doing this, that radiator can become its own entity and you can control it as such. Installing the TRV was very simple, without the need for any tools and is fully detailed in the instructions. For the TRV’s to work, the circuit needs to be active. For example, the upstairs circuit needs to be on, and then I’m given control of the TRV’s ive installed. If the upstairs circuit isnt on, you cannot control the TRV’s. So in an ideal world and if you have one radiator per bedroom, you want to install a TRV onto each of those radiators and then you will be able to control which rooms are heated. If you’ve got a large house, this can save alot of energy on not heating unoccupied spaces.

Performance

Performance is excellent and I’ve yet to come across any major issues with the system. Controlling the heating or hot water via the app is very responsive, hit a button and a few seconds later, I’d hear the boiler kick in. Likewise with the remote controller, although it’s not quite as sleek. You have to hit the touch sensitive center button to activate the screen, which didnt always appear on first touch.

The temperature readings on the remote controllers seem accurate enough and they can be wall mounted if desired. They are battery operated and for the amount of times I used them, the batteries should last a very long time. The system was linked up to Alexa and it worked great. I’d ask for the heating to be turned on or up and it would happen.

One thing I did notice, is you need a decent range on your WiFi system to maximise the potential device locations. I’d regularly see on the app that my hub was just 1/4 signal bar, which isnt great BUT that didnt effect performance, nor have I notice it lose signal alltogether.

Verdict

Overall, this is an excellent product, that’s well built, easy to use and full of functionality. Although I didn’t install the system myself, the installation service provided by Wiser was superb. There are a number of competitors in this market now, including the more well known like Nest & Hive, but also Honeywell, Tado & Netatmo. With that in mind, Wiser sit nicely at the lower/mid end of the pricing, yet offer the same level of service, if not more. Thermostat kits without TRVS start at around £140, and increases a little as you move up the kits. Likewise with the TRV’s included in the multizone kits, these start at £200 and increase with the kits.

It’s two big thumbs up from me.

To find out more or to purchase, visit the official Wiser website.