2025 Thermostat Thoughts - Local Control

I am in the US and looking to replace some early generation Nest thermostats that came with the house I bought 3 years ago.

I have 1 for AC and 4 for propane water boiler baseboard radiator zones. Since I will need 5 of them, low cost is preferred.

I’m not looking for anything fancy but preferably something modern looking with the following features:

  • Local only control, no cloud
  • History in home assistant - current Nest thermostats don’t show events in the log book
  • Ability to control the fan independently for AC - currently doesn’t work right
  • Control temperature and fan from the physical unit

I’ve been looking at these:

Ecobee Essential Smart Thermostat Essential | ecobee
Honeywell T6 Pro Z-Wave https://www.honeywellhome.com/us/en/products/air/thermostats/programmable-thermostats/t6-pro-z-wave-thermostat-th6320zw2003-u/

have this. works great. does all you asked for

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The new nests should work locally over matter.

Do the new Nest thermostats work without ever connecting to the Internet?

I have several of the Honeywell T6 Pro units in different properties. They work very well. The downside is that they seem to be getting harder to find as Honeywell has discontinued making them as you can see on the linked page.

This I am not sure of.

Yeah that was my concern. I was thinking of either picking up some Honeywell units used for cheap or trying Ecobee.

I just found this new option that uses Matter

But Fakespot thinks the Amazon product reviews are mostly fake

I used to put a lot of faith into Fakespot, not so much anymore. I’ve seen it go pretty bad both ways.

I do see a couple of the reviews that state that you can’t control the HVAC fan over Matter. Is this the case with Matter in general, or perhaps just this thermostat?

Yeah I don’t know that’s a good question.

I did get a couple of used Honeywell T6 Z-Wave thermostats and installed one the other day for my AC. Been working OK so far.

It does seem to cycle a lot but I think I can adjust the cycle rate and compressor protection settings



Many thermostats work to maintain temp at +- xx degrees of set temperature

T6 setting determines min/max on cycles to maintain temp(or something similar).I though it ran too often when I first got it but over time realized it worked more effectively.

Yeah I was thinking this, too. I trust Honeywell more than Nest for good compressor and HVAC practices.

I was trying to find recommendations for my Goodman GSX16 AC compressor that came with the house I bought but couldn’t find anything.

How did you get the thermostat to report tenths of a degree to HA?

I have a T6 that I just installed and it only ever reports full degrees, never any fractions.

There’s a setting that does increments of 0.5 degrees F. I don’t think it’s exposed in Z-Wave configuration.

It’s ISU 1421 Z-Wave Temperature Resolution. You can get to these options by pressing and holding the menu button on the thermostat for 5 seconds.

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@finity, @HarlemSquirrel is correct that it is not exposed via the Z-Wave configuration. I have a few of these thermostats and the ones where the thermostat was configured at device to show .5 degrees bubbles that all the way to HA itself, but I can find no Z-Wave configuration option for it.

The ones where it was not enabled at the device do not bring the half degree increments into HA.

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These are on sale on Amazon for 30% off today. In light of all the issues Google neat is having lately, I bought one. Here’s to hoping it works in Home Assistant. Has anyone else purchased one of these and found success?

I have 5 Honeywell T6 Z-Wave thermostats now that I got used from Amazon and E-Bay. I haven’t had the heat on yet but setup was smooth. The first one that’s been running all summer for AC did great so now I’ve removed all the Nest thermostats.

I got it installed last night and aside from the fact that my thermostat was previously mounted to an electrical junction box and this one can’t actually do that without retrofitting; it installed just fine and works just fine inside home assistant via Matter. For $70, can’t beat it!