The Apple AirPods Pro are one of the best gadgets I’ve bought in recent years. So why buy the Amazfit ZenBuds? First of all, I have a weakness for gadgets, and since it was an Indiegogo campaign, I was able to buy the ZenBuds for $69 instead of 149 euros. What I found interesting about the ZenBuds was mainly the promise of noise blocking, including a Pomodoro timer and sounds that contribute to relaxation.
The Amazfit ZenBuds come in an attractive packaging, with no costs or effort spared.
The headphones arrived charged, although the case was not fully charged. The ZenBuds are extremely light, and when you choose the right ear tips, the noise blocking works very well. However, the manual doesn’t match reality, as there is no Amazfit app in the App Store. In fact, you need to search for the Zepp app, which is used to set up the ZenBuds. It’s incomprehensible that there is no mention of this anywhere, especially since I still receive updates via Indiegogo.
What unfortunately doesn’t work at all is relaxing with the sounds. The loops are very short, and my brain immediately notices when the loop starts again. As a result, I immediately wake up. This is really disappointing, as it was one of the main reasons I bought the ZenBuds.
Here’s a summary of the pros and cons:
Pros of the Amazfit ZenBuds:
You really don’t feel them in your ear.
The noise blocking works well.
Cons of the Amazfit ZenBuds:
It takes forever to upload a sound. This is probably due to the special type of Bluetooth being used.
You can’t listen to other music.
The sounds are unfortunately looped too briefly.
An unrestricted purchase recommendation cannot be given for the Amazfit ZenBuds, especially not at the regular retail price.
I was probably one of the first buyers of Sonos speakers in Hamburg. The boxes were new, expensive, but exactly what I was looking for. And I was super happy and deeply in love with Sonos. I love music. And the ability to listen to my music in any room at any time was phenomenal. The app responded instantly, there were never any issues, and soon I had 3 speakers (there was only one back then, the large one) and a bridge to which I connected my hi-fi system. The latter never really worked well, so I stuck with the pure Sonos system.
As with any love, when everyday life sets in, the picture starts to get scratches. Although my Sonos family grew larger over time, the Sub was quickly added, along with 2 ones, 3 threes, and a Symfonisk, but over time, the system became more unpredictable. Eventually, I lost interest in listening to music with Sonos. Every time I wanted to start a song, I was already afraid it wouldn’t work flawlessly. The music would cut off, and the wildest error messages appeared in my once harmonious SONOS world:
Connection to Sonos product not possible
Cannot play the selected item
Cannot connect to the device. Please try again later.
Error adding titles to the list (1002)
Or sometimes, nothing would happen at all. The spinning wheel of death would appear. Or music would play and immediately stop, or it would skip to the next track, and so on… The software, whether on mobile or desktop, no longer responded in real-time.
Of course, my home network isn’t exactly simple. I had Google Wifi for a while, then switched to Orbi, and recently an AVM Fritzbox has been doing its job. I tried using cables, creating a separate network for the Sonos boxes, removing the Gen 1 devices to switch to Gen 2, but… nothing worked. Studying the support page (accessible at http://IP-ADDRESS:1400/support/review) didn’t help at all, the quality of the connections between devices was mostly suboptimal.
A few minutes later:
A few minutes later again:
My last hope was the Sonos Boost. For nearly 100€, you get a Wi-Fi extender, but it’s more like the Boost creates its own Wi-Fi network for the Sonos devices, so they no longer cause confusion in the main Wi-Fi network. You can see the Boost in the screenshots above, and what you can also see is that it doesn’t really improve the situation. It feels like there are fewer problems with the main Wi-Fi, but Sonos is still sluggish and mostly unresponsive. It got a little better after I removed the Symfonisk from IKEA. Apparently, Sonos doesn’t like these devices very much, or maybe the antennas in the devices just aren’t that good.
When you also consider that Sonos tried to persuade owners of old Sonos devices to dispose of them and buy new ones in order to enjoy the next generation of software, unfortunately, Sonos is no longer recommended. Through my PhonieBox experiment, I’ve learned that you can build Wi-Fi boxes more cheaply on your own.
First of all, it doesn’t make much sense. And for many people, it really doesn’t make sense to buy a reMarkable tablet when they could just have an iPad and use its features. The reMarkable tablet is expensive—not as much as an iPad Pro, but in comparison to the features of an iPad in the same price range, the reMarkable looks extremely poor. Yet, despite all this, I’ve come to appreciate the reMarkable in the few days I’ve owned it. The version 1, which I snagged for under €300 on eBay, will likely drop in price soon since the second generation is already being advertised. But before I spend €500 on a device I’m not sure will really suit me, I’d rather use a second-hand one to test the concept. Because with the reMarkable, you can only read and annotate PDFs/eBooks and create notes and sketches. No emails, no web browsing, nothing. Black and white. E-Ink display. Writing with the pen feels almost like writing on paper. You don’t need to charge the pen, but you do need to replace the nibs occasionally. And the device costs anywhere from €450 to €600 depending on the accessories.
What’s my use case? I had bought an iPad Pro with the pencil and everything to work and read with less luggage, anywhere. Reading and writing are, alongside programming, communication, and creating PowerPoints, my main activities. I have to read a lot, especially academic papers, but also articles from journals, etc. Additionally, I write a lot. The split-screen feature on the iPad was a killer app for me: PDF on the left, my notes on the right. It often worked well. But not always. However, the Apple ecosystem with iCloud allows me to keep all my files synchronized across all my devices.
But even then, it’s not perfect. Sometimes, I find it hard to focus because, as often happens when you try to focus on something, you get distracted by reminders of things you absolutely need to do and write down. Then you see those reminders and realize you forgot something urgent, etc. The iPad enables all of this with one device. And so, you quickly get distracted, especially when trying to work on something difficult. The temptation to quickly check emails is very strong. With the reMarkable, this doesn’t happen. And that limitation is what you pay for, at a steep price. Apps that restrict you or help you focus better were something I looked into and used over 10 years ago.
Do I generally have a problem with concentration? No. But it might be the medium. I wrote my most successful book (3 editions) almost entirely on paper, as incredible as that sounds. In a notebook on a terrace in a bay in Sardinia. I had no computer with me, just my thoughts. I wrote them down, crossed them out, rephrased them, etc. Later, at home on my computer, I added screenshots and other materials. Just me and the paper. I’m not sure I could do that today with an iPad. Because even though almost all my notifications are turned off, my brain knows that something new could pop up, and our brains crave that. The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin describes how every interruption stimulates our brain, preventing us from focusing, because thinking is exhausting. I was particularly impressed by Sting’s preference for having the same room set up wherever he is in the world, so that nothing new could distract him.
Tranquility is the new luxury of our society. (The 5 AM Club, Robin Sharma)
This quiet is undoubtedly a luxury when you pay so much for a device with fewer features, just to have peace and be able to focus. Perhaps my preference for paper comes from my socialization: I grew up with paper, wrote everything on paper—my final exams, my university exams, etc. Writing books on a computer, at least exclusively on a computer, is a torture for me. I have to have my…
But the iPad has other drawbacks. If I want to read outside with the iPad, it’s better if the sun isn’t shining. With the reMarkable, that’s not a problem. The iPad doesn’t handle that as well. Besides, the device is quite heavy (653 grams “naked” with the pencil / 1060 grams with the case including the keyboard). It’s not really suited for prolonged reading or holding in your hand. The reMarkable weighs 362 grams “naked” with the pencil / 505 grams with the case, though that’s a bit unfair since the cases are very different. For the reasons mentioned, I don’t like taking the iPad with me when I go outside for a bit. It’s not only heavy and unwieldy, but I’ve also had the experience of how quickly the glass can break (and how expensive the replacement is).
And what the iPad lacks in light during the day in the sun, it has too much of in the evening. I notice it when I’ve been staring at the screen for too long in the evening. The iPad isn’t suitable for me for extended reading and writing of academic texts, partly for ergonomic reasons, but also due to occasional lack of discipline. Following the 5 A.M. Club philosophy, electronic devices really shouldn’t be used in the evening, and the reMarkable helps with that, if you turn a blind eye.
However, the reMarkable has some shortcomings that are rather unacceptable for the price:
The Wi-Fi module seems quite weak; in my office, it shows only 1 out of 3 bars, while all my other devices have at least 2 out of 3.
The battery lasts about 2-3 days with moderate use, which isn’t much for an e-Ink display. Charging takes forever.
Large PDFs (such as Springer non-fiction books between 3 and 30 MB) are a real burden for the reMarkable tablet, and it can take a while to flip from one page to the next. Especially with large PDFs, the reMarkable often freezes or crashes.
The reMarkable can’t open password-protected PDFs at all. That’s quite suboptimal.
The search function is a joke. You can either search for book titles, but only within the book you’re currently viewing. You also can’t directly jump to the location from the search result—you have to remember the page number and then awkwardly navigate through multiple steps to get to the page.
The plastic feels cheap and sometimes a bit dirty, even when it’s clean. For the price, that’s really not acceptable.
The pen seems to have two different types of plastic, at least there’s a noticeable difference in the whites:
What I also don’t like is the lock-in. I’m trapped in their cloud—what if they go bankrupt? I’ve asked myself that several times with tado, but at least you can supposedly still operate the thermostats manually (though they’re still way too expensive). With the reMarkable, you’d be lost if the cloud were shut down. It’s likely that, eventually, you’ll have to pay a subscription, just like tado switched to. However, what helps a bit is that supposedly, you can also access your documents via USB. I haven’t tried this yet, but it means I could potentially build an application like my Kindle Clippings Manager, which syncs a folder on my computer with the reMarkable’s storage. That would be better than this double organization.
Overall, the device is hopelessly overpriced for its technical features, quality, and software. But still, I like it. It serves my use case better than the iPad, and unlike the Moleskine, it’s not a first-class idea graveyard. It has proven this very well in the few weeks I’ve had it so far.
After almost 2 years, I put my 3 Google Wifi Pucks – retired – on eBay. The first problems had already arisen a year ago, when one of the pucks had stopped working from one day to the next. It still worked, but it could no longer connect to the main access point on the other side of the wall. Even if he was standing right next to the other puck, he didn’t want to connect reliably anymore. The Google Wifi Puck was immediately replaced by Google, but the problem was not solved. Most likely, another network had spread in the neighborhood, and in fact, the neighbor below me had gotten a new, strong Wi-Fi. The automatic switching of channels is a nice theory, but it doesn’t really work well. Although the Wifis change their channels from time to time, but only to hang out together on the same channel.
When we were renovating this apartment in the almost 150-year-old house, the electrician asked us if we didn’t want Ethernet to be laid. “No, why, I have WIFI?” I said, and that was one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made. With 8 Sonos boxes, 3 to 5 mobile phones, 1 tablet, several smart home devices such as those from tado and lots of other devices in the WLAN, there is already a lot of stress here. The solution to my WLAN problem should therefore be PowerLine adapters from tp Link. These supposedly transmit up to 1,300 Mbit/s, and of course this is a theoretical value. In fact, however, they actually managed between 200 and 950 Mbit, depending on the room. Only in the study, where I needed the net the most, the connection was very insecure. Either it wasn’t there at all, or it fluctuated between 8 and 200 Mbit/s.
Since I am currently spending a little more time in the study (after the book is before the book), the poor WIFI connection was getting more and more annoying. And constantly connecting the Ethernet adapter (it has to be connected to the old Thunderbolt port on my MacBook Air, because the USB adapter only manages 100MBit/s), well…. Yesterday evening, the network kept failing, and then I looked again for other mesh networks. I had already read some good things about the Netgear Orbi. At 0:58 on Saturday morning I ordered the NETGEAR Orbi High Speed Mesh WLAN System RBK50-100PES (3,000 MBit/s Tri-Band Mesh Router + Satellite Repeater, 350 m² coverage) from Amazon, at 11:58 on the same day I had picked it up from an Amazon Locker station (Thanks, Amazon! Actually, this should not be delivered until after the weekend, but on the same day is already very nice).
Less than an hour later, it was set up. It’s not as easy as with the Google Wifi. The app is less understandable, some settings such as port forwarding can only be made in the browser. But the speed… the satellite is now in the study, and since then I have not had a single break. Better yet, the speed is better than what I’ve ever had. In the screenshot on the left you can see a Tx rate of 867 MBit/s. This seems to be the maximum my old MacBook Air can do on the 5 GHz band. Of course, we are not yet at the 3,000 Mbit/s that the network theoretically offers. But, to be completely honest, who should the MacBook connect to? My NAS has a 10 GBit Ethernet port, but is connected to a 1 GBit switch, to which the Orbi is also attached. My tests currently show a maximum speed of 330 MBit/s to the NAS when I write to an SSD there, which is a little more than 40 MByte/second. Not bad, if you consider that before I could only fear that my connection would last at all.
Of course, it’s no wonder that the Netgear device has more power on it: It’s a lot bigger, so there’s also more space for antennas in it. Yes, it’s more expensive compared to the Google Wifi, but for me it seems to be the solution to Wi-Fi problems, at least for now. The long-term test is still to come. Unfortunately, at least the Google Wifi pucks did not survive it.
Comments (since February 2020 the comment function has been removed from my blog):
Internet Speedtest says
November 2019 at 16:05 Hello, I also use a Netgear Orbi RBK53 system with 3000MBit/s. It is precisely these 3000MBit/s that I would like to briefly explain to you or how they are composed.
1733 MBit/s (4MIMO streams with 433 MBit/s each in the 5GHz network for the Orbi router and the satellite) You don’t see this network, that’s only for the internal connection. 867 MBit/s (2MIMO streams with 433 MBit/s each in the 5GHz network for the clients) 400 MBit/s (2MIMO streams with 200 MBit/s each in the 2.4GHz network for the clients)
1733 + 867 + 400 = 3000 Mbps (which you can never get on a client)
Have fun with your Orbi system! I will never buy anything else for Wi-Fi again…
Sometimes you remember some shows that were on TV decades ago, and one of those shows featured Chris Howland explaining how a microwriterworks. If you google for it, you won’t find anything that I’m going to change with this post. Because Chris Howland was very interested in computers, and I found a small video after all, even if not the ancient video with Chris Howland, but from minute 7:19 the presenter tells about the microwriter and also about Chris Howland:
Invented at the end of the 70s, these devices were never able to catch on, which you may understand better when you see how they were to be used:
At least for me, time tracking is important, but at the same time annoying, because at the end of the day I usually can’t remember everything. For months I had been “followed” by the Timeular ZEI° advertisement, I had clicked on it several times (sorry, over several months from different devices, so I unfortunately thwarted your attribution model a bit). After analyzing my team’s time tracking data, it was clear to me that I definitely wanted to try this thing. It’s not that I’ve never worked with other tools, quite the opposite, but many haven’t proven to be practical. So here are my Timeular ZEI° experiences.
The unboxing and installation of the Timeular ZEI°
The device comes in a nice box, I think most people have learned by now that a product looks more valuable with it. Let’s see when the opposite trend comes that the products are packaged minimally, so that sustainability is more in the foreground and not part of the money invested goes into the design of the packaging.
The first impression after unpacking was that the cube is bigger than I would have expected from the videos and pictures. The device itself doesn’t feel quite as high-quality as the packaging, but it’s not cheap either. Since I had already dealt with the ZEI° before, I already knew what I wanted on which side of the cube, and setting up the cube with the software was super fast. At first I had used the app on my mobile phone, but that was a bit pointless, because of course I like to take my mobile phone with me to meetings, and then the Bluetooth connection breaks down. I hadn’t read anything in the FAQs about how to change the device, but it was very simple: Install the app on the computer, log in, and then the cube even pairs automatically with the computer, if you have logged it out of the mobile phone app beforehand.
The software is minimal and well thought out, no frills, nice design, but with all the features I need. Respect. A lot of brainpower has gone into this so that the functions can be used as easily as possible. I can only hope that future versions will not fall into featuritis.
Usage
What I was missing at first: More sides on the cube. At least theoretically. I’m certainly rather alone in this. But I book on project numbers, and I have more than one project per customer. Overall, I have more projects than pages on the cube. I currently solve this in such a way that I have one client per page and then use the notes to assign the projects. That will certainly not always work. But do you really want to have more sides to the cube? Probably not, because then the simplicity of this time recording system would be lost.
But that is also the only downer. It’s pretty damn cool that if I’m working on a client and a colleague from another project comes in, I can immediately pick up the cube and switch sides to match the conversation to the other client. And I have such a situation several times a day. Since the cube lies on my otherwise relatively empty desk and is therefore mostly in view, I am also more aware of the necessity of changing sides. His presence alone reminds me of the time tracking, so that I do it exactly at that moment and don’t unjustifiably think that I will remember it in the evening. I just don’t.
The Reports
Let’s get to the most important thing: the reports. And they have it all. Because at the end of the day, I can see very clearly what I have been working on and what my time has been spent on.
I have the impression that I am now logging MORE time, and the overview in the picture next to it is just great: I can see immediately whether I am investing the time in the projects that should also have the highest priority. It’s a bit like my beloved Life Balance, which unfortunately is no longer being developed, except that you don’t set priorities beforehand and the system is also much simpler.
However, some points are not quite as easy to understand, such as the productivity level: I didn’t find any information about this on the homepage. And what do I do with the information that I have long entries, mid entries and short entries? Of course, I could read from it how concentrated I am working on a project on average, but for that I also need a benchmark somehow.
The conclusion: Timeular ZEI experiences
It’s only been a few days with de Timeular ZEI°, and I’m pretty excited. If you read through my other reviews here, you know that this is rarely the case. And this despite the fact that the device has fewer pages than my projects and I have to transfer the hours to the official timetracking tool afterwards. At some point, an API solution could do that for me, but at the moment that’s still a long way off.
For me, the very physical existence of this object on my desk has an almost therapeutic function in terms of hourly bookings.
Now the device is not cheap at 115€ if you work with larger teams. What if I wanted to equip my whole team with it? Or if the whole company decided to do so? I’m not sure if you can really justify this expense. Of course, one could justify that this means that more is billed and that the purchase will therefore pay for itself very quickly. But spend a few extra €1,000 for a company of a few dozen employees? This will probably not be so easy to explain.
Comments (since February 2020 the comment function has been removed from my blog):
Stefano says
July 2018 at 00:40 Hello Tom, in February 2018 you started using the ZEI cube as a time tracking system and a few days later you wrote this report. I had one of the first ZEI in 2017 and was so annoyed by the many software bugs of the Zei tracking software on my Windows system that I let the device go back, which worked without any problems, with full replacement. But I would still like to have such a system. May I ask you if you have maintained the habit of using time over the months? Maybe I would then dare to make a new start myself, because the instabilities of the tracking software from the first days have certainly already been overcome.
Tom Alby says
July 2018 at 13:32 Hello Stefano,
I actually still use the ZEI cube every day I work and I’m still totally happy with it.
Best regards Tom
Wast says
January 2019 at 13:09 Thanks for the great article. I also think the thing is a great idea and I like the design, but unfortunately still many teething problems (connection problems for me). The battery was new from the factory with only 43% charged. Notes on the device smudge a lot. The main point of criticism for me, however, is that you are not even allowed to transfer the data to Excel without a premium subscription. So without an expensive subscription not so much of a hit for me. Otherwise, the idea would be quite nice, if it worked.
Patrik says
October 2019 at 23:26 Simple but very practical. Define a task and then only turn the times on and off. What is impractical for me is the recording to the second. So it can happen that e.g. 15 minutes are then recorded as 14 minutes because a few seconds are still missing. But I log my times in quarter-hour intervals and then have to make corrections. Here an adjustment option would be pleasant. The download in Excel is simple, can be filtered, but is also very simple. No sums are automatically calculated. per day. This has to be reworked manually.
Update 29.11.2022: One of the thermostats is defective. It no longer closes properly, so heating is done even when the thermostat is actually switched off. 79 euros. At the bottom of saving money, there is also an addition. Perhaps tado will now pay for itself more quickly thanks to the unfortunately sharp rise in gas prices, but the defective devices do not really help.
Update 18.1.2022: After a repair of the thermal bath, the heating could no longer be controlled with tado. Although the tado app said that everything was running smoothly, the requirements did not reach the spa.
The emergency service of our plumber could not find the fault, and so the weekend was mainly characterized by looking at what the problem could be. In the end, it was a wire that had come loose from the Smart Thermostat. Although the colleague said that this could not possibly come from the maintenance, but that the cable simply detaches from the thermostat on the wall, well. But now a question arises: How can tado say that everything is fine if the connection is not properly established?
Update 8.9.2021: After almost 4 years, the Internet Bridge is in the bucket. Simply dead. Contacted support, a day later the answer came that I should please make a video of the problem. No sooner said than done, then we went to 2nd level support. And since it is older than 2 years, well, bad luck, warranty over, it costs 99€ new. As a result, the investment in the tado story will pay for itself even later, if at all. The claim of tado that you save money, I can deny that for myself. Even after 4 years, I won’t have recouped the original investment, and if something breaks again… But I have to praise the very friendly technicians with whom I wrote.
First of all: I wish I could join the storms of enthusiasm for tado, after all, I chose tado because I really believe that the system can solve my heating problem. So far, however, my experiences with tado have been mediocre to ok, and this is due to the system itself and also to the hotline and the suboptimal help texts. I hope that this report can help to prevent one’s own bad experiences with tado or to think carefully about what one is actually doing. I will update this article continuously. The system was purchased at the end of November 2017.
Content
The problem: wood-burning stove versus heating control
A short affair with Max!
The Crowd’s Experiences with tado
First unpleasant experiences with tado: The sales hotline
Experiences with tado: The installation
Can you really save money with tado?
tado batteries empty after only 4 months
tado Smart thermostat is crazy. And the rest, unfortunately, too.
Conclusion: Experiences with tado
The problem: wood-burning stove versus heating control system
Let’s first come to my heating problem. First and foremost, I’m not interested in saving on heating costs, although that would of course be a great side effect, but about the fact that the old heating control system had a fundamental error in thinking. Everything was newly installed during a complete renovation in 2013 in a pre-Wilhelminian old building from 1855: gas boiler, pipes, heaters, thermostat, everything new. The mistake from the beginning was that the plumber didn’t really listen to our questions, especially whether it makes sense to put a thermostat for the overall control of the heating in the living room when there is a stove 3 meters away. My beginner’s logic: When the fireplace is on, the thermostat thinks it’s super warm and turns off the boiler. Living room warm, rest of the apartment cold. Well, you’re usually in the living room anyway, it doesn’t matter. And in the bedroom you should sleep cold anyway. During a renovation, you have 1,000 problems, and you trust every craftsman who even appears on the construction site. That was a mistake.
4 years later. Offspring. Born a little skinny. The midwife says that the old rule of 18 degrees room temperature does not apply here, the children lack the warming bacon. So the heating is on. Phew. There was something. And lo and behold, even if the oven is not on, I can’t get the temperature the way I need it. Because the living room faces south, the children’s room faces north. And even if it is said that it always rains in Hamburch, no, the sun shines here too, and then I don’t need to turn up the heating, it’s also so warm in the living room. The trick now would be that I simply turn down the heating in the living room, turn up the thermostat so that the boiler is on and supplies the children’s room. But it doesn’t really sound like control, more like a waste of energy, especially since the heating doesn’t even have to be switched on here. Update: One commenter found out that the iSense thermostat can also control the heating independently of the thermostat. So my investment in tado would not have been necessary at all. However, the heating control would still be inaccurate.
A brief affair with Max!
Next idea: I’ll try a smart thermostat, in this case from Max!. The nice salesman from conrad recommends this system to me because it is cheap. Preferably a wall thermometer plus the two smart heating thermostats, and the arbor is ready. The wall thermostat is intended to prevent the temperature sensors on the heater from going out from 21 degrees, which no longer exist in the middle of the room. At first, I believed, no, hoped that this was the solution. But it wasn’t. The system was unpredictable and sometimes heated up to 24 degrees, although it was regulated down to 19 degrees. And it didn’t solve my problem. Because if you wanted to turn on the stove in the living room, well. Then the thermal baths were just out. I couldn’t put it so high that it would have heated the children’s room. Quickly sold on eBay, by the way, the buyer reported after a year that a thermostat was defective; luckily I still had the receipt.
The Crowd’s Experiences with tado
In the days that followed, I learned more about heating systems than I ever wanted to. Our boiler is a Remeha Tzerra 28c that can communicate via the OpenTherm protocol. Until I looked closely, I had assumed that our thermostat in the living room communicated with the boiler by radio, but the iSense thermostat was actually connected to the boiler in the kitchen with a cable from the living room. But it’s also a pity, otherwise you could have just hung the thermostat somewhere else where it wouldn’t have been exposed to the heat of the oven. A wireless version would have cost at least 300 euros. But that would still have been inaccurate.
My next step was to call on Facebook to see who had experience with smart heating. The response was impressive. tado was the main recommendation, followed by elgato (falls flat because not everyone in the household owns an Apple device), Max! (there were also nasty contras), Coqon, Loxone (because you can solve several smart home stories at once instead of having an app for everything), innogy, hydraulic balancing and objections that it was complete nonsense to want to stuff your home with something like that at all. Unfortunately, some hadn’t bothered to read the thread completely at all and came up with platitudes. But good. All in all, a great yield. Since some friends had had good experiences with tado, I took a closer look at this system.
First unpleasant experiences with tado: The sales hotline
My research showed that tado could actually be the solution to my problem, because apparently a heating thermostat directly at the boiler can demand more power here. In the MediaMarkt I saw the complete set late Saturday afternoon, and since it was not yet 6 p.m., I thought that I could try out the offer of the great hotline. Can the tado Smart Thermostat handle the Remeha Tzerra 28c? On the net only contradictory information. On the German side, Remeha was not listed at all, but on the Dutch side, it was. What a pity. No one answered. Not even an automatic message. So I left the set in the store.
On Monday, I called tado first thing in the morning. And I won’t forget this call in a hurry. Before I could even finish my first sentence, I was interrupted. “Do you have a thermostat or…” and so on. No chance to describe my problem. Even when I pointed out to the gentleman that I would like to finish talking first, I was put in my place very rudely. At some point I was able to describe my problem, and now the brash telemarketer had to admit that it might have been better to let me talk first. No, he couldn’t guarantee that it would work with my Remeha-Therme. OpenTherm would also work with others, and in 95% of all cases blablabla. Yes. It is also on the website. I could have saved myself the call and bought it right away at MediaMarkt. I don’t like to buy there, because the much-quoted advice focuses on the devices that are currently in the warehouse by the pallet, but I don’t begrudge tado the extra margin and perhaps also the sales bonus in this case.
4 days later, the package was sent, together with an e-mail including an invoice with a payment deadline on the same day. Also nice. Wouldn’t be there yet, but please pay immediately. Calling the hotline is futile. But a big thank you to the social team of tado, who replied on twitter, because they solved the problem at short notice and competently. Of course, I have a 14-day payment deadline. I ignore the fact that the product arrived here only 4 days later. But interacting with the social team was my only good experience with tado until then. Even with later inquiries, the tado social media team always proved to be fast, honest and solution-oriented. Thanks again at this point!
Experiences with tado: The installation
The installation is very simple, and I agree with it to a large extent. Apple-like. So the setup also knew my constellation of iSense and Remeha Tzerra 28c. Why didn’t the arrogant guy from the hotline know that? It’s just a shame that this super simple installation leads you to assume that every step is really that easy. If everything seems to be made for stupid people, then you can’t believe it when it’s not like that. And then sometimes things get stuck.
For example, you should simply pull the blue paper strip out of the battery compartment when you turn the thermostat over. For me, it all looked very different. I didn’t see a blue stripe. Who would have thought that I would have to open the case first? I don’t think it was there anywhere. But at some point even I came up with it. But it doesn’t say anywhere how to open the case. Of course, you don’t want to destroy such an expensive new device right away.
Some points are also formulated so naturally that, for example, you actually get the idea to look in the box where the phase tester is. Because when people talk about “the phase tester”, then I assume that it is included, otherwise it would be called “a phase tester”. But it is not or it was missing from me (apparently it was only included in version 2?). You are also not informed anywhere before installation that you need it. It’s a pity, actually. In the middle of the installation you realize that you can cancel, because apparently the installation is otherwise life-threatening (I then solved this differently, because the iSense can only live without a battery if it gets power from the boiler, and with the fuse disconnected, the boiler could not pass on anything. But this is not a tip, please do not imitate it!). Or you thought, if you mention on the package that a phase tester is needed, then some people don’t buy the product because they don’t even know what a phase tester is. It’s better to only realize during the installation that you need one, because then you have already bought and are so far along with the installation that you will not send the device back. At 10 p.m., when I started the installation, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to get a phase tester. Apart from that, the “lying pen”, as it is also called, is not a sufficient tool. But that’s another topic.
After everything was reasonably attached (at 10:30 p.m. I was unfortunately still missing something in the wall to which I could have attached the Smart Thermostat, but gaffer tape is your friend), the positive surprise at first was that I had apparently actually managed not to have destroyed anything. The thermostat could actually control the boiler. Only the hot water was switched off. And there is another point of criticism: The hot water control is not really explained. And this drags on through all the help text, everything is just superficially treated. The help function is no help, because the content there is so general that you might as well do without it. During the installation, a yellow tab with a phone icon on the right side of the window can be seen all the time, but if you click on it, you won’t find any help texts that match the current state of the installation. Hardly any text has sufficient depth. This also runs through other areas of the tado world, see below.
Likewise, I don’t understand why I can’t say that the thermostat is now in the living room, where there are also two smart radiator thermostats? Wouldn’t it be great if they synchronized with each other? But now it just says “heating” and “living room”, and they show different temperatures (which is no wonder, because from the heaters at the window to the thermostat on the wall it is again three meters, and there is a loss of temperature). A call to tado, this time to a very helpful employee, brings the solution: He can summarize it, but it doesn’t really matter. The fact that the heating is set to 20°, the children’s room to 21° is also no problem, the heating thermostat is still allowed to request a higher temperature from the heating. Very nice. The hot water was not really explained. And while waiting in the hotline queue, I found the cover plate, which cannot be found in the shop (it can be found under this link here; the know-it-all salesman on my first phone call knew everything better, why hadn’t he recommended this plate right away?). By the way, in the video below you can see how it looks good.
Another point of criticism that I have made in my experiences with tado: The snapping of the radiator thermostats during installation only works suboptimally, with some thermostats I needed several attempts.
tado’s location-dependent control
In addition to the solution that tado offers us for our individual heating problem, I also found the location-dependent control system to be very ingenious from the very beginning. Instead of a strict schedule, the heating would now work when someone is really at home. Sounds good at first, doesn’t it?
The mobile phone or the tado app itself had problems locating me correctly from time to time, because even when I parked in a side street I was still outside the rings. Google Maps showed my correct location, in the settings of the tado app, the side street definitely belonged to the home zone. Only shortly before the front door did the background change from green to yellow. If I had taken the S-Bahn (in Hamburg the S-Bahn runs partly underground and the U-Bahn partly above ground), then I would have understood that. But I drove a DriveNow and was very curious to see when the system would switch. But as a rule, this feature works quite well.
Important: Some Android derivatives seem to activate a power saving mode that prohibits apps from querying the location in background mode. And so it can happen that you are not at home, but the tado app has not noticed it and the heating continues to work happily. So it’s worth taking a look at the app from time to time.
Can you really save money with tado?
I strongly doubt that the >30% savings in heating costs promised in the advertising at the time are really possible. However, the energy-saving guarantee did not refer to the 30%, but simply in case you “didn’t save enough”. I don’t see this offer anymore today. After a few weeks, I could say that the purchase would not pay for itself so quickly. We spend less than 750€ a year on gas, even if tado would save a third of that, then it would take more than 2 years to have the Smart Thermostat and the now 10 Smart Heater Thermostats out again. And this does not include the fact that some of the gas is used for hot water, and I won’t mess with that in the settings. I don’t want to be in the shower at 4 in the morning because I have an early plane, and then have to run to my cell phone again to turn on the hot water. Especially not as long as you are kept awake at night by two little new earthlings and then maybe need warm water to wash your hands after changing diapers (who would have thought that little boys would be so far… but let’s leave that). So I spent around 1,000€ on the smarthoming of our heating system, so I would need about 4 years until I am in the black with tado. I definitely haven’t achieved that after 4 years.
It is also interesting that the app already certified a saving of 11% for the first month of installation, November 2017. I had installed the Smart Thermostat and 4 radiator thermostats for two rooms on 27.11., so there were only 4 days and only part of the rooms in which the tado system was installed, and still you want to have saved 11%? I would be extremely surprised.
Let’s take a look at a monthly report for an entire month. In December 2017, I am said to have saved 22.8% of energy. That would be great, of course. Of course, tado does not know what energy I consumed in the previous month or in December 2016. It is simply estimated that I have saved so much energy compared to “consumption with a temperature- and time-controlled standard control with night reduction according to DIN V 18599-10”. It’s not as if there wasn’t a timetable before. The heating was already turned down during the day anyway, as well as at night. Does this comply with the DIN standard? I don’t know. But I suspect that the calculations here are very optimistic. After all, how much further can tado regulate down so that savings are actually made? To be honest, it’s even unlikely that I would have saved money here, but that’s not because of tado. Due to the offspring, we are more at home and have even heated a room more. In fact, because I can control the heating more precisely, I’m even more willing to turn the heating up when I’m cold. After all, I don’t have to get up for it anymore
In the meantime, however, you can also enter data, in our case the values from the gas meter. If you don’t, the estimates of the “Energy IQ” function look like this:
„
If you then enter data, the predictions are not immediately recalculated, apparently this takes place in the cloud. Here it took a day, and there you can see how far tado is from real consumption:
Anscheinend haben wir schon einiges gespart, aber dennoch nicht so viel wie tado vermutet hatte. Dennoch lohnt es sich, den Verbrauch manuell einzutragen.
Was auf jeden Fall nicht zuverlässig funktioniert, ist die automatische Erkennung, dass ein Fenster geöffnet wurde, so dass die Heizung ausgeschaltet wird. Manchmal funzt es, manchmal nicht, manchmal funktioniert es zuerst und dann schaltet sich die Heizung doch wieder ein. Und dann versucht sie natürlich gegen die Kälte anzuheizen, was natürlich komplette Geldverschwendung ist, im wahrsten Sinne Geld zum Fenster herauswerfen. Das ist natürlich schade, dass das nicht funktioniert.
What I also don’t quite understand is how tado and the heating curve of the thermal baths work together. The heating curve is a very special topic that you can talk about for hours with a heating technician. As far as I understand, the heating curve of a boiler is determined by an external sensor, so that the boiler achieves a flow temperature depending on it. So the boiler always runs a little to reach this flow temperature. At tado, it seems that the boiler is only started when heat is requested. But it’s not quite that simple. You can search in vain for the term on the tado page, and although there are interesting discussions about the heating curve, they are not shown in the search.
tado batteries empty after only 4 months
Yes, you read that right. After 4 months, I received a push notification as well as an e-mail from tado that the battery was empty in two thermostats. The remaining batteries ran out shortly afterwards. Quote from the email:
This is significantly earlier than the expected battery life. We are aware of the problem and are working on the solution. Your devices are updated to extend battery life. Please excuse the inconvenience.
Of course, this is extremely unpleasant. The question is, when will this be solved? Do I even notice when the thermostats are updated? By the way, it takes more than just a few minutes for the app to note that the battery has been changed; in one case, it took almost 30 minutes. In between, you get to know whether you have actually replaced the batteries with the right thermostat.
By the way, a dead battery can also be the reason why a room supposedly has no connection. The two rooms in the screenshot on the left both have 2 Smart Thermostats each, and one of them has a connection, the other doesn’t, apparently because the battery is dead. The app is not really helpful here at first, because the whole room is now no longer controllable. Premium is really something else, I’d say.
And after a year, the Smart Thermostat started to spin:
Sometimes something flashed only briefly when I pressed the button. The problem? Again a weak battery! These had just been replaced (and not with cheap batteries), but without warning the device no longer reacted properly. The flashing of the thermostats, which can be triggered via app, does not work at all in some rooms. Again a battery that is too weak!
Now, disposable batteries are not necessarily the best solution, rechargeable batteries are better from an environmental point of view. Not at tado. Because if you put batteries (HR6 instead of the recommended LR6) in it, then the display that the batteries are empty does not go away at all. This is because batteries simply have less spanning and tado apparently does not feel like adapting the software here. tado simply sits out the topic, as this Twitter thread shows.
Is it really that smart with tado control via the cloud?
A big point of criticism on my part: Why does everything have to be in the cloud? All settings are transferred to tado, and if your own Internet access fails, then intelligent heating is over. Yes, you can still adjust manually. Oh no, it doesn’t work, because if you have activated the parental control, then nothing works anymore. Bad luck. That doesn’t happen? Vodafone Kabel has failed here twice for several days in the last two months. In the middle of Hamburg.
And it doesn’t even have to be your own Internet access, because tado itself can also have problems with the server or the data center (yes, there are redudancies, but I know from my own experience that something like this always sounds good and can go wrong in an emergency). On the photo on the left you can see how it looks in the app when no connection is possible. Supposedly, in this case it was due to my internet connection, the cloud LED flashed on the Internet Bridge (the bridge tries to reach the tado servers). In fact, I was able to access the tado support pages via the same Internet connection, so it was probably less due to my Internet connection. According to the status page, the tado servers were running normally. Supposedly, the devices can then still be controlled manually in the event of an Internet failure. But the first week of my experience with tado was definitely rather mixed, because tado doesn’t seem to be honest about the availability of their servers.
Update 1673.2020: tado was offline for several hours on 1563.2020. Of course, there were more than 294 users who had problems, these are just the ones who had reported it. However, tado was transparent and admitted the problems on Twitter.
Will tado still exist in two years? I don’t know, I hope so, because otherwise I just spent a lot of money on unusable electronic waste. Synchronization is dependent on tado servers. My hope would then be that one of the established energy companies recognizes the opportunity and buys the innovation.
The main question for me is how long tado will continue to offer its cloud for free; at some point, it will probably be turned into a subscription service as well. Otherwise, I don’t understand the business model: How can you run a free sync server if you only have one-time income from the sale of the hardware? That makes no sense at all. I’m even afraid that tado is planning to add a subscription at some point, because if you have made the investment in the expensive thermostats for the first time, then €9.90 a month is not so bad anymore. Or?For this reason, I don’t recommend tado! Update February 2019: That’s exactly what happened. It costs only €2.99 a month, but it was foreseeable that a free cloud couldn’t work.
Nepper, Schlepper, Bauernfänger, tado
In my opinion, tado users are lured to paid updates that don’t do them any good. For example, the paid upgrade of the tado app to version V3+ is recommended for just under 20€, but if you look very closely, this update doesn’t really help you in some cases. The support (the social media support, which I’m really excited about) has kindly admitted that. Of course, tado was also able to automatically detect when you leave the house and also when a window is open (well), only that such settings are now supposedly made automatically.
The indoor air comfort skill, on the other hand, sounds quite useful, but it doesn’t really bring you more information. I did the update anyway (just for this blog), but it was 20€, which I could have saved well. With IFTTT you can do more, because you even get warnings here.
Conclusion: Experiences with tado
The App
The app feels good. The knowledge that I can now really control the temperatures in every room is what I expect from today’s networked world, and tado has implemented this well. The V3+ version, on the other hand, I perceive as a bit of a money-making ploy.
Is it worth it?
At a price of 70-80€ per radiator thermostat, you think more carefully about whether you really equip all 12 radiators in the apartment with it. Then I’m at a price of over €1,000 in total, and then tado needs more than 4 years to recoup the money, as written above. By then, there will probably be better systems again. tado itself has already released version V3+. And even though all components look high-quality (my wife definitely thinks they are fancier than Max’s components!), they don’t necessarily feel more valuable. It feels more like cheap plastic.
Features
Mein Heizproblem wurde gelöst. Auch die ortsabhängige Steuerung funktioniert. Dass die Fenster-offen-Erkennung nicht zuverlässig ist, ist natürlich extrem schade.
Der Support
Dear tado management: Please inform your sales colleagues on the phone that you should not run over the mouth of customers if they have not even been able to pronounce half of the first sentence. This was hard to beat in terms of unfriendliness. And as I said: the help pages are really suboptimal. If tado didn’t just write marketing blah blah in the help part of the site, then they could possibly also relieve the support team. But so it’s no wonder that you have to call. The fact that the installation at a Remeha thermal spa works could have been written on the page. It would have saved me a pretty stupid phone call and tado a blog article that criticizes the friendliness of the tado employees. The help and sales texts are inaccurate, not in-depth enough and sometimes misleading.
Final Words
So my experiences with tado are generally rather mixed. My biggest criticisms are the dependence on the cloud, the poor communication (the social media team is an exception), the lack of reliability in recognizing an open window, the short battery run, and the sometimes unfriendly treatment on the phone. However, I don’t see any alternatives when I look at my experiences with Max! . But I wouldn’t buy tado again.
By the way, the phone number of the support hotline is 089 412 09569
Comments (since February 2020 the comment function has been removed from my blog):
I’m staying says
October 2018 at 19:46 A very helpful experience report, thank you very much!
Marco says
November 2018 at 04:44 Unfortunately, I should have read earlier….
Michael says
December 2018 at 15:45 Oh man, thank you so much for your article. I also wanted to press the order button – but now?? Sorry that you rode ahead as a beta tester. In any case, I have the feeling that the great smart home world is only beautiful in the commercials. The real -smart- life seems to me to be more of an obstacle course. X standards (WLAN, Buetooth, Dect). Nope, I’ll let some more time go by….. As long as I still have two healthy hands, I can still operate the heating controller by hand.
Claus says
December 2018 at 13:38 Hello Tom, I have similar problems, with my heating situation and the tado sales, with me by mail. They don’t answer my questions, and always only answer the question of whether you have a room thermostat. In my particular case, this is built into the thermal baths themselves – a special feature of Vaillant thermal baths with an exterior door guide. Apparently an overwhelm. After your great report, I decided against it shortly before buying. Thank you!!!!!!!! Thank you!!!!!!!! Thank you!!!!!!!!! To you and your family, a nice warm Christmas and a happy new year.
Thomas says
January 2019 at 17:46 Thanks for the review. Unfortunately, I also read it too late. For me, the extension kit prevents me from setting a comfort calorific value of >18 degrees at the boiler. It’s a bit cold in winter… Unfortunately, the support is neither accommodating nor helpful…
Herbert says
January 2019 at 00:33 Thanks for the detailed information. I have also been using 5 radiators and a room thermostat for more than a year. My problem is also the battery life!! every 3 weeks I change brand batteries at the room thermostat !! Without this, the heating system is in place!! I’m thinking about whether I won’t convert the power supply!
Julio Caballero says
March 2019 at 12:13 Thanks for this info. Too late for me unfortunately I recognized the problem even with the window open, I think I’ll send the whole thing back again. You can forget about support.
Herbert says
June 2019 at 06:50 Battery life
After several mails, I got a replacement thermostat free of charge – since then the system has been working again without any problems.
When I asked about the error, I didn’t get any information.
Basically, I am satisfied with the way the Tado system works! But the support is in need of improvement!
Michael says
September 2019 at 10:06 Times without any additional devices The iSense has built in a function especially for this case: “4.2.3. Function External heat If the temperature in the room where the controller is positioned reaches the desired value, the central heating switches off. This can happen if there is an open fireplace. or many people are present. In such a situation, the other rooms in the house are also no longer heated. You can turn on the external heat function to ensure that other rooms continue to be heated. This is done via the Program button. The room temperature sensor integrated in the controller is switched off. The water temperature in the central heating system at that time is then maintained. If it gets too cold or too warm in the other rooms, you can raise or lower the room temperature there by pressing the C button on the controller. This causes the water temperature in the heating system to increase or decrease.In order to further regulate the room temperature in the other rooms individually, you can equip the radiators with thermostatic valves.”
Tom Alby says
September 2019 at 20:25 Wow. All I can say is: RTFM, and thoroughly. I had read it, but apparently not thoroughly enough. I would have saved a lot of money and trouble. The only advantage of tado is that the temperature is at least kept exactly. And that when you’re not at home, you don’t have to think about anything. Thanks for the comment!
Dustin says
September 2019 at 13:13 I can only confirm your experiences in a similar way! The support doesn’t deserve the name. In my case, the bridge loses the connection to the cloud every day, which in turn means that the radiators can no longer be controlled via app, do not recognize an open window and do not notice when they should control up and down. The problem has existed since April 2019, I have now exchanged no less than 77 e-mails with Tado support, made several phone calls…. I document everything now because it seems so unbelievable…. Now, in mid-September, I need the system again and inevitably have to replace the thermostats soon, because I can’t heat properly like this. Instead of saving money, it tends to become more expensive. tado just hasn’t answered at all for 3 weeks now…. All my mails are disregarded. Previously, I was confirmed several times in writing that the problem was not related to my network and that similar errors were currently being investigated, so more time was needed…. as I said, since April it has been going like this…..tado…. please keep your hands off this system. It won’t be fun in the long run and the batteries in the thermostats have to be replaced every 6 months, you will be informed by mail (the mail text is the same every year….you apologize and want to extend the battery life by updating the system soon…)….but there doesn’t seem to be a solution for this either. The support pages on the Internet (please test the FAQ ́s before buying, you will notice it quickly yourself) could not be worse formulated…. You can’t get any help there
Guido Sommer says
October 2019 at 07:40 Hello Tom, I would have found your article in advance .-( I bought 18 thermostats – unfortunately our house built in 1930 is probably so well insulated that the bridge can serve a maximum of 2 floors! Do you have a tip which thermostats (which are controlled via WLAN) are good?
Thanks from Stuttgart Guido Sommer
Tom Alby says
October 2019 at 08:49 No, apart from the thermostats mentioned I have not tried anything.
Andreas Schorre says
October 2019 at 08:19 Hello, I have now two weeks the Tado system V3+, but only for central heating (5 thermostats + bridge) in an old apartment. For me, everything runs as it should, the “window open detection” works without problems, starts immediately and interrupts the heating process. Geofencing also detects my location (iPhone) exactly and starts heating, as it should be. I can’t understand the many points of criticism, at least for me, and hope it stays that way in the future! Of course, I can’t give an estimate of the battery life after two weeks, maybe the V3+ version of the software really has an extension of the battery life, it would be desirable. Although I will probably rely on rechargeable batteries, you can get them quite cheaply from brand manufacturers today and you only have the purchase costs once.
The “window open detection” and “geofencing” are only available in the premium version, otherwise you “only” receive a message and have to turn down the temperature alone, which should be enough for many users (who only hold the mobile phone in their hands anyway…). For my part, I got the annual subscription for 25 euros, because I find this automatic recognition very helpful and the price is also completely ok! (I work in IT and therefore probably see it with different eyes and experience) Unfortunately, many people with today’s stinginess-is-cool mentality don’t see it that way, seen in many chat comments…
I don’t want to praise Tado too early, but I also don’t want to declare every little thing to be a Tado problem. I noticed myself how I had to readjust several times in the old building (3.50 meters ceiling height) with the temperature correction in order to reach the really displayed temperature in the whole room….but it works! Once everything is well adjusted and you have exactly the result you wanted.
So if I don’t have any hardware failures or software problems now, then I’m actually very satisfied with Tado.
Tom Alby says
October 2019 at 09:15 Buying as early as I do has advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, you still have to struggle with the teething troubles, on the other hand, there was no subscription model at that time, so I don’t pay anything per month for the premium feature you mentioned. I only paid for the new app. I thought that was fair. Tado probably did not dare to introduce the subscription to the first customers retrospectively.
Regarding the batteries: This is definitely better from an environmental point of view and will also be noticeable in the wallet in the medium term. However, even with the best batteries, I have not achieved the times that I achieve with a normal battery. But of course, environmental protection takes precedence over comfort.
Achim Sökefeld says
December 2019 at 22:00 I am an architect and after a year and a half of using Tado, I deeply regret it. I saved 50 € in a year for a 100 m² apartment, constantly changed the batteries and constantly had the feeling that my apartment was too cold. A thermostat broke because a little thing fell on it. After an iPhone change, the old iPhone cannot be deleted, the app crashes constantly, data is wrong, for example, I am said to have opened the window 316 times in November. Nonsense, simply unrealistic. I don’t replace the thermostats just for the sake of appearance, but I think I only use them for manual control like my thermostats before.
Simon says
December 2019 at 23:02 Good evening! I have installed 13 Tado thermostats in my physiotherapy practice for a few days now. Of course, I don’t use the away function, because otherwise my employees plus patients would freeze to death while I’m on home visits. Despite all the initial skepticism, I have to say that it works quite well and I am quite satisfied at the moment. 250 m2 are well covered without radio interruptions. Impresses me. That’s how it should be. The support of Tado, however, can indeed be completely forgotten. I wanted to have a few questions answered before investing in the thermostats. Unfortunately, this is only possible via email, FAQ’s or chat (according to the lady from the chat). Email just takes me time to deal with it for days. I don’t sit at the computer all day and type. The same applies to the chat function. At first, a bot responds and after a short time at least a real person. But still, I don’t have the time to chat back and forth like with a friend. I want to get the questions answered quickly for me in order to decide for or against this system and to be able to continue searching. This could be clarified in a much more time-saving phone call. Tado has slackened off in this respect, as there was probably still a telephone service until recently. What a pity. But I found another company that sells these thermostats and could be reached by phone and could help. So much for my experiences so far.
Marco says
December 2019 at 11:01 Lots of negatives. Have you thought about what it would be or is like if you had/have a “traditional” room thermostat? Similar problems? Then all this is not a Tado problem… I am happy with the ability to check and control the room temperature via mobile phone. I don’t need a home/away functionality in my single-family home with several people. (I was not paid or commissioned by Tado. But aren’t some of the negative comments above from the competition? Some “influencers”, perhaps?)
Tom Alby says
December 2019 at 12:22 Sorry, but your comment gives me a stomachache. Have you read my article at all? Then you wouldn’t write some things like that. And I don’t believe in the influencers. At least other users have given real names here and you haven’t.
The Synology NAS has a particularly great feature, namely encrypted backup in the cloud via Hyper Backup. After I had sworn off unencrypted cloud services (including Dropbox), the combination of encrypted backup and the cloud flat rate of Amazon Prime was so attractive. Unfortunately, the backup unfortunately ate up the entire bandwidth of the upload volume, 12 MBit. This speeds up the backup, but also slows down the Internet in the home network.
The “Traffic Control” in Synology DSM was supposed to remedy this, but this is where the problems started. First of all, you can’t choose Hyper Backup as an application whose bandwidth is to be restricted. If the need is great, then of course you can also select all ports and allocate less bandwidth to them, for example 2,000 KB/s. And this is exactly where the mistake lies.
First of all, the port 443 of the destination folder must be selected, this is the port used by Amazon (and probably other services as well). And then comes the biggest misunderstanding, because 2,048 KB/s is not 2 MB/s, but something else that I haven’t understood so far. Because if I select 500 KB/s, then the NAS uses 5 MB/s.
How can that be? Maybe KB/s don’t mean kilobytes/s at Synology, but kilobits/s? But that wouldn’t be 5MBit/s, which Google Wifi now shows in the app.
Update July 2019: I retired the Google Wifi Pucks because they didn’t pass the long-term test. The new installation runs with a Netgear Orbi.
Although our apartment is at least not that big, at least it feels like it, the FritzBox 6490 cable router alone was too weak on the chest for the whole apartment; no wonder, it is also in the outermost corner of the apartment and not central. Initially, an AVM Fritzbox Repeater 310 supplemented the WLAN, but due to the lack of 5 GHz, this was replaced by the 1750 model. That worked quite ok, but not really smoothly either. It was not uncommon to catch the repeater with flashing LEDs, the Wi-Fi reception often did not reach the bathroom, and then there were always dropouts that I just couldn’t explain. According to the predominantly positive reports, a Google Wifi should solve the problems.
Google Wifi Mesh versus Extender/Repeater
In the hope that one station would be enough, at least that’s what the advertising sounded like, I ignored the double pack and bought only one component. First of all, that’s not enough, at least not if the device is in a corner of the 120sqm apartment. I don’t have fewer devices than before, and with 130-140€ per device, the combo is a more expensive alternative. But the advantages of the mesh network as well as the prospect of having peace and quiet with the constant network problems were worth the test for me. Nothing is as annoying as a stuttering movie because some component in the network has a problem at the moment. And setting up the repeater, including a guest mode, took several hours and many support emails.
A repeater has the disadvantage that it simply extends the signal of a WLAN, but some of the speed can be lost because there is an overhead in communication. Meshed networks, on the other hand, do not have this problem, they are simply ONE network; in addition to the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks, they have a third radio module through which the devices communicate with each other. So you don’t switch from the area of the main WIFI to that of the repeater, but are in a network all the time.
Setting up Google Wifi
Setup is super easy, the app guides you through the setup, and you’re ready to go within ten minutes. The latest software version of Google Wifi is downloaded, which accounts for the lion’s share of the time. To be honest, I had spent more time trying to open the package, which is mainly due to my inability to recognize and peel off scotch tape.
After the app reported that my Google Wifi was now ready, I turned off the Wi-Fi of the Fritzbox router and switched the connection to my new Wi-Fi. Setting up and configuring the Wi-Fi is really child’s play, only my Sonos system didn’t want to work afterwards, more on that below. It’s fun to use the app, test the internet connection and Wi-Fi speed in each room at the touch of a button. A guest wifi is set up very simply. What I’m missing, but I’m not only missing here, is an easy way to assign less speed to a device, because when the Synology NAS starts backing up to the cloud, the whole network becomes paralyzed (see also the article on how to reduce the upload speed of a Synology NAS).
By the way, it was only after 2 weeks that I realized that I had plugged the Google Wifi puck into a LAN socket of the FritzBox, which was “only” set to 100 Mbit/s. Since we were kindly given 200 Mbit/s by Vodafone for a few months, I slowed down our WLAN myself. Not that this was noticeable, the limiting factor is the upload speed anyway. But so I went from 91 Mbit/s to 189 Mbit/s in the tests. Of the 212 Mbit/s reported by the FritzBox, 23 Mbit are lost somewhere, but let’s be honest: Anyone who used to surf the net with a 56K modem will only complain here if that actually becomes a problem. An Internet connection that is over 3,400 times faster also goes hand in hand with much more loaded websites and movies, but that’s another story.
Setting up IPv6 is not easy, but this is not due to Google Wifi, but to the Fritzbox. The default settings here look like IPv6 is not a problem, but additional settings are required. For example, with “Also allow IPv6 prefixes that other IPv6 routers in the home network advertise” and with “Assign DNS server, prefix (IA_PD) and IPv6 address (IA_NA)”. Then Google Wifi doesn’t say that it works, but that the ISP may not support it. But it does in my case
But as already announced in the introduction: The WIFI only reached the other end of the apartment with a weak connection, if at all. Quite apart from that, I also hope to solve my SONOS problem, because the connection to Spotify kept breaking off.
Adding another Google Wifi node: iOS issues
So I went to the Mediamarkt, bought a second Google Wifi (yes, the double pack would have been cheaper), and quickly connected it to my home. The setup is just as easy as with the first device, here the addition of the network, only one thing bothered me: If I already agreed to receive purchase incentives and statistics about my network from Google when I installed the first Google Wifi, why am I asked again for the second device? If I say “no” now, will I no longer receive the mails for the first device?
Then the annoying stuff: For some reason, my iPhone went on strike after setting up the second node and didn’t want to connect to the network at all, while my Macbook was able to connect without any problems. Network settings reset, network ignored, everything tried, and still the iPhone (and the iPad went on strike in solidarity). It’s just stupid if the Google Wifi app is installed on it and you can no longer access the Google Wifi configuration without Internet access. Because there is no configuration option from the computer, only apps work. Quickly dig out the old Android phone, wonder about 50 update requests, and then quickly download the Google Wifi app. No problem. The network was running. Why didn’t iPhone and iPad want to go into Google Wifi anymore?
After half an hour, I had the idea to take a look at the IP address, the router address and the DNS servers that the iPhone and iPad had pulled. The error was that the DNS server had the same IP as the router, in this case 192.168.86.1. I don’t know if it was in there before, but it definitely didn’t work. In the Google Wifi app, “DNS of the ISP” was set, but apparently it didn’t work. So I entered a different DNS server under the iPhone settings, and it worked again. Google’s DNS server 8.8.8.8 is quite easy to remember, I recommend FreeDNS (37.235.1.174 and 37.235.1.177), as it does not log or redirect. So far, I haven’t discovered any difference to Google’s fast DNS servers. The problem with this approach, however, is that you can no longer make all settings with the app, because even if you are connected to the Google Wifi, the error message is that you should still connect to the Wifi.
SONOS and Google Wifi
Now let’s move on to SONOS. At first, I had given the Google Wifi the same name as my old WLAN, hoping that I wouldn’t have to change anything else. That didn’t work out. Then I remembered that a SONOS device is connected to the router with an Ethernet cable to have the advantages of a BOOST setup (independence from the router’s WLAN). In fact, however, Google Wifi is located on a different network, i.e. it assigns its own IP addresses to the connected devices. If the Fritzbox router assigns everything in the 192.168.178.x network, the Google Wifi is on the road with 192.168.86.x. The Google Wifi device offers a LAN connection, my Fritzbox 4, where Synology and an Arlo are in addition to the SONOS. The Arlo doesn’t matter, but the Synology and SONOS should be on the same network. Of course, you could also use the Google Wifi in bridge mode (and thus use the IPs of the Fritzbox and be on the same network), but then you can no longer build a mesh network. So that’s out of the question.
The remedy should be to reconfigure the SONOS system from BOOST to standard setup. This is not quite as easy as it sounds, because first of all at least one SONOS device has to be connected to Google Wifi via Ethernet. To make a long story short, uninterrupted music playing was only possible from the local music library, not Spotify or Soundcloud. I suspected that this was mainly due to the fact that the WLAN does not reach into the back rooms. My Synology NAS was connected to the LAN socket of the Google Wifi, which I’m not willing to dive against SONOS again and again, so either a switch has to be made… or just a second Google Wifi, which I bought. A SONOS device into the second Google Wifi, switched back to BOOST, and already… it didn’t work. Supposedly, the SONOS system automatically switches to BOOST as soon as a device is connected to the WLAN with Ethernet, but you still have to set up the wireless network again under the advanced settings. And then it worked without any problems with Spotify. I wonder why this is still necessary, because after all, in BOOST mode, a separate network is created for the SONOS devices. At least the controller app says that I’m in BOOST mode.
Google Wifi and Synology NAS
But then it gets really problematic with the Synology NAS. This should continue to be accessible from the outside. And this is where it gets difficult. Because the NAS is now connected to Google Wifi, it can no longer be accessed so easily via DDNS. Strangely enough, however, the QuickConnect link still works. I haven’t found a solution here yet…
Result
The setup is probably the easiest setup procedure I’ve ever seen on a Wifi device. The network seems more reliable, although the problems that occurred could probably not have been solved by a normal user. Only the long-term test will reveal how reliable this new network really is. The fewer complaints come from the family, the more the exchange was worth the money
Commissioning and initial experience with the Vorwerk Thermomix
The Thermomix as a data octopus
What good is the guarantee of success and guided cooking?
Conclusion: Is the Thermomix worth it?
Introduction
Either you hate him, or you love him. In between, there seems to be hardly anything on the net. Some say that you can buy something for a lot of money that you could do with a stove and good pots, others say that it is a huge relief in their lives and they don’t want to miss it anymore. We are talking about the Vorwerk Thermomix with all its accessories. This article is about the previous model of the current version, and some points have become obsolete: The WLAN module, for example, is now already included from the factory, but this was not the case with our TM5. But anyway, here is the original article!
Even after two months with the TM5, I find myself somewhere between anger about how dubious the business practices of the Vorwerk participants are in some places and what bad experiences have been made with the Thermomix, and the admission that cooking yourself is also satisfying and, above all, cheaper than delivery service, etc. The thought that you can save money by cooking more and ordering less, I can say that right away, you should get rid of it. It is very unlikely that the acquisition costs will ever be amortized,
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