Smart home cost of entry dipped with Honeywell Lyric T5 Smart Thermostat

By Bruce Brown Published September 28, 2016

For many people, a connected home starts with a smart thermostat.

Honeywell recently added the Lyric T5 Wi-Fi Thermostat with a new look and a lower price point to its existing lineup of smart thermostats and other Lyric connected home products.

Recommended Videos

Like the other products in the Lyric lineup, which includes water leak detection and home security systems in addition to thermostats, the T5 can be remotely controlled with the Lyric mobile app, available for both iOS and Android devices. Lyric products also work with Apple HomeKit and Amazon Echo for more control features and for greater integration with additional smart home products that use If This, Then That (IFTTT) home control scripts.

honeywell_lyric_body — Lyric T5 Wi-Fi Thermostat Image used with permission by copyright holder

The Lyric T5’s $150 price is $50 less than the Lyric Round Wi-Fi Thermostat. The T5 has a rectangular display that enables more information on the screen than the original Round model. Paired with an Amazon Echo for voice control, the T5 lowers smart home cost of entry without compromising features.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

The Lyric T5 supports geofencing. With geofencing, when people leave the home, which the T5 detects via the location of the paired mobile devices, the thermostat can be configured to go into an energy-saving mode. The thermostat can also be set up to re-adjust the temperature settings when it detects the first person returns home.

If you prefer fixed heating and cooling settings, the Lyric T5’s mobile app scheduling feature can configure a standard seven-day schedule.

A series of Lyric Smart Alerts can send notifications of extreme home interior temperatures or humidity and also remind you when it is time to change your HVAC filters.

Convenience, control from any location, and cost-savings are target design benefits for any smart home device. With its lower price point, feature set, and compatibility with other connected home standards, the Lyric T5 Thermostat looks like it will fit right in.

Topics

Contributing Editor

Bruce Brown Contributing Editor As a Contributing Editor to the Auto teams at Digital Trends and TheManual.com, Bruce…

Mobile

T-Mobile 5G home internet: Coverage, speeds, and plans

how to unlock your iphone use with another carrier t mobile hq sign feat 720x720

Verizon may have been the first to start deploying actual 5G, but its network was small and spotty. T-Mobile was the first to an arguably much more important title -- the first to launch nationwide 5G network coverage. And, along with that nationwide network, the company has also started deploying its 5G home internet service.

Unlike Verizon, T-Mobile was initially quiet about its 5G home internet service, and it would be easy not to have known that it even had one. But since then, the company has announced its availability to the public -- and it will likely continue to roll out to more users over the next few years.

Mobile

T-Mobile’s 5G home internet service is now finally official

t mobile 5g home internet.

T-Mobile is finally -- and officially -- getting into the home internet game. The company has been testing its home internet service for a while now, but now it's moving out of that phase and launching its service to the public.

According to T-Mobile, 30 million households are now eligible to sign up for the service, and 10 million of those households are in rural areas. Pricing on the service sits at $60 with auto pay or $65 without. There are no fees for equipment rental, and T-Mobile says that customers will install their own equipment -- which should be easier than cable-based internet services.

Smart Home

5G’s arrival has great implications for the smart home’s growth

5G mobile network

Now that Verizon has officially launched nationwide coverage for its 5G network -- the last of the major carriers to do so -- the new era of cellular networks has finally arrived. The increased speeds, reduced latency, and ready availability of 5G have huge implications in the growth of the smart home industry for a variety of reasons, but it ultimately boils down to this: 5G makes the smart home smarter.
How 5G works
Most people recognize 5G for its blazing speeds, but the network is more than just fast. The reason lies in its architecture. While 5G is fast (in some cases, 100 times faster than 4G), it is also more efficient. It uses "high-band" frequencies. Asan example, imagine a squiggly line (or a waveform.) Longer lines with more shallow peaks are considered low-to-midrange frequencies. These travel farther and handle obstacles like walls better, but carry less information.

On the other hand, high-band frequencies can be imagined like a short line with high peaks and low valleys. This type of frequency carries a tremendous amount of information, but is often stopped by walls and obstacles. Older networks only used low and midrange bands, which limited their speed.