Shopping for a smart thermostat that works with the new Matter standard? There aren’t many to choose from, but now you’ve got one more option.
Smart home manufacturer Meross has just unleashed its first thermostat to support Matter, the 2-year-old protocol that allows the big smart-home platforms to play nice with each other.
On sale now for $69.99 (a $30 price cut from its $99.99 list price), the Meross Smart Wi-Fi Thermostat is rated to work with 95 percent of HVAC systems, including single- and multi-stage furnaces, boilers, air conditioners, heat pumps, and fan coil units.
One thing the Meross thermostat won’t do is work with heating and cooling setups in Europe; instead, the device is strictly for stateside use.
The Meross thermostat also requires a C (or “common”) wire; if you live in an older home without a C wire, the thermostat can still work with help from an adapter.
From a design standpoint, the Meross thermostat comes in a sleek white housing with a glass touch panel, complete with LED indicators for current and set temperature, heating and cooling status, and wireless connectivity.
The Meross app lets you set up heating and cooling schedules, and it also tracks your HVAC energy consumption over time.
Best of all, the new Meross thermostat works with Matter, the smart home-unifying standard that made its debut roughly two years ago.
Thanks to Matter, the Meross thermostat will work with Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings, along with their respective voice assistants.
The Meross device’s Matter connectivity comes via Wi-Fi rather than Thread, the latter being a low-power, high-reliability wireless connection that’s an integral part of the Matter standard. Thread-enabled devices can connect to each other, creating self-healing mesh networks, whereas Matter-over-Wi-Fi devices are dependent on a Wi-Fi router.
While thermostats were among the first categories of smart devices to support the Matter standard, there are still only a handful of Matter-enabled thermostats on the market.
Google makes two of them: the Nest Thermostat and the fourth-generation Nest Learning Thermostat, while the Aqara Radiator Thermostat E1 works with Matter in conjunction with the Aqara Zigbee 3.0 Hub. The exclusive club is rounded out by the EU-only Tado X thermostat.
We’ll have a full review of the Meross Smart Wi-Fi Thermostat once we check out a sample unit.
Author: Ben Patterson, Senior Writer, TechHive
Ben has been writing about technology and consumer electronics for more than 20 years. A PCWorld contributor since 2014, Ben joined TechHive in 2019, where he has covered everything from smart speakers and soundbars to smart lights and security cameras. Ben's articles have also appeared in PC Magazine, TIME, Wired, CNET, Men's Fitness, Mobile Magazine, and more. Ben holds a master's degree in English literature.