It’s been pretty hot on Oahu. Just this week, we’ve had highs ranging from 88 to 90 degrees, plus high humidity. My car’s outside temperature reading even hit 94 degrees!

In other words, it’s been air conditioner weather. Good old A/C. And while many Hawaii residents have A/C to help them weather this weather, some are forced to actually get up from the comfort of their couch to physically turn on or adjust the settings. The horror.

As I dare venture into the realm of first world problems, I’ll note that most recent A/C units are endowed with remote controls. So, at the very most, all one needs to do at the first sign of perspiration is merely lean forward, grab the remote, and condition their air from the comfort of the couch.

The sleek, modern Tado Smart AC Control device is about the size of a coaster and the thickness of a smartphone.

Jason Rushin

But American ingenuity can do better. A year or so ago, the Aros A/C was introduced with the tagline, “Ditch your dumb window A/C for Aros, because Aros is smart.”

It’s smart because it comes with its own smartphone app that lets you control it from anywhere, program it to match your schedule, or even turn it on or off based on your location. (It’s also currently on sale at Amazon for $170-ish, if you’re in the market.)

And where would we be without German ingenuity? Tado, based in Munich, recently released its “Smart AC Control,” and I’ve been testing a review unit at my home for the past few days.

Tado turns any remote-controllable A/C into a smart A/C. It’s a sleekly designed, all white, dare I say Jony Ive-like piece of hardware that would look nice in even the most luxurious or modern home … minus the USB cable running to a power outlet.

Tado acts as another remote control for your existing A/C unit, but it’s also linked to your Internet connection via Wi-Fi so it can condition your air via a smartphone app automatically (or manually from anywhere you have a connection). The wall unit is also equipped with sleek touch controls that glow from behind the white case, seemingly from nowhere, allowing you to control the A/C without your phone.

Setting Up The Smarts

If you’ve ever set up a universal remote control, the setup for Tado is similar but done via the smartphone app. Once you enter the Tado’s serial number and unit code and plug the unit’s power cord into a socket, the app walks you through the Wi-Fi connection and the setup for your particular brand of A/C.

For other universal remotes that I’ve used, you scroll through codes until you find one that works with your piece of equipment. For Tado, it showed 39 possible codes for my Mitsubishi Electric split A/C unit … and then took the time to go through all 39 codes, asking me to confirm for each if the A/C beeped or not. It turned a quick and easy setup into a 20-minute operation.

Tado’s smartphone app gives you complete control over your A/C from anywhere, or can completely automate your A/C based on time of day or whether you’re home or away.

Jason Rushin

When finished, you simply rely on Tado’s wall unit or the app to act as your new remote control, or you can set up different “smart schedules” that coincide with whether you’re home, away, or sleeping. Just enter the time you go to sleep and wake up, and the app does the rest.

For example, if you like it cold when you sleep, comfortable when you’re at home, and totally off when you’re away, Tado takes care of it automatically. Even more, Tado claims that its away mode is smart enough to know roughly how far away you are and adjusts the temperature dynamically so that your home is at the proper temperature the moment you arrive.

What Tado is missing are the breadth of controls offered by the A/C’s manufacturer. For example, my A/C has five fan speed settings but Tado only gives me three. The manufacturer’s remote also offers settings for the right-to-left and up-and-down direction of the airflow, but Tado does not.

While Tado is another interesting piece of the “smart home” bandwagon that everyone from Apple to Google to Home Depot is trying to jump on, the ultimate question is this: do you really need it?

How Smart Does Your A/C Need To Be?

I’m a sucker for the next new thing. When I first read about Tado, I thought that it was my next must-have gadget for the home. Being in Hawaii and not needing home heating, I always felt a little left out of the Nest Learning Thermostat thing. Tado was to be my home automation savior!

But with a price of $199 per Tado, and with my home having four A/C units, I can’t really justify $800 against any energy savings or convenience factor. Sure, it would be nice to have my living room at a comfy temperature when I come home, but I usually leave some windows open anyway and that wouldn’t be very efficient. Also, turning on the A/C and waiting a few minutes for the air to be conditioned appropriately isn’t that big of a burden, even with a first-world mindset.

I can imagine a worst-case scenario of going off-island and accidentally leaving the A/C on in one or two rooms for a week or so, and it would be great to have the ability to remotely turn them off. But that’s still not an $800 pain, even if it happens a few times per year. I could also call a neighbor.

Lastly, with the Aros smart window A/C unit being $30 cheaper than a single Tado control unit, you’d save money by replacing your window A/C with the Aros rather than buying a Tado to control your existing A/C.

Tado Smart AC Control is a nifty product, and both the hardware and the app are sleek and modern. But I’m not sure that the benefits match the price tag.