Commercial Electric Smart Thermostat review: Hubspace climate control

Home Depot has rapidly expanded the smart home products in its Hubspace ecosystem since its introduction in late 2021. Now, the Commercial Electric Smart Thermostat joins the company’s smart plug, sprinkler controller, ceiling fan, and various lighting and lighting control offerings.

If you’re not familiar with Hubspace, you might be surprised to learn that it doesn’t involve a central hub. Hubspace devices communicate over either Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and are controlled or programmed with the company’s mobile app. Hubspace devices can also be integrated with Amazon Alexa or Google Home for voice control, but they’re not currently compatible with Apple’s HomeKit or the Matter standard.

Given this thermostat’s $79 price tag, I didn’t expect to encounter a lot of bells and whistles, but it covers the basics, including schedules you can program in the Hubspace app, with presets such as wake, leave, return, sleep, and a vacation mode that can temporarily override those schedules. Unlike more sophisticated—and more expensive—smart thermostats, you won’t get remote sensors for monitoring conditions in other rooms in your home.

Installation and setup

Getting the Commercial Electric Smart Thermostat installed wasn’t all smooth sailing. The wiring part was easy enough—if you don’t have a C-wire in your wall for power (I do), Home Depot includes an adapter kit in the box—but I encountered issues getting it to connect to my Wi-Fi network using the Hubspace app after it was powered up.

Jason D’Aprile/Foundry

It only recognizes 2.4GHz Wi-Fi networks for starters, which can lead to complications with multiband Wi-Fi routers. In my case, the app just refused to connect the thermostat to my network. So, I called Home Depot’s tech support and was instructed to use a different phone, as the thermostat has compatibility issues with some Samsung smartphones. I switched to an iPhone, but it still took a couple of attempts before it joined my Wi-Fi network..

Later, the smartphone app would sometimes report that it was connected to the thermostat over Bluetooth, because it couldn’t connect over Wi-Fi. That’s not a problem if you’re at home, but if the thermostat isn’t on your Wi-Fi network, you won’t be able to control it over the internet when you’re not home.

I also noticed a delay with the app synchronizing with the thermostat—they were reporting very different temperature readings. The glitch seemed to go away after a few hours, and I was able to use the app to make temperature changes without a problem, so maybe these are just early gremlins (Home Depot only put the product on its shelves the day after I finished my review).

Day-to-day use

Jason D’Aprile/Foundry

The thermostat itself offers a somewhat barebones interface, with a large easy-to-read display showing the current temperature. To the right of that are backlit indicator icons and a nub-like button for changing your HVAC system’s modes: heating, cooling (if you have an air conditioner), fan-only mode, and auto. Up- and down arrow buttons let you select the target temperature.

The thermostat seemed slow to send commands to my HVAC system in response to the temperature targets I would set, reporting higher or lower temperatures than I had programmed it to achieve for longer than seemed necessary for my system to kick into action—at least compared to the thermostat I usually use. It’s probably not something that I would have noticed if I wasn’t reviewing the product, but it does color my opinion of it.

Should you buy a Commercial Electric Smart Thermostat?

Home Depot’s Commercial Electric Smart Thermostat is one of the least expensive smart thermostats on the market, but it doesn’t outperform our top pick in that category: the Amazon Smart Thermostat that Amazon designed in partnership with Resideo (of the Honeywell Home brand). But if you’re deciding between the two and you don’t have C-wire in your wall, be sure to consider that Amazon charges $25 extra for an adapter. Amazon’s thermostat does not work with Google Home, either.

If you’re looking for a prettier smart thermostat that supports HomeKit as well as Alexa and Google Home, Walmart was selling several colors of the entry-level Nest Thermostat for $88.99 at press time (and you might not need a C-wire to connect it). Finally, if you want all those features plus the option of adding remote sensors, I can recommend the Ecobee3 Lite, which Best Buy was selling for $129.99 at press time (it comes with a C-wire adapter, if you need one).