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Having a smart thermostat is a good way to save on electric costs, but it allows you to do so without sacrificing comfort. A smart thermostat can keep the temperatures around the house just the way you like it while also keeping electric consumption low.
You can get smart air conditioners and smart vents to help regulate the temperature around your home.
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Smart air conditioners
If you are one of those people who like to come home to a cool house, especially on a sweltering summer day, then you should get a smart air conditioner. These smart ACs come with a mobile app that allows you to turn your unit on or off even when you are not home.
This way, you save money while also enjoying the cool comforts of an air-conditioned room.
Frigidaire Gallery 10,000 BTU Cool Connect™ Smart Room Air Conditioner with Wi-Fi Control
The Frigidaire Gallery 10,000 BTU Cool Connect Smart Room Air Conditioner with Wi-Fi Control combines eye-catching design with cost savings and smart features that make it a top choice for anybody looking for a smart air conditioner.
It has 10,000 BTUs, which makes it perfect for rooms with a floor area of up to 450 square meters.
Great look. The Frigidaire Gallery has a modern-looking and stylish mesh grill, making it look like an air conditioning from the future. It measures 19.0 inches wide by 24.6 inches high, and 14.5 inches deep. This makes it perfect for windows 23 to 26 inches in width and 15.5 inches high.
This air conditioning unit has slanted louvers that can blast cold air upward in a circular pattern, ensuring that it can cool the entire room quickly and evenly. It also makes sure of an antibacterial mesh filter that is very easy to remove and clean.
Smart. You can use the Frigidaire mobile app to control your air conditioning from anywhere in the world. You can turn it on or off, change the temperature, and change the fan speed or control modes even when you are not home.
The mobile app also allows you to create schedules on when your Frigidaire should automatically turn your air conditioning on or off. This Frigidaire Gallery unit also supports voice commands using Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.
Savings. The Frigidaire Gallery allows you to save more money while maintaining comfort. Instead of leaving your air conditioning on the entire day so that you can come home to a cool house, you can just use the mobile app to turn it on a few minutes before you get home.
Or you can just schedule it to turn itself on or off at certain times of the day.
Other features worth noting:
- Clean air ionizer: This air conditioning comes with an ionizer that can help keep your air clean by removing impurities, pollen, and dust.
- Sleep mode: This will lessen your energy usage by increasing the temperature of the air conditioner as it becomes colder outside.
- Remote control: The Frigidaire Gallery comes with its own remote control. So, even if you do not have your smartphone with you, you can rely on this remote control to operate your air conditioning unit. This makes it perfect for households with kids or the elderly who typically have no access to smartphones.
- Certified by Energy Star: The Frigidaire Gallery uses less energy to deliver the same level of cool compared to other air conditioners. In fact, this unit is certified with a 12 rating, making it one of the most energy-efficient air conditioners available in the market now.
LG LP1415WXRSM 14,000 BTU Cooling Portable Air Conditioner Cooling
If you have a larger room, or a room with a floor area of up to 500 square meters, consider getting an LG LP1415WXRSM 14,000 BTU Cooling Portable Air Conditioner Cooling.
The LG LP1415WXRSM has 14,000 BTU that makes it enough to cool a room of that size. The LG LP1415WXRSM features a LED display and comes with a remote control.
The LG LP1415WXRSM has a built-in humidifier that rids your room of excess moisture, helping make the room feel more comfortable. You can control this smart air conditioner from anywhere with the included mobile app.
You can also change the temperature, create schedules, and even create favorites, which would allow different temperature and fan control settings to be saved on the app.
The beauty of the LG LP1415WXRSM is that it does not set out to revolutionize the smart portable air conditioner space. It works and looks just like your old non-smart air conditioner, only it has Wi-Fi connectivity.
It does win because of the dehumidifier, as well as the caster wheels that make it very easy to move around. It is also perfect for larger rooms. In short, the LG LP1415WXRSM keeps things simple while delivering reliable cooling for you and your family.
It does come with some downsides, though. It does not work with voice commands and it can be a little noisy, which is understandable because of its cooling capacity.
Runners up
If you have smaller rooms that you would like to cool with a smart air conditioner, you can check out Quirky + GE Aros Smart Air Conditioner.
Quirky + GE Aros Smart Air Conditioner would have been our top pick for the best smart AC for 2018. However, it is a rather dated AC as it was released in 2014. Since then, Quirky and General Electric had a public fallout when it filed for bankruptcy in 2015.
Nevertheless, the Quirky + GE Aros Smart Air Conditioner is worth a mention because it is the most features-packed smart AC to date. Like every smart AC, you can use a mobile app to control and operate the air conditioner from anywhere in the world.
Plus, it has some unique features that set it apart from other AC brands and models. For instance, it learns your behavior so it could adjust the temperature on its own.
It uses your phone’s GPS to know when you are at home or not and turns the air conditioner on or off accordingly. It originally sold for $600, but you can buy it online for only $479.99. Not bad for a feature-rich smart air conditioner that has a cooling capacity of 8,000 BTU!
There’s also the smaller Frigidaire Gallery FGRC0844S1 Cool Connect, which sells for $400 and has a cooling capacity of 8,000 BTU, which is perfect for rooms up to 350 square meters in floor area. This is a hassle-free plug-and-play smart AC that works with voice commands, a mobile app, and its own remote control.
There are also other workarounds to getting a connected air conditioner. For instance, if you have a perfectly working non-smart air conditioner, you can easily get a $35 Wemo Insight Smart Plug that could turn it into a Wi-Fi AC and monitor its power consumption.
Or you could get the $120 Sensibo Sky that can warm or cool rooms in your house automatically, while also giving you the ability to remotely control your non-smart air conditioner or heat pump.
Side by side comparison of the best smart air conditioners
| Model | Frigidaire FGRC1044T1 Cool Connect | LG LP1415WXRSM | Frigidaire FGRC0844S1 Cool Connect | Quirky Aros |
| Price | $479.00 | $629.99 | $399.00 | $479.99 |
| Type | Window mounted | Portable | Window mounted | Window mounted |
| BTUs | 10,000 | 14,000 | 8,000 | 8,000 |
| Weight | 63.0 lbs | 71.6 lbs | 60 lbs | 64 lbs |
| Wi-Fi + App? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Works with Amazon Alexa | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Works with Google Assistant | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Air Purification | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Dimensions (WxHxD, inches) | 19.0 x 24.6 x 14.5 | 18.5 x 33.0 x 13.0 | 12.1 x 15.1 x 29.8 | 24 x 21 x 16 |
| IR Remote | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Smart vents
Smart vent systems let you set the ideal temperature in every room in your house. If you want a particular room to be warmer, it will send more warm air into that room until it reaches your desired temperature.
This way, you do not have to warm an unused room or suffer from uncomfortable heat in a room that gets plenty of sunlight.
Keen Home Smart Vent
The Keen Home Smart Vent helps you customize the temperature of the different rooms in your house. For instance, if one of your rooms gets especially warm in the summer, the Keen Home Smart Vent can easily divert warm air from that room into to the colder rooms.
The Keen Home Smart Vent has pressure and temperature sensors that monitor your HVAC system. It is also very quiet because of the top-notch airfoil louvers designs.
Moreover, Keen uses minimalist-looking faceplates that you can paint over. These faceplates are attached to the vent itself with magnets, making it easier to pull off so that you could clean it or replace the batteries easily. These smart vents look good and vanilla enough to blend with your ceiling.
Keen Home Smart Vent is compatible with SmartThings, Nest, Iris, and Ecobee. You could, for instance, have it communicate with Ecobee thermostats. It could use the thermostat’s temperature sensors to be more on point when delivering more warm air to a cold room.
The Keen Home Smart Vent comes in different sizes and prices that range from $109 to $134. It is part of the company’s zoning system, so you could also buy temperature sensors for each room at $25 each.
You could also buy the smart bridge, which connects your smart vent to the temperature sensors and your smartphone, along with other devices you want the Keen Home Smart Vent to work with. The smart bridge sells for $44.99.
Ecovent
Ecovent is another zoning system that uses vents, sensors, and smart hub to make sure that each room of your house is at the temperature you want it. It works with Sensi Wi-Fi Thermostat, but there are workarounds for other Wi-Fi thermostats.
Ecovent works similarly to Keen’s smart vents in that you need to install smart vents in each room of your house along with temperature sensors. These devices would connect to the smart hub, allowing each device to connect with one another.
You will see all the rooms and their temperatures on the mobile app, and you can adjust it from there. The smart vents will then work to direct more warm air to the rooms you want to be toasty and comfortable.
Ecovent does not publish individual prices for its devices, but to get an idea, their suggested configuration for the typical 1,500-square-foot home costs $2,750.
This includes eight smart vents, five temperature sensors, the control hub, a smart thermostat, and the remote install package. If that is too steep for you, you might want to pay in 36 monthly installments of $54 each.
Patrick Sinclair is a geek; make no mistake about that. He runs All Home Robotics in his spare time so he doesn’t have to think about his depressing cubicle and it gives him an excuse to buy expensive gadgets to review!
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