"Wiser System - Great once initial Problems Solved"

I’ve had the Wiser system installed for a few months now. Like most people I had a few issues initially with the hub receiving a stable WiFi signal and the low range of the radiator thermostats back to the hub. I tend to read up a little on forums before buying a product so knew a little about these issues beforehand. So a WiFi extender near to the hub solved the WiFi connection issues and a smart plug on each level of the house solved the thermostat connection problems. All good.

However the one issue I did have ongoing was that all the additional thermostats I purchased from Screwfix had a really old firmware compared to those from Amazon. The system after a few weeks did not update the firmware automatically. I contacted Customer support a number of times (both email and phone) who worked through a few things to try but nothing worked. They came to the conclusion that the devices were faulty and I had to return them for replacement. I all I returned a hub and a few Thermostats. The replaced items still had the same issues....On phoning customer support again I spoke to someone who I hadn’t spoken to before, who suggested straight away a manual push of the firmware to all my devices by Drayton. This was done that evening and worked perfectly. Since then a number of firmware updates have completed automatically. Sorted. It probably means the initial devices returned as faulty were probably not faulty.

Anyway each time support were friendly and helpful and returned emails or answered the phones very quickly. I now have a fully working flexible system. I would echo the views of some that the missing device signal info is a shame as it must help with the placement of smart plugs to extend the network. I do believe this info was on previous versions of the App but was removed sometime last year. Is it an option to bring this back?

At present, I use Home Assistant with a Wiser plugin program which does show the signal strength for each device, but this may be beyond the average consumer to setup. It would be much better to have everything in one App. So all in all a good system, once setup correctly, that is updated regularly (both App and device firmware) and provides a good level of user flexibility to setup each room to the consumer’s needs. Hoping for more system updates in the future.

"Don't waste your money on Drayton TRV4…"

Don't waste your money on Drayton TRV4 radiator valves, the quality of these units is absolutely dreadful. I have had two units simply fall apart in the last 3 months. They were only 2 years old, they should last for many years.
How can they have the hypocricy to write 'British Built to Last' on the packaging especially as Drayton obviously know they are very poor quality as they will only warrant them for 12 months.
They weren’t even sufficiently concerned to ask me to return them in order to inspect them for their own benefit.

"Wiser - rubbish"

Wiser


We’ve had the system installed for about 2.5 months and initially we thought we’d give it the benefit of the doubt as we were told the issue was a poor WiFi connection. But having fixed the WiFi connection and checked download and upload speeds even next to the heat hub the issue persists.
The only means of support which is Phone support is very poor as they seem to read from the script and the script does not identify or solve the issue. Which suggests there is a fault with the product? And if not perhaps it would be simpler to have a list of local providers with the skills and experience to trouble shoot and fix. Failing which we’ve spent a lot of money on a system that doesn’t work. The provider we had spent 3 hours trying to get the system to connect to the WiFi - it still doesn’t work.

It’s a great idea - if only it would work - consistently.

"Not perfect but still a superb product."

The product is not perfect and you can see from many negative reviews it can be very frustrating.
First heathub WiFi problems. I had this early on but once I sorted my WiFi reception it has been faultless . Improving WiFi reception is a topic in itself so do your research. In my case I binned my fancy router and went back to virgin super hub, but something like a powerline to the nearest plug and a cheap router right next to your heathub should solve any problems.
Now comes RF connectivity. Wiser uses quite a high frequency RF and this means it struggles to get through obstacles well. I used to have much better reception in my house from far away devices. They do have plugs that you can connect up and which will extend the signal but those offer super weak signal and if they are too far away from each other they can lead to the whole system collapsing and showing like nothing is connected. Only power cycle of heathub would solve this. But it will come back eventually. I struggled with this for nearly a year and support has helped me resolve it by process of elimination. Essentially you will find a plug which seems to be in a location that does not allow it to connect reliably and it will collapse the whole system. By weeding it out and relocating I managed to have my whole house - 19rads covered. My system has been stable for over two months now.
The eco mode has some logics to miser a little bit extra saving. The great option is AwayMode which you can connect to IFTTT together with Logitech Pop Hutton to have a physical switch next to your front door which will turn on and off your away mode. My away mode is set to cap my temperatures at 18 for normal days so getting house back to comfortable does not take too long and I change it to 16 for holidays to max out the saving. Note, this is over and above your schedules - I have my living room at 16 overnight and during the morining on weekdays when kids are at school, but on 20 in the evenings and on weekend. Now whenever I’m out on weekend I just slap my Logitech Pop and boom Away Mode ON notification from IFTTT. On the way back home usually my life360 will pick up me or wife approaching from a quarter mile and turn off the Away mode in advance of my arrival but I still have to Pop to make sure if that didn’t work. I effectively do not need to interact with the somewhat clunky App.
I have not tried OpenTherm as Worcester requires a special protocol translation unit at eur50 to be ordered from Europe plus Worcester’s own Wave controller that I have in permanent manual override seems to modulate system temperature fine based on load and outside temperature and it has more features (like weekly hot water tank automatic disinfection, gas usage history) etc. I just didn’t want to risk it with wiser after all the troubles I had.
Support has been great but it does depend on who you get and whenever I had trouble I was passed to the same person who always managed to figure things out for me.
It chews through batteries fast. Not crazy fast but unreasonably fast. In a year I had been through two sets of alkalines. What’s worse the alkalines typical steep voltage drop means they need to be recalibrated after about 2 months or they will fail to close the valves and leave your rooms wasting heat. I am experimenting with high quality Eneloop rechargeables against the advice from support who say rechargeables voltage is not sufficient. I am bettering that high quality rechargeables like Eneloop have better voltage stability and will require less recalibration not to mention will last much longer. Try at own risk. It’s worth it to me with 24 devices.
What could make this perfect for me.
NOTIFICATIONS. This stuff controls heating - it has to have redundancy but it is WiFi based, rf based plus subject to battery drain and calibration issues. There is no notification from the cloud to tell you heathub lost connection to it and this is important is it can do nothing without internet. There is no notification to tell you device has disconnected, or the valve is not closing and needs attention. The problem with disconnected devices they do not default to closes valve state but stay as they were and you can do nothing remotely. I once watched for a week on holiday as my unoccupied attic room which lost connection for its rad thermostat but had room thermostat connected was getting heated to 25 degrees warming up my whole town. Whilst I don’t have problems with disconnection any more It is possible especially if I lost track of batteries. Also I do have to keep an eye on my room temperature history as this is the only way I can tell if my radiator controls are not closing properly. When this is done I will be a full five star for the product. It’s not perfect but it does everything I need with minimal fuss - that is once notifications are implemented

"Outlived by the AA batteries."

Outlived by the AA batteries.

Company's response when we phoned them: "software error, buy another one". Model I had was Digistat +3 RF.

"Awful"

It barely ever works. I’m very surprised with the few positive comments.
I can never connect any more, I’ve tried everything. Worked for 6 months and now it’s broken.

"Great value, quality product, dedicated support"

After a huge amount of research into different systems, really impressed with our new Wiser set up.

Easy to fit, high quality controls, and unlike other systems, the affordable TRVs mean we can much better control our house room by room.

The app works exactly as expected, and although fine tuning the remote side has been a challenge, it's now well worth it and the support has been exceptional. I'd imagine most people wouldn't have the router issues I did, so I'm more than happy to recommend.

"Smart plugs that are not smart. Customer services....."

Recent updates have rendered (as confirmed by Drayton support) ten - yes 10! So called smart plugs useless.
They cannot be used as smart plugs or wireless extenders without causing radiators thermostats to stop working.
Drayton have confirmed only way for radiators to work is to stop using plugs.
This was after blaming Wi-fi router, password changes, reseting all valves and thermostats.
Only found (then confirmed) after stopping and unplugging the ‘smart plugs’.
Two weeks later, Drayton have yet to confirm what they will do about these expensive unusable plugs.

"Temperature display reads 21s rather than 21.5"

The system was fine. There were the odd drop outs but this was fine as it always manged to reconnect. So we were happy.

Then the developer decided to "improve" the display on the room thermostat. For some reason a decision has been made to remove the decimal point from the temperature display. So it now shows the temperature with no decimal point, but instead using a small 5. So it looks like it reads 21s rather than 21.5.

I don't why you came up with the idea of removing the decimal point, contrary to all recognised use of numbers.

Purchasers beware, all of the promotional material used by Drayton to advertise the product use the old format. I can only imagine they won't update the photos on their website to reflect the new display as why would they want to publisise they now display temperatures as plurals.

Here's hoping they revert it back.

"The best domestic heating controller around. The best customer service I have ever encountered from any company."

A very comprehensive system for controlling domestic heating and hot water. You can set it up as a very simple system or very complex, by adding radiator valves and smart switches. It can all be controlled from a smartphone. My old central heating controller died 6 weeks ago and I replaced it with a Wiser 3. I phoned Drayton for advice after reading about it and they patiently answered all my questions. They have been brilliant helping me to set it up properly. They answer the phone or emails very quickly and give good, simple to understand advice. 5++ stars for customer service, but overall only 4 stars, as I would like to see a bit more flexibility in the controls available..
Certainly the best system around, and the best customer service of ANY company I've ever approached!