I installed my Zen thermostat last week for use with my smartthings hub. It was actually replacing a Nest, which is hard to beat on ease of installation, but the Zen was surprisingly easy to install. My only complaints are that it doesn’t come with a screwdriver but I used my old nest one 🙂 (and glad I didn’t pay for another screwdriver), and that the wire-identification stickers can fall off, so make sure to stick them on really well.

I especially liked the online installation walk-through — you check the boxes for which wires you have it customizes the installation and configuration steps. Nice touch. And the magnetic mounting system is really satisfying for some reason. I do like how it automatically goes into preferences mode when you take it off the wall and thermostat mode when you put it back on. Oh! And it’s hard to tell but there’s a protective plastic sticker on the face…take that off and it looks so much nicer, if easier to get fingerprints on.

The thermostat looks fantastic on my wall, even with the backplate, and I love how it just fades away into the background when I leave it alone for a few minutes. I had an issue with my smartthings hub initially (my fault…running beta firmware) and left it as just a “dumb” thermostat for a few days and it still did a great job. It’s been operating my condo’s system seemingly flawlessly for a couple of weeks, and I haven’t had to go mess with it as much as I did the nest. Very happy backer here, it definitely exceeded my expectations.

This review is from an Indiegogo backer as appeared on Amazon review page.