Tuya vs TP Link Kasa TRVs?

waqasahmed

You can get Tuya TRVs for around £10-15 ish on aliexpress

Kasa TRVs are currently on amazon for around £22 each. There's not a big gulf of a difference in price between the two

I did look at Drayton Wiser, Tado X, Hive etc.. and I figured that I'd actually want Tado X once I go "full ufh" but then the TRVs become basically useless and you've spent £800 for TRVs at £80 each that won't even have paid for themselves. Octopus energy also don't exactly give you a discount code for Tado X (but do for Tado V3)

With that in mind, I'm looking at Tuya, Sonoff, TP link or tbh any others in that sorta price range. Does anyone know which are better?

Thanks 

SaverRate

I have the TP Link Kasa Valves for a few years now. Simple to use and never really had a problem with them. 

waqasahmed

SaverRate said:

I have the TP Link Kasa Valves for a few years now. Simple to use and never really had a problem with them. 

Are they quiet? What do you use for your thermostat too? Or do you just rely on these TRVs? 

alanwsg

Not TRV's (I have a Hive TRV to match my Thermostat) but Smart Switches,
I have Tuya (SmartLife App) and Sonoff (eWeLink App)

All work pretty well but the Tuya/SmartLife stuff  'feels' less reliable.
They reconnect to my router fairly often and their server has gone down a couple of times meaning I have to get up and prod a button to switch a light on - Like a savage!

The Sonoff stuff seems much more 'Rock solid'. It never reconnects and just seems to work all the time. So Far.

waqasahmed

alanwsg said:

Not TRV's (I have a Hive TRV to match my Thermostat) but Smart Switches,
I have Tuya (SmartLife App) and Sonoff (eWeLink App)

All work pretty well but the Tuya/SmartLife stuff  'feels' less reliable.
They reconnect to my router fairly often and their server has gone down a couple of times meaning I have to get up and prod a button to switch a light on - Like a savage!

The Sonoff stuff seems much more 'Rock solid'. It never reconnects and just seems to work all the time. So Far.

One would imagine though that their Zigbee stuff would work better than their WiFi stuff? 

gollum007

The Kasa TRVs as well as the Sonoff are going to be essentially identical hardware wise to the Tuya stuff from Aliexpress.

All they're really doing is a custom app and (possibly) more importantly support if it goes wrong.

waqasahmed

gollum007 said:

The Kasa TRVs as well as the Sonoff are going to be essentially identical hardware wise to the Tuya stuff from Aliexpress.

All they're really doing is a custom app and (possibly) more importantly support if it goes wrong.

Yeah the software and support is more the biggy for me too

In that case I'll go ahead and order a load of Kasa TRVs

Bendo

Tuya,  avoid generally. I'd have thought the sonoff ones will just be zigbee and kasa ones will be proprietary. Been a while since I looked at kasa stuff though.

waqasahmed

Bendo said:

Tuya,  avoid generally. I'd have thought the sonoff ones will just be zigbee and kasa ones will be proprietary. Been a while since I looked at kasa stuff though.

Fair. Tbh this should hopefully be "temporary" until I get underfloor heating. Then I'd want the Tado X with heat pump control too but I figure it's difficult to justify spending £880 on just TRVs if I'm looking to get ufh

Bendo

I have 5 Hive ones and 4 Devolo branded ones I picked up on Amazon a few years back for about £15 in total (assume they were old stock as Devolo don't seem to make them anymore)

The Devolo ones work fine, the only downside I had was they are Zwave so I had to pick up a zwave stick for my Home Assistant setup. Not a big issue the TRVs were cheap as chips anyway.

I primarily use the Hive ones on rads I switch frequently using the Hive heat on demand feature to boost the heating. That said, I wouldn't have bought the Hive ones if I had HA in place beforehand as I could easily automate the heating boost through home assistant.

If I was buying now, my main consideration would be that they use an open protocol so either Zigbee or Zwave so they could be controlled locally without and cloud based services involved.

waqasahmed

Bendo said:

I have 5 Hive ones and 4 Devolo branded ones I picked up on Amazon a few years back for about £15 in total (assume they were old stock as Devolo don't seem to make them anymore)

The Devolo ones work fine, the only downside I had was they are Zwave so I had to pick up a zwave stick for my Home Assistant setup. Not a big issue the TRVs were cheap as chips anyway.

I primarily use the Hive ones on rads I switch frequently using the Hive heat on demand feature to boost the heating. That said, I wouldn't have bought the Hive ones if I had HA in place beforehand as I could easily automate the heating boost through home assistant.

If I was buying now, my main consideration would be that they use an open protocol so either Zigbee or Zwave so they could be controlled locally without and cloud based services involved.

So Kasa now supports Matter. That and this will be fairly "temporary" before I move to Tado X for underfloor heating but that would render TRVs useless