TRV heads, which make to get, as stand alone?

[ericmark]

I have 5 x eQ-3 and 4 x Energenie and one of the latter is damaged, so seems the time to replace it, the original idea was the energenie would link to the Nest Gen 3 wall thermostat, but support has been withdrawn, and it to be frank worked the wrong way around, instead of the TRV telling the wall thermostat it wanted heat, the wall thermostat changed to target heat on the TRV to match what was set on the wall thermostat.

So what to replace with? eQ-3 have rocketed in price, when I bought they were £15 each for bluetooth version, the terrier i30 does not have any way to remotely set it, and it is not easy to get to, since only one it required, getting a more expensive version is not really a problem, and some time in the future I may change the silly Nest Gen 3 for a better quality wall thermostat that will work with the TRV's.

So at moment it will be stand alone, but could in the future be linked. The system is C Plan with the com feeding the boiler, so any wall thermostat replacement needs volt free contacts with com, N/O and N/C so this rules out Drayton Wiser which is claimed to be best TRV head with algorithms to work out how long it takes to heat the room, unless all the others are the same? Hive also does not have volt free contacts, not sure about Tado.

I am not happy with Energenie as the anti hysteresis software is OTT, to get the room to 20°C from 17°C I had to cheat, and set to 22°C for an hour then back down to 20°C. I like the window open function on the eQ-3, but that might be on others anyway. Although the Energenie does have IFTTT and geofencing, I have never used it, all I have done is look at living room temperature in the summer to work out when to turn AC on before coming home. And the old unit even not on a radiator would do that.

So what are the options? Which need a hub to work? If I got which is claimed to be best the Drayton Wiser can I use it without the wall thermostat? Is there one I have not listed, which may work better?

 

[dilalio]

Drayton wiser.
You don't need a room stat.
That is only needed when you have 2 heads in one room that may conflict with each other.
In my last install, I used a trv head to bring on the boiler without being attached to a radiator. This was to send heat to the towel rails while all other rads were closed off by their respective wiser trvs.

Worked a treat.