Tado X Smart Radiator Thermostat - poor battery life

K_T

It has been less than 2month since I installed Tado X system and the batteries in the TRVs started failing already. The system has hardly been used (apart from testing) so battery depletion seems really premature.

stephenhayter

It would be interesting to see just how much Tado’s devices save once you have added back in the cost of batteries. I agree they seem to chew through them.

K_T

Well, for X they are rechargeable so the cost is rather negligible. Legacy system could use standard rechargeable AA batteries too so apart from the initial investment the cost would be low too.

Emcee

Hello @K_T

Sorry for not responding sooner.

Adding your tado° X device to multiple third-party Matter fabrics (e.g. Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home) can slightly decrease the device’s battery life because each fabric requires the device to send and receive additional information.

Might this be the issue here? How many Matter fabrics are you using?

K_T

Hi @Emcee - I use Alexa, SmartThings and Tado app. I understand that this may "slightly" reduce the battery life - however I wouldn't expect that the "up to one year" will get down to merely 2 months - and this is off season when there is hardly any use.

Emcee

@K_T

Yes, I agree. This is very short a lifespan for batteries.

Did you receive the email from one of our engineers outlining a test that can be performed to help find the root of the battery consumption issue?

Energyy

I think I know where from comes battery issue. i have installed tado x system 4 days ago and one of batteries got to 0 in 3days. When I exchanged battery from other device i realized that valve at same point starting every second to adjust temperature with rotating motor. As new ones is very quite it hard to hear but when you put finger on it you feel how it rotating all the time no stop - I think some of they hardware have some defect and this issue appears to no all valves, but it draining battery because of non stop rotation.

P.S. as workaround I inserted different length pin to Valve and for now that issue fixed - but it really looks like hardware issue when it goes to that non stop rotation.

Emcee

Thanks for the info @Energyy
I will communicate this to my colleagues.
Please also contact support via live chat. If this is a device problem, they may want to test it/replace it.

Emcee

By the way @K_T

There are currently mitigation measures being developed for users who experience premature battery depletion with X devices. For Smart Thermostats, version 240.1 should have fixed the issue. Something similar is probably coming for Smart Radiator Thermostats. I will keep you updated once I know more.

macrae777

We have tado TRVs in our second/holiday home in Scotland. We do not use the house in the winter (for obvious reasons!) but want to be able to make sure the pipes don’t burst, etc. Annoyingly, the batteries expire extremely regularly and we are not here to replace them so the radiators blast out heat unnecessarily. This doesn’t sound very eco. Nor is it good for our bank balance. We arrived at the house last weekend to get the house ready for the winter and found the house uncomfortably cold despite us making sure on the app that it would be warm for our arrival. The system seems to default to geofencing - because it hasn’t seen anyone walking about?

rizsher

Any update @Emcee ??