With the current cold snap you may have had to rush back to your thermostat to turn the heating back on, and Amazon obviously recognises that. The Amazon Spring Sale is on now, from Monday April 8 until next Monday at midnight, and this early spring sale deal is still live. You can get Hive's excellent Active Heating smart thermostat with professional installation as part of the price, all with a big £100 off.
• Buy Hive Smart Thermostat with Installation for £149.99 – was £249
Realistically you might not get much more use out of it for heating until winter (if this summer 2019 is anything like last year's anyway), but it can handle scheduling your hot water heating as well, and it'll still be nearly new and good to go when autumn and winter loom into view and its radiator time again.
• Shop the rest of the Amazon Spring Sale deals
Yes, the weather outside may be frightful, but the Amazon deals are delightful, and you probably won't find a better price on this Hive thermostat until at least, ooh… Amazon Prime Day?
Hive Active Heating and Hot Water Thermostat with installation | £149.99 | was £249 | Save 42%
A professional will come and install this for you, and it will then allow you to control your heating and hot water both from the very handsome unit itself and via your iOS or Android device. Geolocation means heating can be activated just in time for your return home, and Hive also has a whole range of other smart home products that it's compatible with, all controlled from the same easy-to-use app.
Hive Active Heating: key features
• Book your installation with a British gas engineer (regardless of who supplies your energy/water). They will bring the hub and receiver with them on the day of installation
• App control of your heating and hot water – turn it on, turn it off, set the temperature and schedules. It'll work with heating zones if your home has them. The app also controls all other Hive smart home products – cameras, lights, plugs, sensors, etc.
• You can set up to 6 daily time slots in the heating and hot water schedules.
A Boost button fires up your heating and/or hot water for up to 6 hours.
• Heating kicks in at a low level when temperatures approach 0º, protecting your pipes from freezing.
• Geolocation means heating can be turned off and on as you leave or return home.
More great Amazon Spring Sale pre-sale deals
Upgrade to smarter living
Get the latest news, reviews, deals and buying guides on gorgeous tech, home and active products straight to your inbox.
Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.
Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years.
A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."