Trane Reviews

Update after a year and a rebrand to this app Home: no change. I spent a fortune on an HVAC system I can barely control (I’m a nerd, I *like* complicated systems, this is just stupid), that frequently says one thing on Trane but something different on the wall units, is remarkably slow to accept and act on input, and displays almost zero actionable usage history.

I’m only using this as a thermostat control, so that’s the extent of this review. In short: it’s a train wreck. Run away. Longer: the interface is ugly. It might update after a while...or it might not. The scheduling conventions were clearly designed by an engineer with little to no UI experience. Did you want data to help you see what effect your changes make on system usage? Ha! No data for you! The most granular it gets is daily - in other words, it’s useless. Seriously, if I had known how bad this was I wouldn’t have spent a fortune on a this app HVAC system.

We purchased our new this app system 3 days ago. I love the system and the thermostat but Trane with geofencing is worthless. I’ve had thermostat and apps less than $200 and the geofencing work perfect. Trane geofencing is the worst. I’ve talked to 2 different tech and none was able to fix geofencing. I’ve logged out and in but still not working. My Nest geofencing worked flawless. $500 for a thermostat with a app that geofencing useless is not acceptable today. Fix geofencing on this app app. Trane disconnects from WiFi to offend. Trane doesn’t mirror the thermostat at all. With a system this expensive there should be a air monitor working with the thermostat and not from a 3rd party but from this app. This is my second thermostat b/c the first touch screen stop working. The second was 3-4 degrees off. I purchased my system because of the this app brand but I have been disappointed.

Ever since your last two updates on your this app Home App the live camera video still does not work correctly. First it did not show up at all, for over 3 months, now it only shows a still image. I have the newer high definition cameras and was told by this app to turn them to the lowest setting, which has horrible playback. When I called they said it was an iOS problem with their app. During the last Apple update only still images showed up but no live video. I have been a Nexia customer for over 10 years and if issues ever came up, they fixed them fast. All I ask is “Please” fix this issue once and for all, I pay for this service and after “5 Months” the camera still do not work properly. Btw, the reason for the one star is because you are ignoring this problem, and for a long time.

We recently purchased two this app units, as one of our Carrier exchangers need repair and the units were over 22 years old. The proposal received from AirDoctorX proved three levels of heat-pumps and we purchased the most efficient and expensive units. One unit backup is propane and the other is electric. These units have been a real disappoint, from installation needing at least five or more repair calls to get the units to working and I am still not sure if the units are working as they are to work. If the outside temperature falls below 32 degrees, the units cannot keep up and maintain the set temperature. We installed high end programmable thermostats on both units which cannot be used because the units cannot recover from setting a lower temperature at night. As it is these units run constantly and the house needs to be set at higher hold temperatures than any unit I have owned to maintain the house to a comfortable temperature.

This weekend I stayed at my father’s house, which uses Daikin units, and it was nice to be comfortable and his thermostats are set two degrees cooler than the this app units in my house.

When I wake up in the middle of the night I do not want to get on my phone to get on an app to change my temp. Worse is the control panel on the wall. U have to put glasses on, turn light on and play around with temp up/temp down/heat on/air conditioning on flat screen until you are awake. Even if u leave the settings when u go to bed close to what u want they will switch from air conditioning to heat when u get up to try to change temp because the buttons r so small u can’t help but overlap the pad of your finger from one heat to air to temp up to temp down. I end up waking fully up. In 25 years of being in the same house we have replaced units, I believe, 3 times (different brand previous units). We like our current unit best but not the control panel. Previous units had an actual button that was the size of the pad of your finger. At night, w eyes closed, u could tap up or down for temp (never having to touch heat or air by accident). I know u can preset temp to automatically change in middle of night if that works for u. It doesn’t for us.

This actual app works perfectly fine.

Having bought 3 new a/c units, we switched to thermostats that work with Trane. Unfortunately, we switched from our Nest thermostats which were amazing. It is so difficult to program this thermostat, I can’t even say. It was far easier when I had just a digital thermostat with no app at all!!! And it would be awesome if I could copy one program to another thermostat. But no. Why can’t I change the time when I open up a particular time period? Nope. Only the temp or, bizarrely, the name of the period. I tried, my husband tried, and our teen tried. I ended up paying her $50 to sit with it for a LONG time and try to make it work.

I give it 2 stars only because it’s easy to change the current temp from my phone. In my opinion, that’s all Trane has going doe it.

First, for specific complaints, contact the developer. I think that’s the only way to get Trane working up to the level of what you paid for your “smart device”.

As some others have mentioned, this is not nearly as functional as Trane for a Nest or EcoBee. Those dedicated apps are focused on a single product, whereas the Nexia app is scattershot across a diverse line of products. The only commonality between the products is the technology employed to allow it to communicate. Therefore Trane lacks focus and control for an advanced item, such as a this app thermostat.

On the positive side, it does the very basics - change temperature, set schedules, etc. But for what we paid for the thermostat (or insert your Z-Wave device here), I would expect Trane to closely match the presentation and functionality of the thermostat. Go to your Account on Nexia’s website, and you will see a nice colorful display that resembles what you see on the thermostat. It doesn’t fully replicate to actual unit, but it comes closer than Trane , and is easier on the eyes.

The unit is “smart”. There are tons of information available on the unit that can be accessed online - why is it not available for the user/owner? And why does the display have to be so Spartan?

Ask the developers.

What’s great: Having internet control from your phone while away from home plus the ability to view run history so you can tell if utility power is out, or your system is down. It does also operate as a hub to run other compatible things such as a camera.
What’s not: The Nexia thermostat touchscreen is terrible. Most of the time it does not work and you can only make changes using a mobile device or computer. Their is no way to do a temporary hold for a set time such as when you have a party with lots of people the way Honeywell units work. You can only set it on permanent hold and then you must remember to change it back. It takes forever to reboot the thermostat. The hub operation has very limited functionality.
Summary: Delete the hub. I would much rather have better HVAC operating options, since anyone wanting a hub would purchase a more sophisticated model such as Samsung’s SmartThings to run household equipment. The thermostat application is poor system design with mediocre capability. I will probably change it out to Honeywell.

It does the job. But…

There are three areas that could be improved.

The scheduling feature can be improved. I would like to have a summer schedule and a winter schedule because I’m on a rate plan that rewards us for using electricity off peak in the summer. Trane has that, but it’ could be better. To make a change I have to save the schedule with the same name (typing it). Awkward. I want to “activate” a schedule but it’s, well, awkward again.

I’d like to see a history of usage by minute. Because of my rate plan, I want to see if I need to make adjustments to the schedule to avoid certain hours of the day, but I can’t see when the A/C is running.

Lastly (least important) the feel of Trane (the UX) is not as good as compared to my previous thermostat (ecobee). Ecobee isn’t perfect, but it got two areas right that this app could copy:
The screen reflected what the compressor is doing “right now”. From a feeling point of view (because the this app thermostat has a delay), I feel like I’m not interacting with the device that controls my thermostat, but it’ll relay the message. I want to talk to the CEO (so to speak)
The other part is Trane isn’t as polished. I apologize that I’m not able to describe this very well beyond that one sentence.

It does what it’s supposed to do, at least so far. That’s the best thing I can say about it. Has much less data available than the wall panel, which is frustrating.

UX looks like it was designed by an engineer. If they were trying to make a confusing app with difficult navigation then they succeeded. (I have one thermostat device. Why are there two different settings screens in Trane ? Thermostat and other device settings should be a sub-item on the main settings navigation controller. Or just call one App Settings so it’s clear they’re different.) Nexia badly needs an actual UX designer, or to even just look at Nest app for ideas on how to make it less bare and ugly.

That said, we no choice in the matter. We had to get a completely new HVAC system and the variable speed system we wanted was incompatible with Nest. It is what it is. Our big thing was to be able to tweak the temp without going downstairs and we can. But overall, Nest app was a fantastically better user experience, Nexia is definitely not an improvement.

Hopefully devs are reading reviews and take this as constructive, I’m not trying to be brutal, just honest. Trane does what it needs to do, but UX could seriously use some love.

Trane works ok. There are some bugs, sometimes it gets out of sync and reports temperatures which are inaccurate but that is rate enough to not be a major problem.

The only significant complaint I have about Trane is the constant annoying surveys. They need to make a survey area within Trane which doesn’t prevent use of Trane , instead when you open Trane a survey pops up and prevents use of Trane until the survey is closed. I deducted TWO stars for this.

If the surveys were a once a year thing then I probably wouldn’t even complain but they aren’t, it seems like they have been doing surveys once a month or once every couple of months and I’m sick and tired of them. I’m to the point that I want to replace Trane .

I put a this app in my last house about ten years ago. Three years ago, I sold my old house and bought a new house. My new house didn’t have a this app so I put in a Nest. A few weeks ago, I replaced the HVAC system in my new house with a this app and replaced the Nest with the XL850 thermostat with great pleasure. Both the this app thermostat and the this app Home app are much more intuitive to use in every way. There’s only one problem… my this app account now controls both homes and I can’t figure out how to delete the old house from Trane . It’s an every day struggle not to prank the new owners of my old home. Please put in a way for us to remove ourselves from the temptation of literally “ghosting” the purchasers of our former homes.

I was about to replace my old Honeywell smart thermostat with a Nest when it became evident that I had to replace my entire HVAC system. Chose this app at the recommendation of the company that sold me my previous system. Both AC an furnace are nice units and functioning as expected. Unfortunately, the Nest is incompatible with the this app so I had to go with their thermostat and app. I think there is a lot of capability here but, and I consider myself fairly tech savvy, can’t figure out how to do it. Cold weather has arrived here in Seattle and I simply want to have the heat at 70 during the day an 67 at night. Should be easy; it was with the Honeywell and probably was with the Nest but I have no clue how to do it with the this app. Tomorrow I’ll test their tech support.

The this app unit we have is very good. Whisper quiet, about 23? SEER, very efficient. We have the house much cooler with this AC, and have saved hundreds v. our old unit that strained to keep the house about 8-10 dergrees Fahrenheit warmer (we live in Texas, so cooler is better).

About the only issue I have with the system is the touchscreen thermostat. Shortly after we had the AC installed, the touchscreen would periodically reset. Then, about six months ago, the touchscreen began to reset with any touch. It’s unusable as a touchscreen, but does display the temperature.

On the flip side, the this app app (which is what I’m reviewing) works very well. I can change the temperature in the house from Trane , and have the AC cooling within 5 minutes.

App out of the blue stopped working. It worked very well for about two years and now all of a sudden it doesn’t work. It shows stuck on 71 fan running. It seems to have stopped communicating fortunately. I tried logging out and logging back in. I deleted Trane and reinstalled it. I shut off my phone turned it back on nothing seems to have worked. So sad.

****change of view. After about 3 days of Trane being ???stuck??? It is functioning again. It is working with my system. What happen, don’t know, I just know it is working again. I just hope if it malfunctions again it doesn’t have control of the thermostat.

The only reason that I have this unit is because it reports back to the distributor with health status. The nest was far superior in boot time, processing speed, ease-of-use, flexibility (the nest will stay dark until you walk up to it. This unit requires that you actually touch it if you put it to sleep.), And overall looks.

As for Trane, I expect any app for home automation to be capable of controlling all functions of the device that it reports to control. There are some functions that I still have to walk up to the display to do.

The scheduling app is easy and has become easier. The nest is just as good.

I think we should have the thermostat temperature buttons that are super easy to see and press. The little arrows are just not pleasing to the eye and don’t jump out as “this is how to adjust me” I remember in the past this being easier. As an HVAC dealer I have to say that I love what we can do with this system. I mean how many others can allow the homeowner to give the dealer/technician ability to check everything about the thermostat remotely? Not only can you allow us to control your thermostat temporarily, but we can always check system run stats and make sure your system is working correctly! That alone is very valuable to the homeowner! Maybe Trane needs very minor changes but this system is so much more than an app. Must have for everyone.

Just got a new HVAC system installed with digital dampers and a thermostat in my upstairs bedroom. Love the convenience of being able to adjust everything from the this app app including setting different temps for each floor, including remotely (like from my mom’s house in a different city/state!). One has to be careful with the “Energy Savings” setting under Home Settings. If you use anything other than High, it automatically adjusts the A/C to a lower temp than I would like (overriding the temp I set). But this setting can be turned off as well. Overall, a really good app.

The current inside temperature shows wrong a lot of the time. It will be working great and then all of a sudden it will show 2-4 degrees off. The dealer who installed it came out and adjusted in in the settings for it to start working right and I have to go in and readjust the settings. I shouldn’t have to do that ever. I have to turn the heat down to a lower setting for it to be the right temperature in our home. Last week it was working right and then all of a sudden it had run most of the day because the temp was off again. So it was 70 in our house instead of around 66. Last night it showed 66 and then all of a sudden 70 which was right temperature (in the room) and then back down to 65 all in a ten minute time span. I had it set on 65.

Suggestion for app developer: I do love the majority of the features over my former thermostat with an app, but there is one feature that I already sorely miss. This would be the ability to manually adjust the temperature different from the schedule running but with a system end time versus running at that temp until the next schedule period which could be hours later. An example for you would be doing vigorous housecleaning that causes a person to get hot such as mopping, dusting and vacuuming where I would previously set the temp for cooler for about an hour duration and then it would automatically revert back to the scheduled temperature at the end of that hour. I have to remember to go back and set back to Run Schedule when done or realize I didn’t when I get too cold when the work is done. Thanks for considering this valuable update.