GLAS by JCI 4+

Coming from another smart thermostat this app is definitely behind the times. You get three comfort “temperature settings” and that’s it; Home, Away, and Sleep and they can’t repeat within the day. For example I used to have my sleep start at 9 pm and then start again at 2am in case someone had messed with the thermostat. I can’t do this with GLAS. I had a Wake temp setting which was warmer than Home for Winter use to get everyone out of bed. That’s gone. I also used to have a Weekend temp setting which was a few degrees warmer than my Home setting. I also can’t do that now. The app works but it’s a bit slower and clunkier than its competitors.

In the end this is a pretty piece of hardware lacking quality software and I’ll probably end up returning it.

It pains me to write this review, because I love the actual GLAS hardware. The thermostat itself with its transparent OLED panel just looks sleek, and it’s UI is pretty good when you’re using the thermostat directly.

What I do have a major problem with however, is the absolutely awful app. I’ve tried to edit the wake times for various days of the week over a dozen times now, and each time I change it and hit save, the wake time immediately reverts back to what it was previously. The only way to make a schedule change stick is to manually input it into the thermostat itself. If I was interested in that, I would have bought a $30 dumb thermostat from the hardware store. This is a smart thermostat though, and a very expensive one at that. I have smart light switches that cost a fraction of what this does whose app works flawlessly. And I haven’t even mentioned the myriad of other problems, such as frequent crashes and wait times of as much as 20-30 seconds after opening the app to actually use it.

Come on JCI. This thermostat has a lot of potential. Your physical hardware is great. Just fix this god awful app and you’ll have something truly special on your hands. For the moment though, until that happens, I would recommend neither the app nor the thermostat.

The app takes an extraordinary amount of time to come up. I've had other thermostats that connected faster but this is not a deal breaker but why does it take longer than thirty to forty seconds and at times almost a full minute to connect. Also lately I've noticed that when the app connects it not showing what is actually happening on the Glas wall unit. Meaning, the wall unto and AC/Heater is working but the app says the entire stst is off and it's not reflecting the true indoor temperature. I've logged off the app, rebooted the phone and even deleted the app and it's still wrong. Hopefully this gets fixed.😳