Tado announced the Smart Thermostat X (2nd gen) on 2 September 2026 at IFA Berlin and put it on sale in the UK the same day, with the wired starter kit at £159.99 and the wireless kit with hot water control at £169.99. The headline change is physical: the new thermostat is 17.8mm thick, which Tado says is around half the depth of most rivals, and it runs on a USB-C rechargeable battery rated for more than a year per charge instead of disposable AAs. It keeps the Matter and Thread radio of the original X, so existing Tado X radiator valves and the Bridge X carry over. If you already own a first-generation X there is no compelling reason to upgrade the thermostat itself; the new features that matter most, AI Assist and Multi-home, are software and arrive for existing X users too.
What's new in the Smart Thermostat X (2nd gen)?
The Smart Thermostat X (2nd gen) replaces the original X thermostat launched in 2024, which we tested in our tado X review. According to Tado's press release, the second-generation unit measures 110 x 110 x 17.8mm, has a matte-white finish, an LED matrix display that shows temperature and humidity, and a circular touch interface for adjusting the setpoint. A new physical button on the top edge can be assigned to an everyday action such as a heating boost or a humidity readout. Installation is now walked through step by step in the Tado app, and the thermostat charges over USB-C, although a cable is not included in the box.
Three software features launch alongside it. AI Assist is an optional subscription at £3.99 a month or £29.99 a year that bundles Tado's Geofencing, Open Window Detection, Adaptive Heating and Pre-heat Before Arrival features and tunes them to weather forecasts and how your home holds heat. Multi-home finally lets one account manage several properties without logging in and out. And Tado's TÜV-certified Hydronic Balancing, which adjusts radiator valve flow to even out heating across rooms, is now available on X-series systems. Tado claims the combination can cut heating bills by up to 22%, but that figure comes from Tado's own modelling rather than an independent test, so treat it as a ceiling rather than a promise.
UK pricing and what is in each kit
| Kit | UK price | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| Wired Starter Kit | £159.99 | Wired Smart Thermostat X (2nd gen), Bridge X (Thread border router), fixings |
| Wireless Starter Kit with Hot Water Control | £169.99 | Programmer X with OpenTherm, Wireless Temperature Sensor X (2nd gen), fixings |
| Wired Thermostat only | £109.99 | Add-on for existing X systems |
| Wireless Temperature Sensor X (2nd gen) | £89.99 | Add-on room sensor |
Prices are Tado's UK web shop RRPs at launch and will vary by retailer. The wired kit is the one to pick if your existing thermostat has a permanent wire back to the boiler; the wireless kit suits UK combi boilers where the thermostat sits away from the boiler and you also want app control of hot water. Both work with relay and OpenTherm boilers, heat pumps and wet underfloor heating, according to Tado's product pages.
Why does this matter for Home Assistant users?
Nothing changes about how the X series connects to Home Assistant, and that is mostly good news. The 2nd gen thermostat still speaks Matter over Thread via the Bridge X, so you can add it directly to Home Assistant's Matter integration for local control of the setpoint and mode without Tado's cloud. The official cloud-based Tado integration continues to work for schedules, geofencing state and hot water, and it gained a heating circuit selector for zones in the Home Assistant 2026.9 release on the same day as Tado's announcement. AI Assist and Multi-home are app-side features, so they will not expose new entities, and Hydronic Balancing runs on the valves themselves.
The practical upside is battery life: a rechargeable cell you top up once a year over USB-C is a better fit for a thermostat that Home Assistant polls over Matter than a set of disposable batteries.
Should you buy now or wait?
If you are starting from scratch with a UK combi boiler, the wireless 2nd gen kit at £169.99 is now the default Tado recommendation, though note it is £10 to £20 more than the roughly £149.99 the original X starter kit launched at, and AI Assist at £3.99 a month is a step up from the £2.99 Tado charged for Auto-Assist on the first-gen X. If you already run a first-gen X, keep it: the thermostat's job is unchanged, the new software arrives for you anyway, and your money is better spent on extra Smart Radiator Thermostat X valves. Buyers still weighing Tado against Hive should read our Hive vs tado comparison, since Hive still has no Matter support and this launch widens that gap.
