Pretend money's no object. Now, look at your new smart home

Loxone radiator valve

This means that Loxone's system is capable of only heating up the rooms that you're currently using, rather than wasting energy by heating up your whole home uniformly.

Not for tweakers

The result might be an advanced system with separate parts that works well together, but it's also one that's not meant for you to tinker with yourself.

This reflects Loxone's desire to provide a finished product to its consumers, which it will then tweak itself post-installation to make sure you're getting the most out of it.

That's a shame as far are we're concerned. Part of the fun of having a smart system is in endlessly tweaking the way everything works and working out the most efficient way to have it run your home.

You're not going to spend Sunday afternoons tweaking. Loxone wants you to forget about its system, and let it become an invisible part of your home.

But if we've just spent thousands on a smart home system, there's a part of us that wants to have a little fun with it.

Should you do it?

All this out of the box functionality doesn't come cheap. Loxone's website lists the price of a typical three bedroom home installation including the core lighting, security and heating as costing around £2,000.

For that price it certainly covers a lot, but with companies like Samsung moving into connected white goods, you might soon find Loxone's system might not cover as much of your home as you might like.

There's also the issue of the app. Loxone's software seems functional, but the couple of bugs I experienced made us think it might not be able to match up to the reliability of the software provided from a player such as Google.

Given that the show home we used the Loxone system in is meant to be a best-case scenario, I would worry that in a home that hasn't received the full installation it might be less responsive still.

Nevertheless, at this price, and with this features, the Loxone system is pretty unique in the market. Gathering this many different smart home functions within a single app is impressive and it leads to an experience which is much more seamless than many of its cheaper competitors.

Jon Porter

Jon Porter is the ex-Home Technology Writer for TechRadar. He has also previously written for Practical Photoshop, Trusted Reviews, Inside Higher Ed, Al Bawaba, Gizmodo UK, Genetic Literacy Project, Via Satellite, Real Homes and Plant Services Magazine, and you can now find him writing for The Verge.