A. O. Smith

I was back and forth on deciding on a Rheem Hybrid or A.O. Smith. I went with the A.O. Smith because I have prior experience with them, they are supposed to be quieter, and more energy efficient. I should have looked at the app ratings too…This app is useless. Not even worth downloading. You’ll be changing everything at the water heater. This app doesn’t stay connected to the water heater. The couple features it has are pointless even when they do work. How about something that tells me it is operating? How about something that tells me what functions or functions are currently operating? Are the elements being used or is it just the heat pump? The schedule makes no sense. You set a schedule for the water heater to be “topped off”. What does that even mean!? It’s set to 120 deg. It should be 120 deg. What does topping it off mean? Very disappointing app for the premium you pay for the water heater. Makes you wonder if the water heater control unit is any good. It and the app are made by the same people….

First off, our family has used A.O.Smith products since I was growing up. I was always under the impression they made high quality equipment. Unfortunately when I bought a hybrid unit for the first time… This turns out not to be as expected… The app never seems to reconnect to the hot water heater after closing the app. I have to re-enter credentials every time I want to check on the status. It also won’t send an alert if the unit loses power which would be a simple monitor from the server end. It won’t give you the option to be alerted when it’s running or alert when it’s topped off… Speaking of servers, the one they are using to run this app is terrible and has been down for over a week with no access to the controller from the app. Now hear me out, these are obviously all 1st world problems and in the grand scheme of things very tiny. However when you pay a PREMIUM for a product expecting to be able to use the features you paid for, and then turns out to be as flaky as it is… makes you question whether or not you want to purchase any other product from them. And don’t get me started on the useless tech support phone number. I called 4 different times before I was able to land a decent technician. If you can read this before purchasing one of these hot water heaters, shop around. Hopefully there are more reliable brands out there.

Maybe it’s because it’s so new, but this app is trash. Unless you have a rate plan with your electric company, you really can’t do much with the app. There’s a “schedule” feature, but all it does is “top your tank off with hot water” at whatever time you set it for. Dumb. Why not create a schedule feature where I can leave the temp at 95° all day when I’m not using it, and then set it to go up to a desired temp at a certain time for bath time, etc. To me, that’s what a schedule feature should do. I try to manually do this, but I’m updating several times a day, and sometimes I forget, then I have colder showers, or I’m paying extra to keep water hot all night when I’m not using it. And half the time, manually changing the temp on the app doesn’t work either. It will say “updating set point” and then when it updates, it’s the same temp I started with. This app definitely needs some hard work. For what I paid for the water heater I know y’all can afford to hire someone to work on this.