Honeywell Home X2S Smart Thermostat (RTH2CWF)

Buttons, a schedule and a fair price

The X2S is a plain smart thermostat, and that is its appeal. A monochrome display sits between Mode, Menu and Fan buttons on the left and up, Hold and down buttons on the right. You can program the week at the wall, as weekday and weekend blocks, each day separately or with scheduling turned off, and use the Resideo Connect app for the same schedule, filter reminders and a geofenced away temperature. For a household where somebody will always reach for a button before a phone, that layout is easier to live with than a touch strip or an app-first thermostat.

Honeywell sells it for about $85 in its own US store, a few dollars above the $80 launch price. The Nest Thermostat (2020) is back at about $130, so the X2S does the basic job for roughly $45 less. Neither has a room sensor. The Nest gives a Google Home household one app instead of two and a tidier mirrored face; the X2S is the newer hardware and the cheaper way to get a schedule, remote control and voice assistants on a simple system. Honeywell launched it in the US and Canada; Canadian prices vary by retailer, so this comparison uses US prices.

Check the wiring before the price

The saving only holds if the X2S suits your system. It needs a C wire for 24 VAC power and has no battery mode. It handles up to two heating and two cooling stages on a conventional system, one more stage than the basic Nest, or two heating stages and one cooling stage on a heat pump with electric backup, plus hot-water and forced-air heat. It does not work with line-voltage electric baseboard heaters. If your old thermostat has no C wire, price the adapter or wiring work before treating this as the budget option: the Nest Thermostat (2020) is designed to run without one on most systems, so a missing C wire can narrow or erase the saving.

Two missing terminal types narrow it further. There are no S terminals for wired indoor or outdoor sensors and no U terminals for accessory relays, and Honeywell lists no wireless room sensor for it. The X2S reads the temperature where it hangs. If the hallway is warmer than the bedroom you care about, a cheaper thermostat does not fix that; the Nest Learning Thermostat (4th gen) includes a remote sensor, at more than three times the price.

It mounts on Honeywell's UWP wall plate, comes with white and grey accent pieces for the lower trim and joins either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz Wi-Fi. If Wi-Fi drops, you can still change the temperature at the thermostat; geofencing and app control stop until the connection returns.

Matter comes second

The X2S is Matter certified, and Honeywell names Apple Home, Google Home and Alexa; Apple Home works only through Matter. The route in is Resideo's app, though. You set the thermostat up in the Resideo Connect app with an account, and the app then generates the Matter setup code; there is none printed on the thermostat to scan. That is a reasonable trade on a cheap thermostat, but it means the X2S joins Resideo's service even if Apple Home is the only app you plan to use.

Independent reports on what happens next are mixed. A June 2025 review by Matter Alpha found that SmartThings could read the temperature and humidity and switch between heating and cooling, but setpoint changes snapped back to the old value. Home Assistant owners reported working temperature and mode control in June 2025 and October 2026, although the October owner later saw three thermostats drop offline for 10 to 15 minutes at a time after they updated to the same firmware. Resideo certified newer firmware in February 2026, and we found no release notes for it, so whether it fixed the SmartThings setpoint problem is unknown. We also found no independent report on Apple Home or Google Home.

That shapes how to use it. Keep the schedule on the thermostat or in Resideo's app, and use Matter for a quick change from your home app or to show the temperature beside your other devices. Do not buy the X2S to drive it from sensor-based automations in another platform until owners confirm setpoint control works there.

Who should buy it

Buy the X2S for a straightforward 24 V system with a C wire, a thermostat in a representative spot and a household that wants buttons, a weekly schedule and phone or voice control for less than a Nest. Pay more for the Nest Thermostat if you already run Google Home and want one app or lack a C wire, for Mysa's central thermostat if its five-year warranty and simple touch controls are worth the gap, or for the Nest Learning model when a room sensor is the real problem. If your current programmable thermostat already keeps the house comfortable, the X2S adds convenience, not savings you can count on.