Slash your bills with these brilliant gadgets Technology

With the price of gas and electricity currently in orbit, the cost of living seems to be soaring ever upwards – but with a few well-chosen buys you can make a big difference to your energy bills. And you don’t need to spend a fortune either, so these gadgets will pay for themselves very quickly. The best place to start is your central heating system. If you don’t have a smart thermostat, or worse, if you don’t have a thermostat at all, you’re probably paying to heat empty rooms or to keep the heat on longer than necessary. There are lots of smart thermostats to choose from, but one of the friendliest is the Hive from British Gas. It connects to your heating and you can use its remote control, smart speaker or phone/tablet app to set schedules, and if you use the app it can tell your heating when you’re leaving or coming home and set the heating accordingly. We installed one a couple of years ago and it made a big difference to our gas bill. Lighting accounts for a lot of our energy use too, so if you haven’t already moved to LED bulbs you really should. For example, if you have a downlighter with halogen GU10 bulbs, swapping them for LEDs would reduce their energy consumption by as much as 90%: a 5W LED emits the same light as a 50W halogen bulb. And if you’ve been thinking about getting smart bulbs, they’re all LED too. Don’t forget about the kitchen either. Your hob and oven use a lot of energy, and there are often much more efficient options: a 900W microwave uses a fraction of the energy for a fraction of the time. But of course you can’t microwave everything, which is why many of us are buying Instant Pots or air fryers. Air fryers are effectively small ovens with a big fan inside, and they cook faster and at lower temperatures than an oven; Instant Pots and similar devices can slow-cook, stew, pressurecook and more, while using a fraction of the energy of a hob or oven.

Hive Smart Thermostat Mini

Smart thermostats from the likes of Hive, Tado, Google Nest and Honeywell give you much more control over your heating and can make a real difference to your bills.

£119, hivehome.com

Hive Smart Radiator Valve

A smart thermostat is just the start. Smart radiator valves can ensure you’re not heating empty rooms, saving even more money. £54, hivehome.com

Philips Hue Starter Kit

If you fancy smart, colourchanging, programmable bulbs then Hue is hard to beat: it has tons of indoor and outdoor lights and bulbs, and the starter kit contains everything you need to get up and running.

From £90, meethue.com

Instant Pot Pro

Don’t pay full price for any Instant Pot: they’re discounted in every big sales event. They’re all good but our pick is the Instant Pot Pro, a 10in-1 pressure cooker, slow cooker, soup cooker, rice cooker… £169, Amazon.co.uk

Philips Essential Air Fryer XL

You can pick up a small air fryer for under £50, but this Philips is a much better family appliance thanks to its fiveportion capacity and Rapid Air technology.

£125, Philips.co.uk