I am same resident tech guy and I always answer the same way - never connect anything to wifi, no matter what it is. it is that simple and always works. if whatever thing you have does not work without wifi - return it.
WiFi is acceptable, but it must be locally managed. My Midea AC came with a WiFi dongle (for some proprietary cloud/app integration) that I replaced by an ESP32 equivalent for local control through Home Assistant. HA runs on my LAN, and is remotely accessed by a VPN.
You lose convenience/functionality though. E.g. it’s convenient for me to turn on the aircon an hour before I get home in the summer.
Edit: I'm not talking on a day to day basis, but when I go on a trip. And I don't have a porch nor I like beer.
Amazing that some people downvote for stating the obvious, which is that you can lose some convenience. There's trade offs when you connect something to the Internet? That's also obvious.
When I get back home in the summer from a short trip away, with a toddler and a million bags it is definitely convenient for me to have a cool home and not a 40+ degrees celsius one.
You can remotely control devices that don’t themselves have any access to the internet via local smart home platforms that are internet accessible, e.g. Apple Home or Home Assistant.
If your schedule is consistent a standard programmable thermostat does the job for pretty cheap.
My Ecobee is convenient but will probably go back to an offline model when it dies or loses support. Once I dialed in my preferred schedule, I rarely touch it except to lock a set temperature when going out of town.
