Absolutely 100%. Click login, accept passkey signature, logged in. This is the way to go

Not even close.

Passkey is a generic technology not specific to any vendor. While there are a few versions of it, the long story short is it uses an encryption key you have to authenticate you rather than a password. This makes phishing extremely difficult if not impossible.

There’s lots of passkey implementations. All the major browsers have one built in with their included password managers. Most good password managers like BitWarden or 1Password also support pass keys. And if you want to be extra secure, the passkey can be an actual hardware token like a YubiKey.

So yeah you see Google pushing passkeys a lot, and if you use Google password manager it will store your pass keys. But you also see Apple pushing it, and Microsoft also.

Welcome to the world of electronic gadgets. You’re right there’s nowhere near $100 worth of hardware in this thing. I’d also love a color touchscreen. But I’d rather a color touchscreen that I could integrate in HA than one running some proprietary cloud connected ThermostatOS.

You could do that yourself- put an old tablet on the wall, run power to it, then get something like a zooz zen16 multi-relay or an ESPHome relay board to drive the hvac. Then the thermostat becomes a totally software defined virtual thing in Home Assistant that pulls data from a temp sensor in the room and controls the HVAC as appropriate.

https://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-Home-TH6320ZW2007-Programmable-Touchscreen/dp/B0BHTQF8NL

That is the one you want. Honeywell t6 pro Z-Wave version, specifically that link which is the newer Smart start version.

Z-Wave is 100% local, not Wi-Fi, and secure.

I use these in my house and couldn’t be happier.