ecobee - ecobee3 Programmable Touch-Screen Wi-Fi Thermostat (2nd Generation) - Black/White

NOTE: (This review is for the non-HomeKit-Enabled Ecobee3, which is exactly the same as the HomeKit-Enabled one except for the HomeKit functionality). I really believe this is the best thermostat on the market, for a number of reasons. 1) This is the biggie: External sensors! You can place multiple external sensors around the house so that the Ecobee3 (E3) knows that the temperature is in different parts of the house. Now, the E3 doesn't do zoning, meaning it can't selectively heat/cool different parts of the house, but it can *average* the temperature across multiple sensors to try to "even out" comfort across your home, instead of only "caring" about the temperature where the thermostat is. Now, these little external sensors ALSO have another feature: occupancy detection! Which brings me to the next feature: 2) "Follow Me": So, since the E3 knows both the temperature in other parts of the house AND if someone is present, it can dynamically "care" about the temperature only in rooms that have recently seen occupancy! So, if you enter a room and start moving around, the E3 begins to "care" about the temp on that sensor and includes that sensor in the "average" temp of the house. And if a sensor hasn't seen movement in a while, it will stop caring about that sensor's temp. This is the "Follow Me" feature. (PS - This feature is disabled for the "Sleep" comfort profile because no one will be moving around the house while they're sleeping) 3) "Smart Home/Away": This feature also uses the occupancy detection feature of the sensors (and E3 itself). If the E3 and all of the sensors haven't seen occupancy in a few hours, the E3 can assume no one is home and enter "Away" mode even when the E3's schedule is telling it you should be home (like after work, or in the morning, etc). So if you unexpectedly leave and it's not part of your usual schedule, the E3 can adapt. The reverse is also true: If the E3 or sensors sees a bunch of occupancy happening when you're supposed to be in "Away" mode, it'll switch back to "Home" mode. (PS - This feature is disabled for the "Sleep" comfort profile because no one will be moving around the house while they're sleeping) 3) "Care" About Different Sensors Per-Comfort-Profile: Why would you care what temperature it is in your living room when you're sleeping upstairs at night? Answer: You don't! So the E3 lets you set which external sensors to "care" about depending on what comfort profile is being used. For instance, at night I tell the E3 to only "care" about the temperature in our 3 bedrooms and to ignore the rest of the house/sensors. So it's always the temp I want for sleeping at night. 4) Accessory/Humidifier control: The E3 can run an accessory piece of equipment, like a dehumidifier, humidifier, or whole house ventilator. I have mine hooked up to my humidifier (whole-house one on the side of the furnace ductwork). So the E3 uses the humidistat inside of it instead of the "dumb dial" humidistat near your furnace to decide when to turn on the humidifier during heating season. Now, one awesome thing about letting the E3 control your humidifier is that you can do "frost control" functionality WITHOUT an external temp sensor sticking out of the side of your house! Frost control is where the humidifier doesn't run as often when it's *really* cold outside, as some houses get frost on the inside of windows/window frames when the humidity is at a "normal" level. More modern humidifiers allow you drill a small hole in the side of your house and stick a little temp probe out the hole. This means the thermostat can automatically "dial back" the humidity when it's super-cold so you don't get window frost. BUT, because the E3 is internet-connected, it KNOWS the temp outside without a temp probe! So you don't have to install a temp probe and get the same benefit of frost reduction. Awesome! 5) Super-Granular Control: This thing has so many controls for minor things, it's awesome (although default settings work just fine if you want to plug-and-play). Partial list I can think of off the top of my head: --Control minimum rest period between A/C cycles (to protect A/C compressor from damage) --Control minimum outdoor temp that A/C will run at (to protect A/C compressor from damage) --Allow A/C to "overcool" house by a degree or two to reduce excess humidity (adjustable) --Set amount of time blower fan will run after A/C turns off (to clear ducts of cold air) --Set a minimum amount of time the blower fan will run each hour (to circulate air in the home if the A/C or heat hasn't run recently) --A ton of other things I can't remember 6) Amazing Web Reports: On the Ecobee website, you can see a huge plethora of reports related to your energy use. --You can see a timeline graph of when heat/cooling/humidifier/blower were running along with the "calculated" indoor temp, outdoor temp, etc so you can see the activity for the previous day. --You can see a "heating/cooling hours vs outdoor temp" graph (per day) so you can see the effect of the outdoor temp on how much you run heat/cool. --You can download a spreadsheet of data with 5-minute granularity (up to a month at a time) that shows the status of EVERYTHING: blower/heat/cool/humidifier on/off, temperature of each sensor, occupancy of each sensor, outdoor temp, outdoor humidity, indoor temp, indoor humidity, etc. I easily used this data to determine exactly how much electricity I used on HVAC last month (blower+A/C compressor+A/C compressor fan run times * amps * voltage = watt hours). Anyway, this thing absolutely blows my mind. Nerd paradise, yet would work fine with ZERO configuration. Oh, AND it has an IFTTT (If This, Then That) channel so you can make the E3 change temperature profiles, home/away/etc profiles, via IFTTT triggers.

Context: I owned a Nest for a few years, in two different houses, and loved it. It was great to have control on our phones, Auto-Away was an excellent feature for when you left a room, and recent Amazon Echo integration was a nice touch, enabling us to control the thermostat with our voices. I also invested in three Nest Protect smoke detectors for our new house and was fully invested in the Nest ecosystem. Nest is pretty, looks great, and I love the dial-to-adjust nature of the thermostat. After moving to our new house in March 2016 however, I felt a big need for something different and after months of research/digging through helpful and unhelpful reviews (hopefully you find this to be the former), I finally settled on the ecobee3 as my thermostat-of-choice, and am happy to report that it has been one of the best decisions/upgrades to our current house and far superior to the Nest. I know you may be considering different smart thermostat options, and I may speak in compare/contrast terms with the Nest as that is what I know. REVIEW: Like the Nest and other smart thermostats, the ecobee3 is controllable by smartphone, gets its power from being wired in to the wall, has the ability to set schedules for your home/away times and thresholds/limits to how hot or cold it allows your home to get before kicking in, and uses motion sensing to tell if you're home/away - all these are excellent features. The ecobee3 has the ability to set different temperature thresholds for away, daytime, and sleep time. I haven't played with these much yet as we haven't really had a need. I have a two-story house with a finished basement. The thermostat placement is in a much-used hallway on the main floor outside the kitchen. It's pretty good placement for a thermostat that depends/integrates/relies upon motion sensors to drive temperature or home/away settings, though it's not near as high-trafficked area as placement in my previous house. In my experience with Nest, the thermostat was never the greatest at detecting when my wife and I were "home" versus "away". Thankfully, we never had the experience where the thermostat thought we were away when we were actually home, but I often noticed that the Nest's "auto-away" feature wasn't triggering. This was especially frustrating given that both my wife and I have Android smartphones with location settings and Google Now integration with Nest (owned by Google's parent company Alphabet), yet the Nest remained blissfully ignorant of our location on any given day, even if our phones were connected to the SAME WIFI network as the thermostat. While the ecobee3 doesn't track our phones and we set it to "away" manually still (nothing changed in our routine, as we had been doing the same with the Nest), the ecobee3 does track when we are home/away much better, due to its sensor integrations which also have motion sensors. So, not only does ecobee3 know if we're home, it also knows which floor of the house we are on. The greatest "issue" we've had in both our houses was the temperature difference among floors. Upstairs (where the bedrooms are) is too cold, the basement (where the entertainment system is) is too cold, and the main floor (where the... food? is?) is just right and matches what the thermostat is set to. With Nest, I found myself cranking the heat to try to get upstairs a little warmer and it never seemed to happen. We have two sensors with the ecobee3 - one upstairs and one downstairs. The most excellent thing about the sensors is the ecobee3 does its best to get the temperature to a 'median' point of where the motion is. While this has resulted in me being much warmer than desired on the main floor, I'll take that to not being able to sleep because our master bedroom is (literally) 10-15 degrees colder than the main floor. Since getting the ecobee3 and sensors, our master bedroom is MUCH more comfortable. You might say "well I don't want my heat running all the time" and I get it. However, I find myself adjusting the thermostat not near as much as I did with the Nest. I don't wake up at 3am freezing anymore to pick up my phone and boost the heat. The Beauty of the Sensors (and where Nest falls short): The ecobee3 sensors detect motion and temperature. When it detects motion, it runs heat/ac until the temperature hits a median point. So, if I have the thermostat set to 70 and it's 60 upstairs, when motion is upstairs it will run heat until upstairs is roughly 65. This means the main floor gets to be around 73, but it hasn't been awful. My only complaint has been when I run upstairs quickly it may end up cranking the heat for a couple minutes because there was a blip of motion, but it's an extremely minor complaint. THIS is where I actually got mad at Nest. As I previously stated, I have three Nest Protect smoke/CO2 detectors - one for each floor of my house. Nest Protect detects smoke, CO2, humidity, and TEMPERATURE. Oh, and motion (the little nightlight on the Protect is my favorite little feature, to be honest). However, even with a Nest thermostat and Nest smoke detectors, the Nest Protect DOES NOT and WILL NOT 'talk' to the Nest thermostat for... reasons? There is literally nothing the ecobee3 remote sensors do that the Nest Protects can't do, yet Nest has not yet figured out how to do the same thing WITHIN THEIR OWN ECOSYSTEM. It's been 3 or 4 years since Nest released their smoke detectors yet they still haven't figured it out. I know that's not long in the scheme of things but... really? The fact that Nest hasn't even acknowledged this as a 'could come one day' feature shows that the company doesn't have its own best interests in mind, and I was sick of waiting. I still think Nest makes a great product, but it's not the best if your thermostat isn't in a central location or you have a multi-story house. I truly hope Nest figures out how to make their own products integrate with each other more, but my guess is Google will kill Nest and wrap its products in to the Google Home ecosystem before that happens. IN SUMMARY: If you have a multi-story house, the ecobee3 remote sensors are a must-have and will far outshine any other smart thermostat on the market. It also has an always-on display (Nest does not) so you can see what the temperature is at any time. The only thing I don't like is the occasional thermostat change due to a moment of motion on the sensor and the fact that the touch-screen is glass so it's a fingerprint/smudge grabber, but those are tiny first world problem-level complaints and not near big enough to knock even half a star. Get a bee.

Unlike the Nest, it proudly displays the current temperature! What a concept! Imagine looking over at your thermostat and the big number is the temp it is set to maintain. Nope. I know that number. What I want to is the current temp, thank you ecobee. It also has a multitude of adjustments that you just might need or just enjoy tweaking to perfection. My cooling tends to short cycle. No problem here, unlike Nest. There are 2 ways to fix my problem with ecobee 3. And, that's just one example. Or, just set up a schedule from the comfort of your computer or smartphone & leave the rest alone. No manual setting every change all day every day for a week or 10 days for the thermostat to "learn" your likings. Add the little remote sensors and you really have a great setup that will just hum along and keep you comfortable and efficient. Plus, I like the attitude of the company! After my purchase of which I thought was the thermostat with the best compliment of features & usability, I found that the company goes to great lengths to stay in touch with and get ongoing feedback from customers. For interesting customers (I am one) I find the creative, innovative interactions available with the company fun, challenging and thought-provoking. It's a like a bonus to feel like I am a valued member of the team that can result in valuable improvements of the product I already bought--as a cell phone can have features added to it without buying a new phone. Their approach gets me thinking. And, there is the product. It looks great, acts great (does what it says it will do). You can set it and forget it or you can get it to do all sorts of things to keep you comfortable and save money, automated and manual at your command--if that's your thing. You can even take advantage of the unique ability to take into consideration temperature readings in multiple rooms of the house and concentrate on keeping the room you are in the temperature you want. [Nest must be sorry they didn't think of that.] I initially bought the package with just 1 remote--didn't know there was the option to buy a package deal with 3 remotes, so ended up buying 2 more remotes. Very pleased the way it keeps my heating an cooling under control as I want it and I can easily make a quick change from my smart phone--like heat the house up (or cool it down) when I'm on the way home so it's comfy when I get there or bump it up or down a notch without getting up from the sofa. Cool stuff for those inclined, but very automated for those inclined for set it and forget it or a couple with a gadget oriented husband and couldn't care less wife (or vice versa, of course!). And, with the support of this interesting and interested company, who knows what interesting and helpful update they may send to your bee, just like your phone. Or, don't worry about it and just let it hum along, saving your $$ on your utility bill.

I've slowly been making my house smarter, and had been eying a smart thermostat as a key upgrade for the past few months. I had heard a lot about Nest thermostats from tech blogs and such, but after doing some more research, learned about the ecobee3 and decided it had more features that would be helpful to me than the Nest, so I went with the ecobee3. The non-homekit unit went on sale, and I don't use any iDevices, so I picked up this unit for pretty cheap. Additionally, I was able to get a $100 rebate from my energy company in massachusetts, which was great. Be sure to look for rebates in your area. The thermostat arrived quickly, and was very well packaged. Installation was not difficult, although it was a little trickier than I expected. I did not realize I would need to install the C-wire adapter inside my thermostat as well, which worried me a little, but it turned out to be just a matter of unscrewing a couple of wires and sticking a box down there. Now everything is working great! It came with two wall plates to cover up the unpainted area underneath my old thermostat just fine. It was pretty easy to set up a basic schedule, like a regular old programmable thermostat, but this thermostat has the added benefit of handling schedule exceptions without any user input. That means if I decide to stay home for the day, or don't come home one night, the house will auto-magically sense my absence or presence and either keep me comfortable or save me money, which is great. The ecobee3 also comes with a remote sensor, which is one of the major differentiating features from the Nest. My small house HVAC only has one zone for five rooms, the thermostat is in the living room, which is the largest part of the house, and is very open. Before the ecobee3, I always had problems with my room being significantly cooler or warmer than the rest of the house at night, probably because it was a small room with an oversize vent, and better insulation than other parts of the house. The old way to fix this would be to try and overcompensate on the thermostat, which is tricky and doesn't always work, but with the ecobee3, I just put a remote sensor in my room, told the system to only use that sensor at night, and now, suddenly, I am always comfortable at night. It really is amazingly effective. I will soon buy some additional sensors to make the system even smarter. FYI the sensors have not been tripped by my cat, which is good. The other key feature for me is the rich API that ecobee makes available. I use it to integrate the thermostat with my SmartThings home automation hub. The thermostat appears in the interface like any other smart device, and can now be included in all sorts of home automation programs. The thermostat is already pretty smart, but when you combine it with other systems you can do even more. I now have it set so that if anyone opens a window or door in the house for more than 10 minutes, the heating and cooling systems will shut down and instead only ventilate, automatically. Overall, the interface and control systems for the thermostat are excellent. The web interface has been a little buggy recently, but the company assures me they are working things out. I haven't been able to access the HomeIQ reports yet, but hopefully they will be ready soon. I am very happy with my purchase and have been thinking about upgrading my parents home with an ecobee as well. It would be easy enough for them to use, and could really save them some money as well. PROS ------------- increased comfort and money savings with AutoAway and occupancy detection excellent UI and beautiful hardware rich API, compatible with smartthings and logitech harmony, IFTTT remote sensors are the biggest innovation in thermostats since programming much more powerful than the nest thermostats logs temperature, humidity, occupancy, and HVAC usage constantly and historically, great for people who love data it displays the weather and indoor humidity on the screen CONS -------------- still a little bit buggy in the web app, but does not affect operations was a little difficult to find energy rebates for it (they do exist!), nest makes it easier, with a rebate finder website

Ecobee3 is by far the most advanced smart thermostat for Heat Pump users. It is suited for the novice that wants a simple smart thermostat as well as the more "power user" who wants to tweak the settings or interface with things like IFTTT. I have a pair of 2-ton Goodman heat pumps and started out with Nest thermostats. It was quickly apparent that the Nest's do not know how to efficiently utilize heat pumps. I returned my 2 nests and shelled out the extra $100 for the pair of Ecobee3's (Nest was running a special a the time in Dec '14). While there was a bit more setup for the Ecobee than the Nest (but no more than a typical programmable thermostat) but well justified in the benefits. The remote sensors help to overcome slightly cooler/warmer rooms or in my case where the thermostat itself is in a non-living room (a hallway to upstairs) allowing for the HVAC to heat/cool to a comfortable temperature in our living room and kitchen (done by turning off the thermostat sensor and only using the remote sensor temperature). The interface is beautiful, intuitive, and responsive. All the menus are easy to navigate and allow for easy access to the simple settings as well as the more technical settings. The main screen gives a clear picture of the current status of the thermostat as well as quick access to current and forecast weather for your area. The web portal is brilliant, fantastic graphs and assessment of your houses efficiency compared to houses in your area. For those that are data inclined, all the data from the thermostats can be exported into CSV format for additional analytics. I have a Android phone so cannot comment on the iPhone app but the app I have is well designed, responsive and has all the features needed (including vacation settings, fan settings, schedule edits, sensor temps, sensor inclusion in comfort settings) The feedback loop into the development community is good and you can see previous requests for enhancements/features being fulfilled. There is also a good community to ask questions and learn about your thermostat (https://ecobee.influitive.com/) as well as 3rd party communities (http://www.smarthomehub.net). As far as support, Ecobee has a very intelligent and responsive set of technical resources to help with setup, settings, and any issue. I've contact support twice, both related to understanding how the E3 was working and not for poor performance. Both times my questions were answered and the support team knowledgeable and courteous.

I previously owned a Nest thermostat at another property and was happy with it at the time I purchased. However, when I bought my new condo the Nest refused to work with my new system. It wouldn't recognize wires that were connected and it actually burned out the controller board in my HVAC requiring a service call for replacement. I ended up replacing the Nest with my old manual thermostat while patiently waiting for a new compatible smart thermostat to come to market. I have a Daikin-McQuay water sourced heat pump with Mark IV Control Board. The ecobee3 Smarter Wi-Fi Thermostat with Remote Sensor, Black Apple HomeKit Enabled works without issue with my HVAC system. The install was very easy. Although not required, I did purchase new Southwire 64170422 18/7 Solid Copper Class 2 Power-Limited Thermostat Wire to replace the stranded thermostat wire attached to my previous thermostat. It was simple to attach the new wiring to my controller board and feed to my thermostat location. Since I was able to feed the C wire from my controller board directly to my new Ecobee3, it wasn't necessary to use the included power extender. The setup of the Ecobee3 is very easy with the included touch screen based input. This is much easier than the twist/push method of input on the Nest. The setup screens stepped me through the initial setup. When I got to the screen showing the wires connected it was not seeing my G wire. I checked to make sure it was connected properly and it was. I was afraid I would be stuck like I was with the Nest issues I had in the past, however the Ecobee3 gave me the option to tell it which wire was connected that hadn't been recognized. Once this was selected, everything worked without issue. The only mistake I made during setup was with the sensor. I got a little too eager and removed the tab before my Ecobee3 was powered up. This was preventing my sensor from going through the setup process. I made a quick call to Ecobee technical support and they gave me the easy solution. Simply remove the battery from the sensor and replace the battery BACKWARDS into the sensor for 30 seconds. This discharges the sensor. Then, simply replace the battery back into the sensor in the correct position while standing in front of your Ecobee3 thermostat. This will begin the sensor setup process. Given all that, what do I think of the thermostat? I love it! I have been monitoring my energy usage since installing the thermostat. My daily usage has decreased by at least $1 per day over the past three weeks with temperatures in the 90s. Which is great considering I work from home and do not benefit as often from the auto-away features many others do. My thermostat is near my front door and the remote sensor is a great benefit of monitoring the temperature in other parts of my home. I currently have the main thermostat and bedroom remote sensor average the temperature in the home throughout the day. At night, I only use the bedroom sensor so that it keeps me comfortable while I sleep (ignoring the temperature near my front door). The Ecobee3 has a great iOS app, web app, and Apple Watch app to control the features from anywhere you may be. Of course, with iOS and HomeKit, you can use Siri to control the thermostat with your voice. I also use personal recipes created on https://ifttt.com/ to change functions on my thermostat based on my location. For instance, when I leave a certain area it goes into Away mode. The Ecobee3 also contains many of the features Nest users may have grown to appreciate. For instance, when your AC has reached the correct temperature the thermostat can keep running the fan for a period of time to push the last of that cold air out of your ductwork so that it isn't wasted. It can do the same in Heat mode. The thermostat also learns how long it takes to cool/heat your home so that it is the appropriate temperature at the time you want. There are many more features others have listed in reviews that I have certainly missed. The Ecobee3 team is very responsive to customer input and have an online community of great users helping to shape future updates and features. I am happy to have purchased an extremely 'smart' thermostat that is helping to lower my utility bill immediately after install. My energy provider also offers a rebate on the purchase so it was a great win-win purchase!

The Ecobee 3 Thermostat Quick facts; used to replace a Honeywell TH6220D and a Honeywell TH 5220D thermostat on a heat pump system with one cool cycle and two-stage heat. Two Ecobee 3 thermostats were installed on a two zone system, one zone being downstairs with the other being upstairs. The only installation issue was knowing that the W wire is a shared connection with the O/B post on the Honeywell thermostats (the wiring configuration from the Honeywell’s was a little confusing to me, although probably not to most – the W or O/B wire connection is the same connection on the Honeywell thermostat). Honeywell uses a central horizontal post configuration in these thermostats and the top configuration is labeled W and the configuration on the bottom for the same connection is labeled O/B. Something to think about before purchasing either the Ecobee 3 thermostat or the Nest thermostat is the location of your thermostats. One of my thermostats is in a small vestibule leading to the master bedroom on the first floor and the second thermostat is in a media room on the second floor. These are not areas with a clear line of sight nor much traffic which ultimately makes the Nest thermostat somewhat unpractical since it only sees what is in front of it. The same would be said for the Ecobee 3 except the Ecobee 3 allows me to install remote sensors. Ecobee’s remote sensors are its defining feature. As Ecobee’s website states their thermostats are designed for people who live in houses with more than one room. The remote sensors can be activated individually or in groups and each thermostat has the capacity to carry up to 32 remote sensors on it. This feature alone is what makes this thermostat so valuable to me. I am one of those people who needs to sleep in a room that is on the cool side and the Ecobee allows me to do that. I have a remote sensor placed in my bedroom and when the thermostat enters the sleep cycle it is the only one that’s selected therefore the thermostat is actually reading the temperature in my bedroom and acting on that instead of the main thermostat in the vestibule. For me, the ability to control the temperature in my bedroom with this type of precision is one of the best sleep aids I could ever have. It doesn’t matter whether I like it hot or cold the Ecobee is going to read the temperature in my bedroom and heat/cool to that setting and nothing else. It’s this degree of programmability and flexibility that I find most desirable with this thermostat. The Ecobee is not a design object like the Nest thermostat which is made of glass and stainless steel. The Ecobee is a utilitarian design to provide maximum comfort and control over your house. It has a couple of features that I think are very important. These are its “follow me” feature, which, with the use of remote sensors, allows you to move from room to room in the house without the main thermostat going into an “away mode”. It also has an “auto away feature” that recognizes when no ones is in the house so even if the thermostat might be in the middle of a cycle that calls for 72° inside it will automatically go to the away setting which by default I believe is 78°. These are the things that are important to me and the things that I like about this thermostat. I cannot make a claim that the Ecobee will save money, although that is entirely possible. But for most people including myself a claim like that is similar to saying that if you switch to the diet versions of all your favorite foods you will lose weight. The goals are possible but it is the user’s responsibility to apply the technology provided in a way that it will deliver the desired results. In that respect the Ecobee gives the user all the tools necessary to obtain significant savings in energy costs.

This might be the most effective "smart" thermostat solution on the market. I've owned and worked with several others over the years, including some that were integrated with home / building automation systems, but none that truly addressed as many interior comfort problems as this one while remaining very automatic and easy to use. The layout of our home presents several challenges in keeping it comfortable with stable temperatures. We have two floors, with separate HVAC systems for each, but poor locations for the thermostats and main air return ducts. There is a 2-story entry foyer and staircase, through which the warmer air naturally rises and collects near the 2nd floor thermostat . Likewise, cooler air falls to the first floor near its thermostat location. A 10-degree temperature difference between the top and bottom stairs was a frequent problem. Worse, if the downstairs unit was inadvertently placed in heating mode while the upstairs was in cooling mode, the systems would work against each other and both floors would hit opposite temperature extremes. Very unpleasant to come home or wake up to. The ecobees are expensive and may be hard to justify for some folks. In our case, one of our older programmable thermostats was intermittently malfunctioning and putting the HVAC system at risk, so it had to be replaced. This was a good time to see if a pair of ecobees could finally solve the larger problems with discomfort and inefficiency. We've had them just over a month, and working together they've made a huge improvement. There are several features that combine to make this possible, but the main ones are the remote temperature/presence sensors and the fact that you can group multiple thermostats together to work as a single intelligent system. The remote sensors let you measure room temp where where people in the home spend their time. You can set it up so that certain sensors are used at different times in your schedule or depending on room occupancy. You can have the system take average readings across multiple sensors, and you can disable the senor in the thermostat itself. And by having the two thermostats grouped together, you never have to worry about one being in heating mode while the other is cooling. When you change modes on one thermostat, the other one follows suit. Each thermostat can still have it's own temperature set-points and schedules, or you can have them share a single schedule. You can also set the thermostats to run the fan periodically, keeping air circulated and temperatures more balanced across the home (and in our case, dissipating all the hot air that would gather at the top of the stairs). There are many other intelligent features, like Smart Recovery, Smart Home/Away, and the factoring of outside weather conditions and forecast that I expect will go a long way to keeping indoor temps more stable and comfortable in the most efficient way. Then there is the convenience of being able to change the temperature from the PC in your office, or your smartphone while sitting on the couch. And if you are out of town when extreme weather hits, you can check in on things remotely and change system modes if needed. You can also set a special vacation schedule with departure and return dates/times. All of this functionality is very easy to use through the ecobee portal, and it's been interesting to scroll back through the graphs and see how our units have been operating! I've recently run into a couple of minor bugs, but ecobee support has been responsive and I feel confident they will correct these problems with automatic firmware updates. I am very happy with our investment.