ecobee - Smart Thermostat with Voice Control - Black

I recently installed 6 “ecobee smart thermostats with voice control” and I love them! It was a bigger project than anticipated, but well worth the effort. My Five Favorite Features 1.The ecobee comes with a remote temperature and occupancy sensor. My ecobee reads the temperature in the living room where I sit and ignores the temperature in the hall where the thermostat is. 2. The design of the ecobee touch screen is elegant. A dark rounded square screen displays the room temperature in large numbers along with the time of day, outdoor temperature, and a weather icon. When you walk up to the ecobee it comes alive and displays a slide for the setpoint and icons for quick Home/Away, detailed weather, voice control, and menus. 3. My six networked ecobees can be monitored and adjusted from an app or a web portal. 4. Ecobee lets you display helpful graphs of, for example, room temperature over time along with setpoint, outdoor temperature, and an indication of when the thermostat was calling for heat. See pictures at the end of this post. 5. Voice control is more useful than expected. I don’t have to be in a room to change the temperature. I just say “Hey Google, warm up the Master Bedroom” from anywhere. One complaint is that the slide for the setpoint never seems to wind up where I’m aiming. Comparison Shopping I bought the ecobee instead of the Nest Learning Thermostat because it includes a remote sensor and can produce energy reports and graphs. The ecobee thermostat dedicated power approach is more reliable than the Nest’s power stealing scheme. With the ecobee schedule, I am in control and I know what is going on. In contrast, a learning thermostat like the Nest could learn a wrong schedule or hide what it has learned. Installation and Setup The ecobee requires a “C” wire for 24 VAC power, which many HVAC systems already have. My old thermostats did not have a C wire. My five heat-only zones each had two unused wires running from the basement to the thermostat. With the help of tech support I bought two 24 VAC transformer and ran power to the ecobees on the C and Rc terminals. (Max 3 ecobees per transformer) For my one heat plus AC zone I found the C wire on the AC air handler and ran it to the ecobee on an unused white wire to the C terminal on the thermostat. I sent a photo of my air handler wiring to tech support and they sent it back annotated and talked me through it. See photo. Tech support was excellent - patient, knowledgeable, and helpful. Mounting the ecobee is simplified by a built-in bubble level. I used the optional back plate to cover over unpainted areas from the old thermostat. Setup was easy. The ecobee senses which terminals are in use and shows you a diagram to confirm. The hardest part was typing my WiFi password on the small screen. To pair the smart sensor with a thermostat use the app to scan a QR code on the sensor. Twelve ways I am Saving Energy I am running a schedule to turn down heat when rooms are unused. My old thermostats were so hard to program that I did not run a schedule. I am tweaking the schedule to turn down heat. It is so easy to program the schedule that I’ll jump in and tweak it if I see a chance to save a half hour of heat. I am turning down heat when I leave a room or when someone leaves the house. I just say “Hey Google, cool down the Living Room” even if I am already in another room. I am overriding the schedule. If we go to bed early, I say “Hey Google, good night” to turn down all zones. If we leave the house, I say “Hey Google, I’m leaving.” to run the “Away” settings. Ecobee senses if a room is unoccupied for a couple of hours and then runs the “Away”settings. I am warming rooms up just as I need them and only for as long as I need them. For example, before shower time “Hey Google, warm up the master bath” and after “Hey Google, turn on the master bath schedule.'' Constant monitoring allowed me to realize rooms were warm when they should not be - a problem with my flow-check valves. I will replace the flow-check valves on my boiler and eliminate this unwanted heat. I am not overheating rooms that are otherwise warmed up by human activities and electronics. The remote sensor reads the occupied room, not the unoccupied hallway. I am not relying on too-generous guesses about preheating. The ecobee learns how long it takes to bring a room up to temperature and if you say you want 65F at 6:00 am, the room will be at temperature then. By observing when the thermostat calls for each room and watching the outdoor temperature I am identifying which rooms lose heat the fastest and considering insulation. If I forget to turn down the heat, I can do so remotely anywhere and anytime from the app or the web portal. I can easily check if the heat was unnecessarily left on by asking "hey google, what does master bedroom say? Five ways I am more comfortable The remote sensor delivers the heat I want at my location. I can remotely preheat such as warming up the office from the gym as I finish my workout. “Smart Recovery” preheats a room so it is at temperature when the schedule calls for it. There are no longer hot spots in the house. I have the comfort of knowing what my system is doing when and seeing as much detail as I want. Voice Control: the Good and the Bad I was not excited about voice control when I bought the ecobee but it has turned out to be much more useful than expected. The ecobees have Alexa built in so you can talk directly to the thermostat and get a voice response. Alexa is a bit of a nag. The day after installation the I found the ecobees flashing turquoise and blue. I asked “Alexa, what’s up?” and she said there were new albums released by two of my favorite bands. So I turned off “shopping notifications” and the next day I got a different alert, this one green and relating to a news report. I just don’t want my thermostat to alert me unless it is HVAC related. I was already using Google Assistant so I use it instead of Alexa. As a result, I must speak to one of the smart speakers I have in my home or speak to my phone. I also find the language more natural: “Hey Google, what does kitchen say?” versus “Alexa, ask ecobee the kitchen temperature.” Finally, Google Assistant lets me group commands into routines. For example, when I say “OK Google, I’m leaving” it turns down all six thermostats and turns off two lights. The ecobee is the best product I’ve bought this year and I recommend it to anyone who does not mind doing a bit of wiring. Who knew you could love a thermostat?

I have another Ecobee upstairs (the 4th version) and decided to get the newest for the downstairs (5th). The Ecobee 5 is the best yet, not too much different then the 4, it’s bluetooth enabled. Big whop. It plays songs off my skype account and it’s Alexa enabled. I like the updated look and the newer temp sensor. It totally makes the house seem so much cooler, as the original thermostat we set at 74, we had to change the temp in here to 77 which still feels cool! What a difference it makes to have the sensor in the room we are actually spending time! Definitely get this, Google/Nest (even 3rd gen) stinks. I have had all three best systems, other then customer support, I don’t suggest getting a Nest. Too buggy and it would change setting all the time ON ITS OWN, even when I turned learning off and had a set schedule. It’s like someone took it and started playing with the temp somewhere around the world. Possibly hacked by someone. Ecobee makes me happy, and Alexa listens when I tell it to change. Happy purchase.

Ecobee Thermostat comes with everything you need! Instructions are easy to follow. The functions are great! And love the Follow Me function of the smart sensors! This has been great addition because I leave home and worry about the HVAC running while I'm gone. The Ecobee thermostat takes care of this. This can be done with your smartphone or with the Follow Me function of the thermostat. The follow Me function works with the smart sensor and the thermostat. They can determine whether or not the rooms are occupied or not. If the devices notice that no one is occupying the rooms. The thermostat does not turn on. And like wise if you have a schedule set up to turn down the temperature at certain time. But you're actually home. The smart sensor, if you have one in your bedroom, it will show motion to the thermostat so that it doesn't turn down the temperature and wake up to a cold home. There can be up to 32 smart sensors to your ecobee. Since purchasing the Ecobee Smart Thermostat. I've added 2 additional for the kids' rooms. And will add more as they go on sale. The speaker is good. Not something to replace your sound system if you have one. Alexa works great, I've been able to interact with Alex function from the other side of the room. And I'm not sure if it is something everyone else is experiencing. But when comparing the temperatures between my old thermostat and the Ecobee. There seems to be a 2 degree difference. Where the Ecobee comes up higher temperature then the old one. This will be something I'll have to test out with a third temperature reader to see which one would be more accurate. My main complaint is that when adjusting the temps directly from the thermostat doesn't always work. What I mean by that is that when I try to move the temps up/down. The temp number does not change. I sometimes have to keep moving all the way up the touch screen. Then adjust way higher/lower than desired. So sometimes it's better to adjust through the smartphone.

It looks great and is a perfect size for our home. Comes enabled with Alexa and this AI feature is great bonus. The speakers are fantastic and audio quality is great. We jam to music during this unprecedented time when we are hunkered down in our homes.

I was debating getting this model or the ecobee4 since both have the same functions and the 4th gen was on sale for $229. I decided to buy this one and compare it to my friend’s ecobee4 & return it if I wasn’t happy with it. I will say... paying that extra $20 makes a huge difference! The built-in Amazon Echo has much better voice recognition, the device interface operates SUPER quickly (whereas the 3rd & 4th gen have a slight lag when using the interface), and the room sensor included is a newer generation and has a MUCH a better rated battery life than the previous generation of sensors. For all of you smart home enthusiasts out there, the room sensor plays very nicely with Apple HomeKit. The cool thing about these sensors is that they provide more data than just temperature... they’re also occupancy sensors! I purchased 2 additional room sensors along with this. Not only are they providing a more accurate temperature throughout the house... they also save more electricity by turning off the lights in the room they’re placed in when no occupancy is detected (configured via Automations under the Home app)! I also have one of the sensors set to turn on the lights dimmed at night for when I get up to grab a glass of water. Super convenient. It gets better... This thermostat has a “Follow Me” feature, where it utilizes all available room sensors to determine which rooms are & are not occupied. For the unoccupied rooms, the thermostat will not focus on cooling those; it will focus only on the rooms in use! I can definitely say, my A/C has much lesser runtime than it did with my previous smart thermostat (Nest 2nd Gen). I’ve owned this for less than a month & I cannot wait to see how much money this will save me on my monthly electric bill

I love this thermostat and the sensor comes with it. It has a build in Alexa it’s a plus but I’m all Apple so I add another one upstairs which is Ecobee 3( No build in Alexa)I have a nest which is nice too but if u truly want to use the smart sensor then don’t look no where else.

Got this for basically $25 dollars (before taxes) after my electric and gas rebates and $50 off when it was on sale. Can't really say if it is better or worst than the Nest or any other smart thermostat in terms of features as I have never used any others but have been very satisfied with my purchase of it. However, there are three reasons I picked it over the Nest. 1) It had a built in Alexa speaker, and I have a few Echos in my house but not in the dining room where the previous thermostat was located. So now I can have music in that room too! Can also adjust the temperature in house by telling Alexa too. Believe the Nest has voice recognition but not a speaker capable of playing music, but I could be wrong there. 2) The dining room and our living room have about 2-3 degree difference between them, so I like that this came with a individual room sensor that I could put in the living room and that would adjust the temp of the room according to occupancy. My previous thermostat tried to adjust to the dining room which is usually hotter or colder than the living room, as it has the most windows in it but is typically not occupied much. Now it's a lot more comfortable in the living room. Nest has one, but it is a separate purchase. 3) Personally think the display and how it looks are better than the Nest and the other smart thermostats.

Overall, Fantastic thermostat. Only reason I have given it 4 stars instead of 5 is the user interface and connection with certain devices could be slightly better. My fiance has had some trouble with her app staying connected to the thermostat, or saying our AC was on when it really wasn't. However, this is MUCH improved from my Nest I had previously. When comparing this to the Nest, I believe this unit has much more functionality and is able to connect to SmartThings natively instead of needing to use a workaround in webCoRE. I use SmartThings as my main hub, and have noticed the commands through this have been extremely fast, and consistent with no drops in connection or missed routines/automations. Not to mention the additional sensors you can add double as motion sensors in SmartThings and webCoRE which are a massive plus. I have disabled the Alexa Smart Speaker in the unit itself as I have an Echo Show in our kitchen which picks up the voice commands along with this device. And, since there is no ESP on this device (the ability to recognize which device is closest to the user and respond with only one speaker and not the entire house), both speakers will be talking at the same time, and they are never synced! Given the choice between this thermostat, the Honeywell T9, and the Nest, I will 100% buy this again.