I bought my brother a Nest for his house warming gift. A few months later I bought a house and spent a ton of time researching thermostats. I came across the Ecobee thermostat and fell in love quickly. The Ecobee has mostly the same features as Nest, but with 1 HUGE difference, room sensors.
Main Features
Let’s get into the main features first. Like most smart thermostats, Ecobee has an app that allows you to control everything through. The app allows you to do basically everything you can do at the unit. There has not been a time I was required to go to the unit to do something except the initial installation. You can set up a schedule easily and quickly, and even set up comfort settings. Comfort settings allow you to set a standard temp for when your “home,” “away” or “sleeping.” These comfort settings make setting up a schedule easier.
You can set up a “geofence,” which a set perimeter around your property that will change your thermostat from “away” to “home.” For example, you set a perimeter of 5 miles around your house and you come home early from work, when you “break” into the geofence your thermostat will switch from “away” and turn to “home.” This means your thermostat will break its schedule and switch to your “home” comfort settings. This is a great feature if you drop your thermostat up or down 6 degrees when you are away.
Room Sensors
Room sensors are the unique feature that sets Ecobee apart from everyone else. There are seperate little units you place around the house that read the temperature in that area and have motion sensors. These motion sensors allow the Ecobee to break the current schedule. For example, you fall asleep on the couch and your thermostat is set to away. You wake up and walk by the sensor, the thermostat will snap to “home.” Example two, you don’t have geofence set up and you come home early from work. You walk by a sensor, the thermostat will snap to your home comfort setting. My favorite part of the sensors are that you can read the temperature for each sensor. I use this to monitor the temperature in my baby daughter’s room to make sure she is comfortable.
Conclusion
I love the Ecobee thermostat so much that I have two of them in my house. Even thought each Ecobee comes with room a room sensor, I bought extra room sensors. The installation is extremely easy and their customer service is excellent. I have a whole house humidifier installed and my HVAC contractor had to call Ecobee for guidance. They answered quickly and helped get everything installed in a few minutes.
Stats
Ecobee 4 – $199 (currently on amazon)
2 pack of room Sensors – $79.99
Installation time: Less than 30 minutes
