home, there are thermostats, smart thermostats, and then there's Ecobee. And while this HomeKit
enabled Ecobee3 was introduced just this past year, Ecobee has been making smart thermostats
since 2007. That's nearly four years before their biggest competition hit the scene. Since
that time their thermostat offerings have improved drastically and this latest thermostat
is the culmination of their years of experience.
Ecobee was kind enough to send me this thermostat
for review, and in this review we'll explain why you should consider purchasing a smart
thermostat and we'll see if additional options and features of this ecobee make it stand
out from the competition. Heating and cooling your home can account
for over 50% of your home's energy usage. In most cases the device that controls this
is maintaining a constant temperature around the clock even if you're in bed asleep or
not even at home. Programmable thermostats have been around for years.
The problem is
very few people actual program them. It's not that we don't know our schedules but rather
that the interface for programming these is cumbersome and our schedules constantly change.
Ecobee is not a learning thermostat. It's not going to automatically learn your schedule
and program itself. However the interface for setting it up is very simple and it even
comes preset with a base template.
In addition to that it contains motion sensors to sense
whether you're at home or away. For example, if you usually go out on Tuesday nights but
this week decided to stay at home, then ecobee with sense that and set the thermostat to
your home comfort setting. Similarly if you decide to go out and run errands during a
time when you'd usually be at home, ecobee will sense that as well and set your thermostat
to away. Any smart thermostat can do this and the savings are huge.
However, there's
a few other options and features that ecobee has that we should definitely consider. Ecobee's tag line is that it's the thermostat
for homes with more than one room. That's because each thermostat ships with an additional
room sensor. These tiny room sensors are wireless and battery operated and ecobee says you'll
get about four years of battery life from these.
Most thermostats are only monitoring
the temperature directly from the thermostat. Ecobee however uses these additional sensors
to monitor the temperature as well as the humidity from additional rooms. It then averages
these figures across the house to provide comfort throughout all the rooms instead of
just at the thermostat. Where you place your sensors will vary depending on what room is
important to you.
An obvious choice is a nursery so that know your child's room is always comfortable.
The more sensors you add the better ecobee will be able to heat and cool your home. The
unit ships with one sensor, or three if you buy the bundle, but you can add up to 32.
Ecobee takes this a step further by adding motion detection as well. So if you enable
it, ecobee will use its Follow Me feature to only consider rooms that are occupied.
For me I put the sensor in our guest room. So now ecobee will only consider that room
if we actually have guest staying in it.
Motion is also considered for Smart Home and Smart
Away. If you work from home occasionally this is a must. By putting the wireless sensor
in your home office ecobee will sense that you're still at home and keep your home nice
and cozy even if you never go near the actual thermostat. Setting up the wireless sensor
is a breeze.
You pull the tab to activate it while standing near the ecobee and it's
then automatically added to the system. I. Did have a minor problem with my sensor after
using it for about a week where it would frequently disconnect from the ecobee. I contacted support
and they said this was because the battery wasn't making good contact with terminals.
They suggested I take the back off and gently bend the terminals to make better contact
with the battery.
After doing this I haven't had the issue since. I also noticed if we
leave our guest room door shut for long periods of time the sensor will disconnect and reconnect
as well. The sensor can be mounted to the stand or wall mounted using the optional back. The second thing that makes this thermostat
stand out from the competition is how well it works with various home automation platforms.
At the time of publishing this review it's the only thermostat on the market that works
with Apple HomeKit.
Although Honeywell just announced at CES that their Lyric thermostat
will soon support Apple Homekit as well. This means that you can control your thermostat
using Siri. You can say things like "hey Siri, set the temperature to 73 degrees" "OK, I
set the downstairs to about 73 degrees". There are some limitations though.
Currently in
order to use HomeKit you can't have the thermostat in auto mode. It has to be in either heat
mode or cool mode. I've really enjoyed using auto mode especially this time of the year.
Having the thermostat automatically switch to heat at night when it's cool outside and
then switch to AC during the day when it's hot is really handy. It may sound wasteful
but that's just the reality of the fall and spring in the southeast.
Ecobee informed me
though that they've figured out a workaround and will be releasing a software update in
early 2016 that will allow the use of HomeKit even while in auto mode. Another limitation
is that in order to use HomeKit outside of your hone you have to have an Apple TV. The
Apple TV acts as your hub to allow you to control your HomeKit devices over the Internet.
I currently don't have an Apple TV so I wasn't able to test this. You can use HomeKit to
create scenes.
This allows your HomeKit devices to integrate with one another. For example,
you could create a scene called "I'm home". Then when you come home you could announce
to Siri that you're home and this will set your thermostat, turn on your tv, and turn
on your lights all depending on what type of HomeKit devices you have. "Hey Siri, I'm
home." "OK.
Your humble abode is ready for I'm home". Another way to trigger scenes is
by using location. You can set a geofence around your home and then trigger scenes when
you enter or exit this fence. However this requires an Apple TV as well since you'll
be using HomeKit away from home.
Another system that I took advantage of was
if this then that. I used this to trigger my thermostat based on a geofence I'd set
around my house and the if this then that app running on my iPhone. This meant that
my ecobee could begin warming my house when I was about five miles away versus right when
I walked in the door. You can also get creative and tie in things like your Fitbit so that
your ecobee knows right when you wake up and can switch from your sleep comfort setting
to your home comfort setting.
While other thermostats participate in If This Then That
as well, none have the flexibility of ecobee. And this is the case across almost all home
automation platforms. If you'd rather use Samsung Smart Things or Wink then ecobee participates
in those as well. Or if you'd like to program your own software, it has an open API.
The interface on the ecboee is very intuitive.
Because it's a normal touchscreen like on your smartphone or tablet almost anyone can
use it. My kids have really enjoyed checking the live weather as well as the four day forecast
to see how they should dress for the day. Unless you never leave your house, having
a smart thermostat is definitely going to save you money. I've been using Ecobee for
two months now and while comparing last year's versus this year's electricity bill, granted
it was six degrees warmer, but I've saved roughly 21%.
Ecobee also has a savings monitor
in their portal where you can see how much runtime you've saved versus keeping your house
set to a standard 72 degrees. It's not a matter of if Ecobee will pay for itself but rather
how quickly. And while speaking of the portal, they keep all of your runtime history and
temperatures for the past 15 months! None of the competition comes even close to this. I've been looking at smart thermostats for
years now, and that's primarily been focused on Nest.
However after using the ecobee and
seeing how it compares to Nest I'm sold. With its additional room sensors, HomeKit integration,
and general openness of the ecobee, I'm convinced it's the thermostat to beat. The only one complaint worth mentioning is
that the ecobee doesn't use motion to determine if you're still awake at night or if you've
woken up early. At the time of recording this it's currently a little after midnight and
I'm sitting directly in front of my ecobee and it's in sleep mode even though I've been
sitting here for the past two hours.
However this could easily be fixed in a software update. I didn't have time to go into the easy DIY
installation, the three year warranty, the very thorough portal on your tablet or on
the web, vacation scheduling and being able to change the temperature from anywhere, or
the vast array of options on the thermostat itself and your ability to customize it if
you so choose. If you have questions about any of those things or anything I didn't mention
feel free to leave those in the comments. If you've enjoyed this video review please
give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing if you haven't done so already.
And as always,
thanks for watching..
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