I just got an email from Google/Nest that my Gen 1 Nest will be EOL soon. They are offering a sizable discount to migrate to their latest. Since Nest isn’t very Apple friendly, although that’s not a dealbreaker, it’s time to some summertime shopping for thermostats! (I can’t remember something like a thermostat being EOL’d but that’s life now).
Recommendations anyone?
Ecobee is another option. I have used both and I prefer Ecobee over Nest.
That’s where I am likely headed. Ecobee because it works with Apple Home? Any other benefits?
Ecobee has a terrible (IMHO) physical user interface. Nothing like Nest.
If you never use the t-stat physically, not a problem, but others in my house hated the Ecobee when I briefly tried it out.
I went all-in on Tado when I moved here a few years ago. It’s German engineering, utilitarian rather than attractive, but it means I can set every room to its own schedule and thermostat and it genuinely “just works” once I set it all up. It’s all in Apple Home too.
+1 for ecobee. We have one for each a/c unit and has worked flawlessly for years. Having room sensors throughout the house is a big help balancing temps and presence sensing.
Interesting - we have central AC, so I’m not sure how to manage temperature by room.
Been very happy with our 2 Ecobees. Very easy setup. As mentioned the device UI is a bit difficult but I mainly use the app.
They changed it a couple years ago, and not for the better. They changed the UI on the phone app as well (to keep them in sync) and it’s very confusing where you need to go to do basic things.
You don’t. Just like any other central AC system, if you don’t have multiple zones, you’re pumping air throughout the house regardless of settings.
With Ecobee, you can put sensors around the house (last I checked, $80 for a 2-pack but the thermostat is also a temp sensor and it comes with one in the box) and then for different comfort settings, tell it to use only specific sensors. Then it uses the readings from the sensors to get the temperature where you want it for those locations.
Examples:
My thermostat is in my dining room on the first floor. Overnight, I don’t care much what the temperature is in the dining room because we’re all asleep upstairs. So I have 2 sensors upstairs in bedrooms and for “sleep” setting, only the readings from the upstairs bedrooms are used to manage temperature. In the summer, that may result in downstairs being several degrees cooler than upstairs.
Weekdays, kids are at school and my spouse & I are working from home. So the upstairs sensors are ignored, and the thermostat as well as the other sensor we have downstairs are used to monitor temperature. Which, in September, invariably leads to at least one kid saying “wow, it’s hot in my room” when they get home from school because downstairs has gotten “cool enough.”
What country are you in? In the UK, Hive is usually the most common installation, probably because it was developed by one of our biggest energy providers. It’s available in some other countries though and is a standalone product.
I don’t have anything to compare it with, but for me Hive has been perfect and since I got it I’ve helped 3 other households also get it. It integrates flawlessly with Apple HomeKit, which means you can set things up per room if needed, and the scheduling functioning in the app is brilliant - your schedule is 100% customisable so you can do whatever weird timings you want to match your life.
More importantly though, the controller that you get can function without the iPhone, which means for less tech-savvy people its very simple for them to use it as well without having to learn how to use an app. I never touch my controller because I do everything via the Hive app, but I know other people who only use this.
Unfortunately, this is a common scenario that consumer smart thermostat manufacturers don’t explain very well.
A single-zone central HVAC system does not magically become a multi-zone system simply by having multiple remote temperature sensors connected to the thermostat.
As @Alevyinroc clearly explained, you can tell the thermostat which room is your priority and to use that room’s sensor to control the heating/cooling cycle, but all the other rooms will be hotter or colder.
FYI, just about every smart thermostat on the market can function without an app and act just like a dumb thermostat.
However, many so-called smart thermostats don’t put a lot of effort into the physical user interface design and can be harder to use than an actual dumb thermostat, if you are not using, or prefer to use, the physical thermostat controls some of the time.
This is how I thought it would work as well. Our thermostat is on the 2nd floor, bedrooms on 3rd.
Ok, digging deeper, I saw that Ecobee also has alarm services. Our current alarm is via Xfinity and is now more than a decade old. The various gadgets are starting to fail on that system.
Anyone using Ecobee for alarms?