Side by Side Comparison of: ecobee vs Nest

Absolutely love the Ecobee3! I highly do and have recommended the Ecobee3 to friends!Pros:-Remote accessibility-Precise temperature control (+/- 1°F compared to +/- 3°F Nest)-Powerful, detailed interface with lots of parameter controls-Good looks-Evolving online data metricsCons:-Detailed interface may be less intuitive to some-Initial configuration/calibration requires a bit more effort than someOther thoughts:-I really appreciate the controllability compared to similar offerings (Nest, Honeywell) - the user interface is very intuitive for me, though some may prefer the simplicity of the Nest's learning controls.-Local HVAC companies have all been impressed with the Ecobee when I've showed it to them (I was shopping around for a full heating system upgrade and was excited to show off the 'bee!)-The precision of the unit at +/- < 1°F makes for a notably more comfortable home compared to the +/- 3°F of other units. This means that if you have the thermostat set to 70°F, the Ecobee will maintain the temperature within a degree either way, while the Nest (for example) will not call for heat/AC until either 67°F or 73°F. For those wanting the least variance in home temperature, this is a huge plus!!-In ways, the 'learning' capabilities and online data metrics may feel somewhat redundant with high efficiency HVAC systems. For example, we have a new boiler-based heating system which varies the heating system outlet temperature dependent upon the outdoor air temperature, so at 50°F the system targets the water output to our boilerplates to be 130°F (98% rated efficiency), but at 10°F ramps up to the full 180°F (~92% rated efficiency) output. The Ecobee's online metrics do not have any way to measure this, as all they measure is whether the unit is calling for heat or not. So comparing the "run time" for my unit to the "run time" on boilers set only to 180°F will show that we are "less efficient", though that is not necessarily the case. This does not adversely affect the operation of the unit, but is worth knowing. :)

I got this system installed today and setup was very straight forward. I replaced a older thermostat with 4 wires but had three unused wires tucked away, I confirmed the blue wire on the furnace was connected to the C port so I was good to go to install this with five wires. I just have a single stage gas furnace and a AC unit outside so all it took was five wires. Setup was a breeze and I downloaded the iOS app easily. I think the device looks real slick and I love the reporting available, I sure hope I save some money... I've setup a schedule for everyday of the week with all my comfort zones. I have a remote sensor in my bedroom and will probably buy a two pack very soon. So far my only con has been that the sensor was showing my temp at the main sensor bit higher than it actually was.... I had my old thermastat that said it was 68 and ecobee said the main sensor was like 73.... So I went into the settings and set a offset and the house feels much better. I will email support and see if they can push the newest firmware to me and see if that helps with the tempature sensor. I actually also turned off "Follow me" but the system still averages the tempatures which is what I want, I may experiment with follow me in the summer with ACI also read that ecobee is beta testing IFTTT... I would love to get invited to that beta so I can test some things out for the company.Overall I give this 5 stars and can't wait to see how it works long term.Edit:IFTTT integration is awesome! So many cool things you can do with it. I'm loving this device so far. Update 3.6 just came out and it provided users with almost all requested features! You can now view your remote sensor data from the iOS app and HomeIQ. The iOS app just got an update the other day that now provides a widget for my ecobee3 on my home screen, it's so cool. Buy this product, you won't regret it!

I love this thing!My Highlights:1. I felt like the install was pretty easy, and self-expiatory.2. The big thing for me is the web portal! I'm an Engineer, so I love data, and this thing gives it to you. It allows you see how often your HVAC is running/ monitors humidly (and controls it if you choose) and compares it to outside temps.3. It has a Follow Me function that overrides the Away setting in your pre-programmed schedule. This is nice when my kids stay home from school. I don't need to worry about adjusting my schedule, the Ecobee notices that they are home and switches to the Home temperatures. You can see that on one of the screenshots that I attached.4. It allows you to setup an auto fan mode where the fan can run for a certain amount of time per hour regardless of weather or not the hot or cold is running. Nice to circulate the air and keep the rooms a more consistent temp.5. Multi-room monitoring - you can disable the follow me feature on the remote sensors and just you them to monitor temp if you choose. I disabled my basement sensor from follow me and just like to make sure that it is not getting to a pipe freezing type of temperature.6. If you want, you can download the RAW data in Excel format. This is really cool for a geek like me, because i can look at all of the rooms that I have sensors in and chart them over the entire day or multiple days. Then I can see if certain rooms are getting colder faster than others, and adjust my heating distribution. Did I mention that I like data :)There is one function that i wish Ecobee would add. Hopefully one of their Application Engineers read this and agree. When you manually override the schedule, i.e. go to the thermostat and change the temperature, the override is permanent until you manually go back to the thermostat and cancel it. I wish you could change the temperature and it was only applicable until the end of that schedule period, then the normal scheduling would resume. For example I find myself saying "everyone is complaining about how cold I have the house again, I guess I'll will bump it up a couple degrees". But when I do so, i forget that i did, and then the furnace holds 72 degrees all night long or until i remember that I overrode the system. As expected I typically blame the Ecobee for my short comings, and I move on with my life. I don't know of any other thermostat that can do this, but it would be really slick if they could add that feature.

My old 3M-50 Filtrete Wi Fi thermostat was having trouble with the radio module for a while and finally it bit the dust. I scoured the internet for a replacement, and read review after review after review. I cringed at the thought of spending $250 on a thermostat but I am a data junkie and love the idea of being able to track temps and humidity throughout my house via the remote sensors, learning how the weather affects my houses heat loss, and seeing the run times and stages of my furnace.INSTALLATION: 5/5I chose to run new 8 wire cable for my furnace and thermostat, but I could have continued allowing my furnace to control both heating stages and just installed it with the existing 5 wire setup. Given that, I would say for anyone with a more modern HVAC system, this should be a breeze: remove the old thermostat while labeling the wires, then reattach them to the ecobee mounting plate in the same terminals. Done. For other arrangements there are wiring diagrams in the installation manual.SETUP: 5/5Turned on the furnace breaker, was greeted with a green bee icon, confirmed by wire connections, ran through my wifi setup and was basically done. I registered my thermostat with the smart phone app and created a website account as well in this stage. The unit did a self calibration which took 20 minutes or so and then was ready to operate.SENSORS: 4/5Remove the battery insulator on the sensors and they automatically pair with the thermostat. Label them, then put them in the appropriate room. One of my sensors lost contact because it was just outside the range and possibly had some obstructions making the signal weak between the two. I moved it about 3 feet closer and out from behind a shelving unit, and it has not disconnected since.PROGRAMMING: 4/5Done through the web portal, pretty intuitive. 3 modes: home, away, sleep. Set the desired temperature for each and then add segments to each day to coincide with your schedule. You can also use Smart Follow wherein the thermostat and sensors determine if you are home or away automatically and adjust the target temperature accordingly. I prefer to create a schedule as well as use the smart home / away as our household isn't always true to the details of a set program. Once it seems our pets may have set the unit to think we were home while we were at work, causing the house to heat up for an hour or so. Otherwise it has worked well.INTELLIGENCE: 5/5The unit learns how long it takes to heat the house up relative to many data points including outside temperature, and intelligently warms the house in advance of your schedule. For instance with my old thermostat the away target was 62 degrees, and the "at home" target was 69. At 5:30 PM it would turn on and for about 40 minutes climb towards the target temp. If we didn't command a higher temp, the house was still cold on the days we arrived home 20-30 minutes early. With the ecobee3, the furnace is running in stage 1 for a while before we even are scheduled to arrive and by the time we get home it's just getting to the target temperature in the house. Of course, if we are late. we just tell it to hold a lower temperature for however long we intend to be.CONCLUSION:The ecobee3 is a huge step forward for mainstream residential thermostats, and an enormous leap from the old 3M-50. There is an active smart home community that is working towards integration with things like IFTTT, and support has been good so far. Overall, I am very happy with the unit.

Our house had been using the Nest since the first generation product. Although we did save money over the course of a few years, the Nest is not positioned in the most ideal place in our house so we had to resort to scheduling instead of using the built in sensors.When Ecobee announced their new Ecobee3 with remote sensors, I knew I wanted to replace our Nest, specifically for the remote sensors. The install for the Ecobee3 was a little more involved than the Nest. I needed to open up our HVAC system to install the PEK unit to provide the C wire to the Ecobee3 thermostat. This was not that difficult, but was an extra step needed compared to the Nest. Once I had wired the Ecobee3 properly, I proceeded to follow the setup instructions and registered the product with their online portal. Setup was extremely easy.After initial setup, I configured 3 remote sensors (upstairs bedroom, loft, living room), which helps the Ecobee3 keep our house at a consistent temperature. Ecobee3 supports a "follow me" feature with the remote sensors that helps determine which rooms in the house are occupied and relays this information to the main thermostat to help with comfort. Overall, I'm happy with this purchase, especially with the remote sensor features!

I just received this thermostat today. It is not my first smart thermostat, however. I've been using a Nest since 2012. I thought I'd try something different. Here are my thoughts after installing and using it for a day. I will update the review as time goes by.Install - I am one of those folks that has 4 wires from the unit to the thermostat, so I had to install the PEK. This is a very straightforward task, but one that shouldn't take the average DIYer more than a few minutes. Overall, my complete install was about 30 minutes. 20 of those minutes were spent troubleshooting - it seems that when I remounted the control panel cover I didn't do it correctly and it wouldn't switch on. Once I fixed that issue, it was smooth sailing. If you've installed a Nest before, just plan on an additional 10 minutes more than the Nest.Setup - Setup was very fast. It took less than 5 minutes to walk through the unit's setup and connection to the internet. After that I registered the unit via the web portal. That worked well and was also very quick. I read a few reviews where the reviewer constantly remarked on the issues during the registration process on both the web portal and iOS app. I used both during the process and they worked perfectly. Adding the included remote sensor was as simple as removing the plastic battery protector and holding the unit up to the thermostat. It was connect and reading temps in less than 30 seconds. Sweet! I put the sensor in my kitchen, which is the coldest room in the house. I plan on one in each of the bedrooms to round out the system.Programming - Most of the programming is very simple, and there are features that I wish other thermostats would employ. The vacation mode is brilliant. I already programmed the dates and temps for a business trip I'll take in a few weeks. But the day to day programming seems weird to me. I don't quite get it. I've tried a couple of times, but my patience isn't being very patient today. I'd just like to set a few basic settings and I'm quite confused doing it. I would like a morning wakeup mode, then an I'm away for the day mode, then an I'm home for the evening mode, and lastly an I'm sleeping mode. I can't seem to do that without it telling me that my modes overlap each other and aren't allowed. I've got to figure this out.Display/App - I love the display on the unit - it's clean and bold and easy to read. The app and the web portal are nice and clean as well, but they are both lacking. Neither has shown me the status of the remote sensor. To see that sensor I have to go to the thermostat and check sensor status. I don't understand why the app and portal can't include that data as well. Maybe its an oversight, and will be added soon. I hope.Build Quality - If you've owned a Nest before, then you know how gorgeous and heavy it feels in your hand, and on the wall. This unit looks great - but it feels like plastic. And it is plastic. Once mounted you most likely won't complain, but it doesn't have that 'thing' like the Nest does where you want to hold it in your hand. All of the parts, however, fit well and appear to be built fine.Overall, I think this is a very nice unit. I gave it 5 stars, but want to give it 4.5. Hopefully, it will grow into a 5. Ultimately, I'd like to control it from my Smart Things controller. Ecobee tells me that they are doing internal testing with Smart Things right now. With their support for previous Ecobee items, I anticipate native Smart Things control reasonably shortly. With my travel, I look forward to it.

I bought this initially for a vacation property I manage so I could, from 1500 miles away, constantly monitor and adjust the temperature, humidity, energy usage and keep tabs whether the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment was functioning properly. Was so impressed with its initial operation that I installed a second unit in my own home soon afterward.Installation was incredibly easy in both cases, and the units look great. They really do self-program and learn in response to local weather data (from internet feeds) and the motion of people coming and going, And save energy and $, which have more than offset the initial cost of these thermostats. But what really impressed me the most about Nest is its record-keeping and analysis of HVAC use. I receive the data (in chart form) in regular email updates from Nest, and I can also find detailed data if I log in to the Nest website.After two glitch-free years using Nest Thermostat, I am so enthralled with Nest products that I recently bought and installed at home 3 units of Nest Protect, the smoke/carbon monoxide detector.Can't wait to see what they'll introduce next.

I was very skeptical to buy 2 of these after reading the top rated reviews stating that the Nest had failed or doesn't work on some peoples systems. Bottom line is this: The nest is awesome and it works wonderfully if you know what you're doing. If you don't, just hire someone to install it. The problems people are seeing with the nest are due 100% because of user installation error. HVAC systems in general are confusing things to the lay person. Save yourself a tone of time and frustration and have a professional install the Nest. The first Nest I installed on my downstairs unit was a breeze. In full disclosure, I spent an entire day trying to get my second Nest working with my heat pump. This is by no fault of Nest. In fact, Nest has the ABSOLUTE BEST customer service I have ever dealt with. They spent as long as it took to trouble shoot the problem (user install confusion due to old house wiring) Nest had me send them photos of my setup and we had the problem fixed in no time.

Love this thermostat. It replaces the one in a new home construction. It is easy enough to install without the help of an electrician. It is very helpful to use the Nest video tutorials though. I had to view it several times. In the end if you follow the illustrations in the packaging you will be fine. I had to change configurations several times to get it up and running, but that was operator error. Once it is installed, it is an amazing instrument. I really love the feature that recognizes when the house is not occupied and adjusts the temperature accordingly. You never have to program as edible, it does that from how you adjust it from time to time. I like being able to make adjustments from my iPad and also pull up a history of how long it has run over several days. My old thermostat only gave history for about 2 days. Also a green leaf comes up to shows up on the control when you set a temperature that is energy efficient. Another feature I love is that it tells you how long it will take to get the house to a temperature you have set. It saves energy also in that the display only activates if you walk by it. Otherwise it is dark. Includes a back panel for folk like me who do not want to paint the wall space that is exposed from a rectangular thermostat. Don't be lazy like me. If you have matching wall paint, when you take the old thermostat down, just paint the space that was under the thermostat. It will look so much nicer. One day I might do this. But for now, I am just loving it!

I have had this installed for about 5 months now and here are my big observations:1. It is a piece of digital equipment so it needs a little more care than the average thermostat. For example, it is connected to the internet. As such, if the power goes out and you don't have an UPS on your router (I don't) then your ability to read the thermostat remotely (via the phone or internet) won't work. Another example is that I have had a few (like 1 or 2) times where I have had to completely reprogram the thermostat because of a random reset. Fortunately this is very easy to do and only slightly inconvenient.2. It does save you money. I have seen about a 20% improvement in efficiency in heating and noticeable decrease in electricity usage for AC in the short time that I have had it. It's not barn burning savings but it is noticeable and should pay for itself in the first year.3. The auto away is better than the learning. We haven't had the learning turned on for that long while we have owned the nest mostly because any adjustments that we made were applied to every other day of the week - which is completely inappropriate for week day versus weekends and vice versa. In fairness we probably didn't give the learning a big enough shot. We have been able to get most of what we need for automatic adjustments by relying on auto away (which usually senses us leaving within 15-20 minutes - not bad if you're forgetful).4. The people who say that you can get just as much out of a programmable thermostat just don't get it or haven't spent enough time with nest. I'd rather take a hammer to the face than program a standard programmable thermostat. They're not intuitive. They require you to stand in front of the thermostat. Nest is a breeze. The web interface and overall intuitive entry meant that I could switch from my winter program to my summer program in under 5 minutes and I could do it from my phone/computer/tablet anywhere.Bottom line is that the nest is great but it is not perfect. It is so different from other thermostats out there that comparing it to the others really isn't relevant. The drawbacks are minimal and should be expected considering that it is something that is digital and connects to the internet. You actually do save money. Some have saved dramatic amounts. Ours were less dramatic but noticeable. The monthly feedback helps you monitor your usage and think of ways to cut back. Highly recommended.

I installed my Nest right after Thanksgiving and had done quite a bit of research before purchasing. One thing that should be mentioned is that the common wire is often labeled B/C or just B so when they say do you have a C wire you may be thinking no I don't but you actually do. I was able to confirm this by looking on the circuit board inside the furnace which is labeled B/C.I also needed my furnace to control the humidifier which for me is a powered humidifier which required me to do a bit of extra wiring and I had to purchase a relay switch 6AZU2. (can be purchased here on Amazon for $12 bucks) This took an extra half an hour but once I finished I popped on my Nest and off to the races I went. I should also note there are lots of wiring diagrams on the internet which will help with your installation.So far all seems to be working well. It is doing a great job with the humidity so far and I don't have dripping wet window like I did in the past. I look forward to it learning our schedule and hopefully saving me some money.

Hello!I've seen some good and bad reviews about this thermostat. I've been using this thermostat for the past 2 years and it works great. The only thing you have to know is the configuration and what runs in your house. All this information will be prompt at time of setup with the Nest itself. It will tell you where to put the wires, and it shows a diagram of your current setup. If there is a ERROR then it will actually tell you whats going on. Nest did a mayor update and even upgraded the interface which is a lot better now. This thermostat device has cut my electricity bill in half by saving and controlling temperature while I'm at home and away. Keep in mind that it has to be in a area where there is motion. It has a sensor and it detect movement. That is one of the ways that it learn your everyday routine and patterns. You can always control the device from your smart phone and see all type of changes. I highly suggest this device, it pays back on its own.

I have to say right of the bat that I really like this thermostat. Follow directions to the letter and you should not have a problem installing. Follow the onscreen questions and give appropriate answers to get you going. There is something about a reversing valve you answer either "on cool" or "on heat". If you don't know pick one. You will find out after a while if your choice was right. You can go back and change it. I did. Sadly I discovered this wasn't the answer to my problems. I must replace my entire system. The cost effective system we found is not compatible with ecobee3. So I must return it. If you get this, please be patient with it.

I've had this unit now for two years. It has grown-fencing which is great for warming the house before we return and has online details on your usage compared to others. It has an easy to use front screen. The app sometimes will select the wrong temperature if you manually adjust which can be frustrating if you are temporarily adjusting to compensate for an unusual weather pattern (St Louis seems to be warm one day and cold the next). The company states they are working on new features to release soon but won't even tease them more than say something is coming.I wish this device had the ability to adjust on the fly as weather changes, as it does fetch weather info. If it's suddenly 80 out, why run the heat until it literally runs into the threshold for cold??The device has remote sensors but since it doesn't auto adjust for them I'm not entirely sure if they are worth buying more. It is good to know if certain areas are too cold hot, just not sure if it's worth the price when I can walk down here. Very few residential homes have zoned HVAC (Heating Venting and Cooling) so it's a toy in my honest opinion.I test for various companies and I've found that when I'm done testing I miss my ecobee. I re-install it every time.Please ecobee, setup a feature to learn our habits like a similar product on the market and turn it into a true SMART thermostat.I'm also able to tie it into IFTTT and Samsungs SmartThings Hub which is nice so I have one place to go as a HUD (Heads up Display) for all of my smart items in my home.

Pros:Internet support. You can view and interact with your thermostat using a free app.Remote sensors. Averages the home temperature using the thermostat itself and all remote sensors.Touchscreen. Crisp display with a responsive capacitive touchscreen.Motion detection. Thermostat and sensors detect motion to determine whether a room is occupied and weights temperature averaging if you allow it.IFTTT support. You can create recipes based on the temperature of your thermostat. For example, I have a recipe that will send me an email if the temperature is ever above 90 degrees, indicating a fire.Cons:The thermostat itself heats up when running the AC, so the temperature reading is actually 2-3 degrees higher than it should be. This is a big problem that's only lessened by using remote sensors or hacking around it using suggestions provided in other comments.The motion detection on the main thermostat simply stopped working one day. A few days later I called tech support and they rebooted it remotely. This fixed the issue, but to me this represents somewhat buggy software.Edit: The motion detection stopped working again. This time I manually rebooted it by pulling the thermostat off the wall for a few seconds. Once again this solved the issue, but once again I am disappointed by the buggy software.Edit 2: 7/12/15 - This is now the 3rd time the thermostat has stopped detecting motion. I'm going to contact Ecobee tomorrow and will update this review with their answer.

First off, just installed this earlier this week as a result of our propane regulator freezing up twice. Installation was fairly simple. We have a Carrier Infinity. Because we initially didn't have a C wire hooked up, we tried to use the PEK. Not necessary for this, you have a C-Wire if this is the type of furnace you have. Hook up the COM 24V line to the C, W1 and W2 should be hooked up to run your 2 different heat stages, and R should be used. We also used a note we found on the ecobee3 board indicating 2 of the switches on the circuit board should be flipped. We did so, not positive if it "worked" or not, but our system is functioning flawlessly.At first we thought we could only have e-mails sent for "low-heat" warnings when the temperature dropped. Most cell carriers allow you to have e-mails sent to text, which gives you the ability to get e-mails and/ or text messages. For Verizon, XXX-XXX-XXXX@vtext.com. Google it and you'll find your carrier quick.I chose this over the Nest as I felt this set-up is a little less "invasive". My perception is that Nest watches you constantly, and makes a note when you come and go. This one technically does the same thing, but it doesn't appear to adjust what it does based on it's creepy log of what you do and when. You can create multiple settings like "home", "away", "sleep" and whatever else you wish with programmed temperatures for each. It allows you to set a full schedule for your week and even schedule vacation. Additionally, even if you're on a normal "schedule", you can override the setting with a "Quick Change." For instance if you're scheduled to be away, but you came home for a while, you can override with "Home" and it will hold that temperature until you tell it to resume the usual schedule.Overall I think this is very slick. The display is very nice. It senses when you're in front of it and brings up the current temperature, quick change if any, and the bar to adjust the temperature. If you're not in front of it it shows the current temperature, and a little weather image if you're hooked up to the wireless.

I was really excited to be able to finally install a stat like this. -I only had 4 wires and did want the hassle of adding more.The included power extension Kit makes the conversion super simple.Pros:1. Looks great2. Phone and web apps work well.3. I really like looking and the historical trend analysis. I also really like the temperature and humidity alarm notifications, I wish there were more like occupancy detected during certain times like when the house should be empty.4, Remote Room Sensor works well. I wish it came with more.5. Free for life web access to the thermostat.Cons / Wish List1. Pricy but still worth it even though nest is now $200.2. More information and more control on how that information is used. (Sensor Data and occupancy can only be viewed from the ecobee3. -Why? I want it all everywhere. I whish they would allow the customer to set their own notification triggers.Update 5/3/15 (6 months)Really happy with this thermostat. Latest updates and IFTTT integration are really cool. No regrets at all.

The value for the cost is really here with the ecobee3 thermostat. I've been using it for 4 weeks now and really like it. Installation was a breeze (I already had the cyan power cable provided in my current HVAC install so no need to monkey around with wiring in the furnace closet). Setup was easy and I haven't had any issues with wi-fi connectivity. They should have had some in-box documentation that you simply hold the remote sensor in front of the unit when pulling the battery tab to pair with the thermostat, but I found that info online without too much difficulty.The touchscreen is great and responsive. Haven't had any issues controlling the unit from the thermostat directly. No major problems with the mobile apps, though the UI is a little buggy and in places incomplete, which is why I deducted a star. The main issues are:- Mobile app has to reconnect to thermostat any time you context switch to another app, even for just a second, and connecting to the thermostat takes 5-15 seconds.- When changing temp on the mobile app, the changes will be applied, but the UI doesn't always display the correct temp range on the app. Heating or cooling activity state is not always reported correctly on the mobile app. Seems to me like they have timing issues with this code and need to rework their mobile to thermostat communication API.- I used my HVAC fan for bathroom ventilation since our bathrooms do not have independent fans. It would be nice to have the option to display a fan toggle control right on the thermostat main screen, instead of having to drill down a level, since I use this feature many times throughout the day.Excited for software updates and to try some of the reporting features that are promised. I also plan to get 2 more remote sensors so I can properly make use of the "follow me" feature that puts more weight on the temp of the sensors where activity in the house is occurring.

I really like my Nest Thermostat. I got it to replace my very basic Honeywell thermostat, which needed to be adjusted manually, and also gave stats shocks while adjusting it. The Nest thermostat was very easy to install, and I love that it can be controlled via Cell phone app as well as website login. This is very helpful in my 2-story home, so I don't have to go up and down the stairs to change the settings. It can also be set on a schedule, and it is great for winters when the house can be warmed up around the time my morning alarm goes off, so I can get out of bed easily.I took one star off because it's "learning" is not perfect. If the schedule is set and I am not home, it will still turn the heating on. The other problem is I cannot see real-time records of when the heating came on during the day. I can only see previous day, up to last 10 days. There also doesn't seem to be a way to see or download the history of usage. I would love to be able to see the records of usage over the last one year at least, so it can help me figure out which energy plans are better, should I switch to solar etc.

Like the title says, so much missed potential...but first, the pros.Pros: Solid, I'm not sure what odd occurrences the negative reviews have run into, but we did a DIY install and have been running for almost 3 years with no issues.The industrial design is also beautiful, this is probably the best looking thermostat on the market.Cons: This thing is like the Apple of thermostats. Solid hardware/software, beautiful design, but almost no configuration options. It's like having a high-performance sports car limited to 55mph or a high end gaming computer limited to playing solitaire. And all of the current software features don't work that well, so I gave in and just programmed it myself. (It's possible that they do work, but there's so little feedback given that I couldn't tell if it was doing anything productive or not.) And now that my utility has "peak" hours, I definitely have to manually program because I can't afford to trust the Nest to understand that I really do want to do counter-intuitive cooling schemes. (I'm sure Nest is taking away my leaves as we speak!)Also, we have had one software bug, the pre-heating/cooling option broke in a software update last winter. Called them up and they had a fix in a few weeks. Since there was an easy work-around, adjusting the programming, it wasn't too bad. Their tech support was a little disappointing at first and blew us off, but once we reached level 2 tech support they acknowledged the issue and confirmed that they were aware of it.Why did I buy it? My old thermostat wasn't programmable and I wanted wifi capabilities. At the time, getting both of those was quite difficult and I finally went for the Nest because of the knowledge that it would have a solid app. I've seen some of the competitors apps at friends/family house and they're pretty bad.Am I happy with it? For what I bought it for, definitely. For what it could do? Quite disappointed how much they have limited the capabilities. For instance, the only information the Nest gives you is when it was on the previous day. Want graphs of indoor or outdoor temperature? No luck. What about programming? You can only program in setpoints an hour apart. No bad usually unless your utility has peaking hours and you want fine control over how you pre-cool in preparation for the peak period.What if that one room in your house gets really hot and you want the Nest to circulate air or turn the AC on to help out with it? People have been begging Nest for years for a little wifi temperature sensor to put in different rooms, but nothing has materialized yet. The app makes it easy to turn the fan on, but it's a poor solution unless you're always sitting in the room, finger on the button. If pets or children live in that bedroom, sucks to be them.What if you want to change your cooling schedule based on the weather that day? No luck, the program is set in stone and can't be set based on any outside variables. Many new sprinkler systems are doing this, why not a wifi connected device like the Nest?Really, I don't need a Nest. It's not very good at telling when I'm away, even with the new app tracking features. If you want careful control to limit heating/cooling costs, you'll program it yourself anyway which many other thermostats can do. As technology has improved, viable competitors have appeared and Nest will need to add new features or lower their cost to compete with these other products that are willing to innovate more and actually put some useful features into their apps.

Update-June 3, 2015-I have now been using this thermostat for 2 months.My gas bill is down by 50% over the previous year, and previous month.I love that you can set it to a minimum temperature (or max if you have the A/C connected to it.) and regardless of which day of the week, it keeps that temperature, combine that with the "AWAY" function, and you are so unlikely to waste energy!I do a lot of running around, and the "AWAY" function prevents me from heating my house when I am not at home to need it! [AWAY is controlled via your smart phone, when your smart phones have left the house, it sets the thermostat to "AWAY" mode, and skips your at home comfort temperature, and defaults to your away temperature, which you select, in the set up process]I have dogs at home, and so, I leave a reasonable temperature set for "AWAY".I am pleased with it overal, I have had to play with the settings to have it keep my house comfortable, I did not use the "learning mode" - which is the Nest, figures out when you are home, and sets the heater or cooler to your preferences, automatically for you. I didn't opt for that learning mode, because I have a weird location and heating situation- my nest is in my hallway, next to my vaulted ceilings family room, so the temperatures are wildly different within two feet of the hall and the family room, so we just adjusted the heating desired... And selected the times we wanted the entire house to be warm!!( We do not have zone heating set up, in our home!- we were advised it wouldn't be worth the time, money or effort for that kind of efficiency! So we aren't going to pursue it!!)Overall, I LOVE seeing the weekly usage on the app.I love seeing the actual times we use energy- on the app.I love seeing that we decreased over 50% of gas usage - on our bill.(Which also means our electric bill has been reduced!!)I love that I can change the temperature from anywhere ... While at home or while away!!April 2015- Just had this installed. Learned that I could have installed it myself, and that you only need a professional installer, when you have an air conditioner and heater connected to it. I did some research and got two apps for my phone, skylark and the nest app. Skylark senses when you are more than 700 feet away from your home, and will set the Nest as "AWAY" so your house doesn't heat up while you are gone. I liked getting a notice that when I went to get my daughter, it set the temperature to "AWAY" ... Which when I go out for long periods of time, that is awesome. You also get to set the temperature you want your house to stay when you are away. I need to search the setting for late at night, it came on a bit too many times during the evening... (But as it was set to do!!) we had our old setting so it stayed off from 1:30 am to 6:00 am. Going to set up something similar... Don't like the heater waking us up, or disrupting our sleep patterns.So far I like it, and am looking forward to when I have the A/C installed... So it can do,exactly as it was designed for!!

So far no issues which I thought I'd have after reading some reviews. This 2nd generation is different from the 1st--it works fine. I got two of them, one for my mother's home and one for my home. I can control both from my iPad and mom enjoys the little messages they post on the device indicating what's going on.A great tip is the following:When replacing your existing thermostat with a NEST, after removing the old thermostat cover, take a photo with you phone or whatever, of the current wire attachments. Then use that on the NEST site to have it build an image of how to reconnect those same wires to the NEST. The website works great for this purpose.

Once the units are set up and running they are great. They will definitely pay for themselves. I have three units now. One is on a simple heat and cool system. It works fine. I am able to adjust it remotely while out of the house or traveling. The second system was tied into two Trane high efficiency systems. The units were not able to connect properly in the beginning. The original installations were not done properly in 2011 after finally moving back into my house after Katrina. Thank goodness my professional was able to correct the mistakes made 4 years prior. Now the units are exceeding my expectationsUpdated March 2015Recently I have noticed that the schedules I have set for the thermostats are changing on their own. First I thought it was something I have set up improperly but recently I have been checking both of my systems and this little bug is present in both instances.

You need a relay to use the Nest thermostat and Aprilaire Whole-House Humidifier with the simple 24VAC water supply solenoid/valve. Nest will not provide any information on connecting the two systems, and will only direct you to a $$$ professional HVAC company. The Aprilaire representative was sympathetic and directed me to search the internet for a relay, and online HVAC or DYI forums. I found a relay on Amazon, it's the Industrial Grade 6AZU2 Enclosed Fan Relay, SPNO, 24V. You can get more information regarding the wiring from the link in the comments section of my Amazon review of this relay.The Nest does not replace the Aprilaire Humidistat with outdoor temperature monitoring and automatic turn down for temperatures below 30 degrees, like the Aprilaire RP-58 Automatic Digital Humidifier Controls. These automatic humidistats are far superior to the Nest at controlling winter humidity levels. To control humidity on the Nest requires you to monitor the outside temperature, house humidity, understand what adjustments are needed, and then use the Nest app to change the humidifier setting.Using the wiring diagram as shown with the "H" or humidifier power tap on my Carrier furnace only turns on when the heat cycle is running. So when the Nest sees a demand for humidity, it closes the new relay, starts the fan, but there's no power to the water solenoid until the heat kicks in. Consequently, the fan may continually run without providing humidification.Thanks Aprilaire for making reliable systems, and having great customer service. After researching this problem, I wish I would have bought a less expensive WIFI thermostat and the Aprilaire RP-58.

I went from a gen 2 Nest thermostat that I had for about 2 years. We sold the house that the Nest was in; and having read reviews of the Ecobee3 we left the Nest for the next owners. That home was a 100 year old single family 1,000 sq ft detached home with a standard forced air natural gas furnace. There was no central air (so the Nest only operated in the winter). The Nest did a great job, but it didn't have the statistics that I enjoy crunching - only number of hours the furnace ran for each day and a sum for the month. That's basically it. It was extremely user friendly though... very intuitive.We've now had the Ecobee3 in our 'new' home for about 3 months. This home is a 10 year old 1,800 sq ft manufactured home (no basement, on piers) with central air and a propane forced air furnace. Not that you care, but we bought the home for the 40 acres, not the house...Onto reviewing the Ecobee3. In short - it's not nearly as intuitive as the Nest. For starters, turning the HVAC system to 'off' takes going through 2 menus (took me a while to find!) to get to. Much of the thermostat is like this, it takes minutes to go through the menus to find what you need. The analytics (detailed usage) is only available online, not with their app. This is a huge bummer, because I travel a lot and would prefer using my app, not have to lug my computer out (or go onto the browser on my phone) to log in online.In all, the Ecobee is awesome. I'm just kind of disappointed that I left the Nest at our last house. That would have been free for me to install here. Now I'm $230 less rich! So maybe you are wondering, which would I choose if I did it all over again? Sadly, the NEST would win. Not by a lot though. Why you ask? Because my wife could easily work the Nest. And that is valuable to me. She is home much more than I, and that means a lot. Statistics are great - but what if I never see them???? Nest sent me a monthly usage email. Haven't see that from my Ecobee :(A word to Ecobee - not that they read these... become more user friendly! Make is something your wife could easily use! :)I'll try to update this after my first Wisconsin winter. Blessings.

I really was excited to get a smart thermostat that could integrate with IFTTT, the Amazon Echo, and other home automation tools/tech. Also, the ability to have multiple temperature sensors spread throughout the house was also appealing since our thermostat is located in an area that stays relatively cool and is not representative of the rest of the house.The installation process was relatively frustrating and tedious. All thermostats, smart or otherwise, take time to setup but even after having experience (but no professional training) installing four different kinds at different houses, this took well over a couple hours to configure to my liking.Additionally, it turns out the firmware that the Ecobee3 shipped with was severely outdated which meant the additional temperature sensor would not work. After three days, the firmware still had not updated on its own which required me to email the company and provide my thermostats identifier, my account name/email address, etc. They emailed me back within a couple days to tell me the firmware had been "pushed" to my thermostat. I confirmed it had updated but the additional sensor still did not work!More importantly than the installation challenges is the significant design flaws. As another reviewer stated, the temperature sensor built into the main wall unit is always plus or minus a couple degrees. Sometimes the unit itself heats up which throws off the sensor and trips the A/C to start running again. Our house often got super cold and other times the house would get way too hot. Rarely in the week or so we had the Ecobee3 were we truly comfortable.Also, the graphical animations/transitions on the physical thermostat and within the mobile apps are fairly annoying and add unnecessary delays. The thermostat has a built-in motion sensor so that it "wakes up" and comes out of standby when anyone gets near it. This delay is about 2-3 seconds (combining the motion detection delay and the animation) but is just enough that I can't intuitively know where my finger needs to go to make changes. I have to wait for the animation to complete, wait for the display to update, then make the necessary changes.I have similar complaints with the apps and their website where there are animations added for a more "modern" look. Sometimes I will make a change and I assume it had been registered to their system because an animation had completed but there was a actually a second progress indicator animation that still hadn't completed. Since I didn't notice this second animation, the the changes I made (unbeknownst to me) were never actually registered. I had to re-do several different things during the setup process because my changes didn't actually register to their systems.The concept of a thermostat that is relatively simple to use, allows a lot of flexibility, is highly upgradeable, and is relatively affordable is highly appealing to me. But in the end, this falls short due to somewhat poor execution and poor app/user-interface decisions.

I bought this replacing a Honeywell thermostat thinking it would be the next best thing since sliced bread. All in all, it's OK. I had a 'C' wire, so the installation took less than 15 minutes. Remove old thermostat, label wiring, remap wires to Ecobee3 and then double check the wiring based on their wiring diagram in the installation packet. I had an 'R' wire on the Honeywell and the Ecobee3 has Rh or Rg, but the diagram shows you which one to put it in.It came with a bracket which I used to put on the wall and it look nice. I would say though that it stands out because the bracket is white and the unit is black, so it does look a little loud. When it's installed, you have to hook it up to wifi and then register with Ecobee so you can use the app. It should have been easy, but the Ecobee app kept failing to add my user account and throwing me errors left and right. Seems like they could fix their user authentication process.What the installation packet doesn't tell you is that the unit has to 'calibrate' before it's actually useable. It took me a while to figure that out since the calibration took over 10 minutes to finish, so I couldn't be 100% certain that all the wiring was hooked up right. Also when you start up the Ecobee, it has you confirm the wiring you installed, but it's not the most novel idea because you already covered the wiring when you hook up the thermostat, so a lot of it is remembering what you hooked up or taking the unit back off the wall to confirm what's plugged in.The software on the unit is nice, but isn't the most intuitive. In order to schedule your time settings, you have to set the temperature in advance. That means if you want to change your temp and the time "sleep" kicks in, it's two completely different steps. One step is to lower or raise the temp, then the second is to change the time of when those temps kick in. It would be nice if you could do them all in the same spot so you aren't toggling back and forth. I'm just worried my wife is going to be completely lost when she wants to adjust the temp because when you do it from the main screen, it stays locked at that temp until you tell it otherwise. So if my wife was temporarily cold, she moves the temp to 80 degrees and it will stay there unless I go into the settings and manually set it to expire after a certain time. Semi-poor design in my opinion.The app is nice, but it's slow. Clicking through the menus has a slight delay and I'm always getting errors saying it can't find the unit even though it's 15 feet away from me with a 70% signal strength. I'm guessing they continue to refine the app as customers give feedback.All in all I don't think I'm sending it back, but it makes me wonder how this compares to the Nest. I chose this over the Nest for the multi-sensor feature and Nest has privacy issues which I want no part of, but a piece of me will wonder if I made the right choice. Only time will tell I guess.

!!May not be compatible with your system!!I really loved all the features this system offers, and the new 3.6 software allows great use of custom schedules, setting profiles, and added remote access. Unfortunately, I ran into the same problem others had (http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1OITZU0HVT5IW/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00NXRYUDA#R1OITZU0HVT5IW) involving the overheating of the main unit throwing off its temperature. The main purpose of the device (sensing your home's temperature at the base unit) is broken because it gets so hot under normal use the readings are worthless. Their engineers knew about the issue because the unit attempts to "calibrate" and add or subtract from the read temperature, which is worthless because it varies when the AC is triggered or not. Mine was always off by at least 4-5 degrees. The remote sensors work perfectly, though I had to hard reset one by removing its battery and shorting the terminals to drain capacitors.The support experience I had with this was typical, but sad for the price of this unit. I was escalated all the way up to the CEO, and never received acknowledgement that they knew about the problem or if there was a fix. I was met with typical disbelief (they did not believe me until I proved myself 3 times over), and troubleshooting that was not related to the issue (you need to duct tape the wall up). They even went as far as to attempt to confuse me by dumping logs in my face and reporting that it proved the unit was working properly. Unfortunate for them, I was very fluent in how the product worked and was able to parse the logs into a format to show unarguably that they were overlooking/misinterpreting the glaring evidence problem.While my experience is most likely not typical, I find it ridiculous that they allowed the possibility of any heat issues in a product this expensive. I attach photos that I sent to their support so you can clearly see I'm not bluffing. My recommendations are that you should try this product, and if it overheats, return it immediately and move on to something else.My contacts:Stuart LombardCEO, ecobeeMu SaleemSr. Manager, Content & Advocacy

Based on my extensive troubleshooting over the past few weeks with the Ecobee, I'm revising my review. A large section of this review is one of my most recent emails to their tech support because that email documents my findings which are still consistent with the intial review.In summary, I recommend this product with reservations. It has some really nice features, and many people seem to be having very good luck with it. In reading other reviews, I'm also seeing that a few people are seeing problems that are consistent with my findings and recommendations to Ecobee.THE GOOD: Attractive on the wall, can control basic functions from smartphone, works well for heating function. Remote sensors provide temperature and occupancy data for multiple rooms. Will overcool to adjust humidity.THE BAD: Temperature on main thermostat always reads 2-3 degrees high. It is not clear if the bias adjustment which is accessed via the menu applies to only the wall mounted sensor, or to the averaged temperature reading across all sensors. The wall mounted thermostat does not have many holes for ventilation, so temperature response is slow (side by side comparision with old mechanical thermostat). Not all functions are avalable via smartphone. No geo-fencing capability. Not possible to have different setpoints/ranges for specific sensors.THE REALLY BAD: When AC is running the thermostat itself gets hot which makes thermostat think the room is much hotter than it is. As a result, AC runs excessively, and thermostat does not control temperature. I "fixed" this by purchasing and installing a mechanical relay board. (more detailed info below)Here is a very recent email to Ecobee support (after numerous interactions troubleshooting the last few weeks).=================== Begin Email ===================I'm disappointed in your last email response saying that "we conclude there seems to be an air flow/draft influence affecting the t-stat sensor only." This is simply not supported by the data and several tests that we have both reviewed over the past few days.Primarily, I direct you to a test from two or three emails ago in which I manually jumpered at the furnace to start the AC. With the jumper in place, the Ecobee wall thermostat showed a drop in temperature as soon as the AC turned on. Without the jumper--when the Ecobee thermostat itself calls for cooling--the wall thermostat shows an INCREASE in temperature. This test by itself shows that air flow patterns are not an issue.Additionally, for the last several days of testing I've placed the remote sensor and old thermostat mounted on the wall within inches of the Ecobee thermostat. Both the old thermostat and remote sensor show that the temperature in that location immediately goes DOWN when the Ecobee calls for cooling. The Ecobee3 wall thermostat (both the original I purchased and replacement you sent) shows incorrectly that the temperature goes UP when the Ecobee calls for cooling. This divergence in temperature at the same location also support the conclusion that the thermostat itself is the issue.For an additional test on my theory that the thermostat electronics are overheating, today I added a mechanical relay board (Temco MRB-4) to isolate the Ecobee thermostat from the furnace/compressor. This relay board serves to remove the compressor contactor load from the thermostat. You can see from this afternoon's temperature trends, when the AC starts, the temperature reading of the wall thermostat drops as it should (exactly what happened when I manually jumpered the R-Y wires at the furnace). The thermostat FETs may be rated for 2 amps, but in practice the Ecobee wall thermostat overheats with a 0.25 amp load and shows an incorrectly high temperature.The reason this thermostat overheating problem is not seen during heating cycles is that the current draw for a heating call is near 0 amps. Still, the current draw of 0.25 amps for the AC contactor is well within acceptable range for residential AC equipment.There is absolutely no doubt that the Ecobee thermostat itself is getting hot (and producing inaccurate readings) when it turns on the AC compressor.I've spent significant time over the past several days testing, and most of my interactions with Ecobee support have been explaining basic testing results. I have an engineering degree and significant experience with process control instrumentation. I know how to interpret temperature readings and troubleshoot to identify cause & effect. I find it hard to believe that Ecobee support is having trouble interpreting these same results.I have read about other customers who have also been frustrated that their Ecobee3 didn't work and that Ecobee support kept insisting this was due to "air drafts". I have no interest in legal action personally, but to me this sounds like fertile grounds for a class action suit. Consumers who are also experiencing this issue will be receive higher cooling bills than they should. Adding more remote sensors would indeed help average the temperature readings and thus compensate for inaccurate readings at the wall thermostat--but this is passing along the expense of poor design to customers while generating even more revenue for Ecobee.At this point, I am going to research alternatives because I do not believe any further troubleshooting is going to be beneficial. If I do not find a better alternative, I may end up keeping the Ecobee thermostat since now with the addition of the MRB-4, that resolves the overheating problem. However, since I will have to use the bias adjustment to alter the wall thermostat reading, the remote sensor will not be of much use. This is really disappointing for a product that is so expensive.In summary, my recommendation is that Ecobee do the following:1. Review the design of the thermostat. There is not enough ventilation on the wall thermostat. There are only a few tiny holes on the bottom of the thermostat, and thus the thermostat has a slow response to changes in room temperature. Additionally, this lack of ventilation on the thermostat contributes to overheating of the thermostat itself leading to inaccurate temperature readings.2. Review the "complex temperature correction algorithms". They're not working.3. Consider reworking the unit to incorporate mechanical relays instead of FETs. I first became aware of mechanical relay boards while researching this problem and finding so many Nest owners have experienced FET failures and consequently had to replace their AC system. Replacing FETs with relays will make the wall thermostat bigger, but it will reduce issues with overheating and will greatly reduce the risk of AC system damage due to FET failure.4. Review support procedures and training. The tests I conducted and conclusions are fairly basic for anyone with control system experience. I will give Ecobee the benefit of the doubt that the support team is not knowledgeable, rather than suggest that they are intentionally providing incorrect and misleading information.5. IF there's a way to specify temperature bias for individual sensors, please let me know. I have seen with two different Ecobee thermostats that the remote sensor reads correctly, and the wall thermostat reads too high. It appears if I configure a bias adjustment via the wall thermostat, it affects all readings, and not just the wall thermostat. More sensors simply provide more averaging to lessen the effect of the single incorrect reading on the wall thermostat, but that's not a very good solution.5. Add geofencing capabilities to determine if users are home/away. There are not many thermostats that offer this, this but I have found that relying only on the wall mounted thermostat and remote sensor to detect home/away is not sufficient.=================== End of Email ===================Conclusion:All in all, this thermostat has potential, but there are some fundamental design flaws which cause incorrect temperature readings and cause the AC to run excessively. I've tested two Ecobee3 thermostats and they both exhibit the same characteristics, so this wasn't a fluke with a single defective unit. Although the Ecobee support team was responsive, it was frustrating having the same conversation with them repeatedly in which they insisted the incorrect temperature readings were being caused by air leaking from the wall cavity. I was able to prove this was not the case, and actually "fix" that issue by inserting a manual relay board to isolate the thermostat. That kind of troubleshooting and remediation would be beyond the technical capabilities of any consumer without a process control or engineering background. I will probably end up keeping the Ecobee thermostat with this workaround, simply because I don't see other alternatives on the market that have fewer problems.Since sensor readings are averaged together and the remote sensors seem to be more accurate than the wall unit, more remote sensors could theoretically help adjust for the measurement error of the wall thermostat. however the remote sensors aren't cheap, and in the end this is just a workaround for a design problem of the base unit.My take is that the remote temperature sensors are just a gimmick for 99% of the people who will receive them. If the main thermostat works, then the rest of the house is typically going to follow once the air ducts are balanced properly. The only benefit I personally see for the remote sensors is to let the unit know I'm still at home if I don't pass by the main wall unit periodically. Another vendor handles this with geofencing on the smart phone, and some other units don't have geofencing natively but it can be added with an iphone app. In the end, it's important to figure out how the extra features are actually going to work for YOUR lifestyle. A useful feature for one person is a gimmick or even a nuisance for another.I did not purchase the Nest because for a few reasons. First, Nest is touted as being so smart that users don't have to program it. My problem with that is that I have an irregular schedule and there's no way that Nest could just figure out my schedule. Reason two that I read several places that Nest has a 3 degree temperature swing--which is quite large. Almost every other thermostat maintains temperature +/- 1 degree. Any more than that is too noticeable. Most importantly, I did not want a Nest thermostat because I read about several people who have had FET failures which destroyed their AC systems. Older thermostats and many programmable thermostats use mechanical relays (like little light switches) that click on or click off. Mechanical relays are hardy little devices that are not prone to failure and they are super reliable at turning your system on or off. Some thermostats (like Nest and the new Ecobee3) use FETs which are like electronic/software "switches". They don't click, and when they fail, there's a good chance they will fail in the "on" position. This has apparently happened frequently with Nest thermostats and people have found that their AC compressor had been running for days/months nonstop and had seized up (which means at least a couple grand to replace it on top of all the electricity wasted in the meantime).

I have a 3300sq/ft single level home with 2 HVAC units (one on each side of the house). For the last few years I've been using two Nest units - initially the first generation, then the second generation. Never had any problems with Nest, but I've really been wanting a remote temperature sensor, as the master bedroom gets really warm compared to the hallway where the Nest unit is located, so it requires a bit more tweaking to get the temp just right than I'd prefer to have to do.So after reading into the Ecobee3 and its remote sensor functionality, I thought it would be a good solution. Installation was VERY easy, took less than 10 minutes to wire it up and connect it to my network (I already had the C wire so I didn't need to run the extra connection cable). The unit then went into "Calibrating" mode for about 30-40 minutes. After it was done calibrating, I noticed the temperature reading was about 5 degrees too high. Odd. Within the next hour or so, the reading eventually adjusted itself (without the AC or heater turned on) to the proper temperature.. Ok, so the unit needs a good 60-90 minutes to fully calibrate itself, no big deal. At this point, I got around to using the interface - I really like that its a touch screen, and it was very responsive. No sluggishness at all - every menu responded immediately, and I like how you just touch and pull up/down to adjust the temperature.I then pulled the plastic tab out of the remote temperature sensor, and the Ecobee3 unit immediately detected the sensor and prompted me to pair/activate it. I then put the remote sensor in the master bedroom, which is only about 25-30ft away from the Ecobee3 main unit - its almost a direct line of sight between the sensor and main unit. Throughout the night, I got 8 alerts that the remote sensor had disconnected and reconnected. I do have a lot of tech in the house, although not more than a few wireless devices are on in the evenings. The next night, I decided to place the remote sensor within 5ft of the Ecobee3 unit, just to determine if the 25-30ft distance was the issue the previous night. Sure enough, another several disconnects/reconnects occurred, even with the remote sensor just 5ft away from the main unit. I also pulled the battery out of the remote sensor, replaced it with a new one, then re-paired it. No change - still disconnected several times.So in summary, I really like the Ecobee3 main unit and its interface - it is very responsive and has a great feel to it.. I like the touch-screen on the Ecobee3 better than the wheel control on the Nest. However, in my particular case, the remote temperature sensor would not maintain a reliable connection to the main unit, which rendered its functionality useless. I understand that every home is different, and perhaps mine was disconnecting due to some sort of interference, but I don't have anything particularly unique (as far as wireless devices go) in my home, and I really don't want to spend hours or days troubleshooting this thing. Perhaps I just had a defective remote sensor. I returned it and went back to my Nest for now. Maybe if they release a new revision in the future I'll give it another shot.

At first I loved my Nest! It mounted cleanly and looked very nice on the wall. However, after using it for several months, I began to notice some quirks and then lost all confidence in it.It was summertime and I had the Nest set to cool to 72 degrees but noticed that the house was much cooler than usual. I checked on the Nest and it did indicate that the AC was running and the house was 70 degrees... I was not able to stop it using the standard dial controls or my cellphone app. I had to dig around in the menus and do a hard reset to get the AC to stop running. After that it was fine again but made me wonder when it would happen again...When I sold that house, I left the Nest there...

I like the design and I like how my wife is easily able to figure out how to use it. It is also nice to be able to change the temperature from another room or when on vacation to have a nicely cooled or warmed house. It is also nice how it controls the humidity, though that requires some work.I am not a fan of the "Smart" functions, they really overstate the savings that this thermostat provides and it's "smart" functions are very flawed. If you are all electric heat, then it feels like this can cost you more as the logic for this device is flawed. We basically had to change a lot of the default settings as it was costing us more money and making us less uncomfortable. If the nest really wanted to be "smart", see what type of HVAC your programmed into it and adapt to it. It should use that and the weather data to know if it should try to warm the house up early to take advantage of the lower cost heat pump vs aux heating coils. It would also be nice if they had sensors that connected to this device to control whether or not the fan should circulate as the basement is colder and the upstairs is warmer than where the thermostat is located.

As background, I am an early adapter of products. Have been using programmable thermostats since they were first introduced many many years ago. Nest is very good looking on the wall but that is about the extent of my appreciation of this device. There are many deficiencies of this device:1. It has poor temperature control, it overshoots the set point and then drifts far past the set point before turning on again. Blah Blah Blah regarding the energy savings of not reacting too quickly. $29.00 programmable controllers have a control accuracy of +/- .5 degree, Nest's control spec of +/- 1.5 degree is a joke.2. Learning the control settings did not work over the first 6 weeks, this is primarily due to its understanding of home/away and poor temp control. For many valid reasons I subscribe to residential time of use plan for electricity, due to this plan I specifically over-cool my home at night so that my house stays very comfortable throughout the day without the use of AC. Nest learning does not get this concept at all therefore after weeks of patient waiting, I ended up manually programming my desired control profile which ended up being quite different from its learned profile.3. Occupants in our home at any point in time vary dramatically, normally it is just 2 adults and 2 small dogs. 1 to 3 nights a week and every Sunday the occupants of the house grow up to 10 adults and 6 dogs for dinner during the week and weekend evenings. During these occasions the nest propensity to over and undershoot the set-point make the home feel poorly controlled and often when all are in kitchen and typically making a large meal the kitchen gets hot. With a low cost programmable controller I could press "hold temp" which would normally be a cooler temp than typical and then leave it like that for the duration of the event and then a single button press goes back to program control. Cannot do this with Nest as the next programmed set point overrides any temp setting the user selected outside of the program control. IT IS STUPID TO NOT HAVE A "HOLD TEMP" FEATURE!!!!4. Programming user interface on the device to create a control profile is poor, programming a control profile on a phone is not that much better as the cut and paste feature only works in landscape mode and I did not know this at the time. Programming on a Pad was easy.5. There really should be a better display of the "actual" home temp and not just a few bars above or below the set-point. Yes, it is good to know set-point but normally want to know the actual temp of the home!!I could go on but this is enough time spent on this review. FYI, I really could care less about changing temp when away or knowing the set point when away so the whole app feature is a non-issue for me. Cool but pointless for me!

I bought this unit as my first foray into a home internet of things wiring up my furnace and a recently purchased smoke detector from nest. Originally I thought I'd get more integration between the two but other than accessing them from within the same application I see no added value of the two units networked together. Well other than the iOS app telling me I have to re-pair them, despite it being clear they can see each other.The nest itself has seen little to no revision since we purchased it. There was one major software update where I was excited (I know weird for a thermostat) to try it but was disappointed with what was added/changed. I don't know what I expected but since it has a lot of potential to detect who's home or near it I guess I hoped for more integration within and with third party applications.As a thermostats it's fine though the UI on the device isn't as easy as I'd hope. Still better than competitors but far from intuitive. Simple things take time to figure out the iconography and the iOS app is the most non-intuitive & painful UI I've ever used. As a UI/UX person I would have changed so many things to make it easier. Something as a simple overlay tour could make this app a million times more useful. The device itself just lacks quick access to common features like turning on / off. Since most people aren't using their thermostats that much having to decode the meaning of icons shouldn't be so painful.I think Google is going to ignore and kill this device like most of their devices but I still hold hope for it. If anything it cased a reset in the industry and maybe Homekit enabled devices will catch up or leapfrog this one.NOTE: The one nice thing I'll say that nest has done is team up with local utilities to get discounts & credits for days of the year where they can control your thermostats to save energy during tight power times. This saved us like $200 last year, enough to almost cover the cost of the unit.

My husband and I bought this last year because our existing thermostat didn't work correctly.We loved the sleek design and the fact that it worked great at heating the house, and the fact that we could raise and lower the temperature setting (something we couldn't do with our prior thermostat). All the modes were easy to access, use, and program. Honestly, we loved this thermostat all winter!The problem came with summertime...We don't have air-conditioning. We live in an area that is usually in the 90s to 100s, during the day, all summer long. Thankfully, at night the area drops down into the 40s to 50s. Since our house is well insulated, we are able to open the windows during the nights and close them during the days, so we are able to keep the house cool enough most days. However, to cool the house off during the night it helps to have airflow... This is where the Nest Thermostat failed us. You see, although there are wires and settings for a house fan mode, they do not work... Oh, the TEST mode does the correct thing and turns on the house fan for 3 seconds, but the house fan mode doesn't work.We called Nest (which had GREAT customer service) and spent HOURS on the phone testing and debugging the problem with them. Then they sent us a second Nest Thermostat when 4 hours on the phone proved that there was nothing they could do to make the thermostat work. (They ran tests on it through the internet, had us run tests, had us check out all sorts of modes of the thermostat as well as the furnace, but nothing convinced the thermostat to run the fan except for the test mode!) Once we got the second Nest Thermostat installed we ran into the exact same problem. Another 4 hours on the phone showed that the programming for the house fan didn't work, and they admitted that it was unlikely that they would be working on the programming any time soon...On the plus side, Nest returned our money for each unit (when they received them back), even though we had purchased the first unit almost a year prior to discovering that the house fan setting didn't work.So, overall, if you don't use a whole house fan, then this is a great unit! Especially if you tend toward the geeky end! It is simple to use for us non geeks, too!

I own three of these and bought the first one over 2 years ago. I bought it because I wanted to be able to adjust the temperature in my house from a few floors away. Mission accomplished. However, Nest tries to be so much more but has failed miserably.Let me give you the three GLARING holes in the Nest world. At least, these are the three things that annoy me the most -- which could be easily fixed if Nest spent 2 minutes on them (and these are things many users would use).1. There's no way to lock it. WTF. Why not? I have kids, they like to fiddle with the termostat. Why can't I lock it or make all adjustments app-only? You can limit the manual range to 5 degrees but that's a HUGE range. Effectively, there's no real lock.2. There's no notifications. Want to be notified if someone adjusts the temperature? How about a notification if your heat or AC isn't working? How about a notification if your house is too cold or hot? Nope, none of that is available! Someone left my door open in my house in winter and the temp dropped 10+ degrees and the Nest ran non-stop with no effect. My Nest didn't know or care that the house was getting freezing (not to mention the danger). How hard would it be to build in some notifications?3. Stupid design of features like auto away. Great in concept. You're across the country on vacation, the thing shuts off. Great. Now it's time to come home so I want to turn the heat on so the house is warm when I get back. You click "end auto away" and hop on the plane. When you get there, your house is freezing? Why? Because 15 minutes after you told the Nest to end auto away, it detected that you were away! There's no option to say "have the house at my temperature in 4 hours, or at 6 PM or whatever." There's home and away, that's it. You can go through 12 menus and end auto away permanently, I guess. Huge pain.All in all, it looks good but lacks a robust feature set. Great integration with IFTTT might help (as of now, there's basically none -- just a few simple options). The "learning" feature is overrated, it doesn't really learn very well and it is easier to just program your schedule. Hopefully, one day they will fix all this and this could really be a killer product.

I just returned my ecobee. It was a beautiful device but did not work properly and their support team was no help. I had the common problem of the temp rising six or seven degrees when ac started running so ot ran nonstop. I had to disable reading temps from the main thermostat and only rrad from the little mobile one. Then I thought well maybe ill just tolerate that so I tested my heating and that didnt work either. Kept short cycling without ever resching temperature.My wiring was correct at least according to every ac forum on the internet. The support team suggested I install the pek even though I have a c wire. Asked them how to do it exactly because I dont have a mainboard in my furnace...the wires are just spliced with other wires that then go to various relays and small boards. They sent me a generic copy and pasted response from the manual.I really tired to like it and i think it did save me around $30 off my electric bill for the month I had it. But didnt want to risk not having heat and waiting too long to not be able to return for a refund.

I purchased the ecobee3 because of its ability to use remote sensors. My master bedroom is too far from the thermostat location and putting the remote sensor in the bedroom and using just the remote sensor to run the ecobee3 seemed to be a good solution. And it was, for the first two weeks. It completely solved our problem and made the master bedroom perfectly comfortable.Then the remote sensor started to lose its connection to the ecobee3, causing the unit to use its own sensor.Sometimes it eventually reconnects on its own. Sometimes not. Coincidentally or not, the disconnections started after I replace the nearby wooden attic stairs with aluminum attic stairs. The stairs are a few feet away from and in the ceiling above the ecobee3.The website FAQ suggested moving the sensor closer. Its 30 feet from the ecobee3, well within its supposed 45-foot range. And moving it closer would move it out of the bedroom, defeating its purpose. It also suggested removing the remote sensor's battery, waiting two minutes, reinserting the battery, and waiting five minutes for the sensor to reconnect. That worked to reconnect it, but it didn't stop it from losing its connection again.I called support. They siad that the aluminum attic stairs could affect the remote sensor's connection. They had me delete the remote sensor's info from the ecobee3 and then re-pair the remote sensor with the ecobee3. That got it working it again, but it hasn't stopped the repeated disconnections. For example, it disconnected and later reconnected on July 3, July 5, July 6, and July 7. It is disconnected as I write this.I've just submitted another support request, but I sense they have no more advice to offer. If they do, I'll update.When the product works, it is really great. When it works intermittently, not so much.Should I replace my brand new aluminum attic stairs with wooden ones? Would that really fix my ecobee3 remote sensor disconnection problem? Ha, ha. Me and my first-world problems.

This products seems great at first, it's nice looking and I really liked the possibility to add sensors to each room, I used to have Nest in my previous home and decided to give ecobee a try. Unfortunately in my case my ecobee had a WiFi issue because it would disconnect very often and it would require a reboot for it to work again. I mean the whole reason to get a smart thermostat is to be able to access it online, if it disconnects that feature is not useful anymore.I called ecobee support 3 times and we ended up sending emails back and forth. Here's the last response I received from them:ecobee Support (ecobee Support)Jun 4, 3:45 PMHello Juan,you could do a return with amazon if you feel the WiFi chip might have an issue. Our servers are what's gone down today. They are being updated so it could be causing some issues.Let us know if we can be of further assistance.Regards,The Customer Support Teamecobee Support250 University Ave, Suite 400Toronto, ON M5H 3E5It seems nice and OK, but I didn't feel they knew what was going on so just left the issue up to me...when I spend $250 on a thermostat I expect more ownership if I have an issue.I considered just replacing it and trying out another one in case I received a defective one, but since I had a Nest in the past and never had problems with it I have decided to go back to Nest and not have to deal with ecobee and their support.I may have just been unlucky and that's a shame because I was excited about this product, but now prefer to take the safe route.

The item arrived fine. The wiring was easy. I turned off the air handler. it took roughly ten minutes to re-wire and another few minutes to place the screws and base. I popped in the thermostat. No problem. The device booted up and recognized the wiring. The touch screen did not work. it was erratic and did not recognize my touches. Jumped around. I called Ecobee c/s and they recommended returning it. I did. I am a bit skittish to buy another one.Update: As a leap of faith and also with Amazon Prime as my backup, I bought another one. It took about fifteen minutes to get it up and running and then another ten to fifteen minutes for it to calibrate. I ran into some issues in that it would not keep Arizona as my time zone and kept defaulting to Mountain time. Once setup was complete I was good to go. The AC kicked in and started cooling. Apparently the remote sensor automatically connects. I think. There is not a mechanism to manually connect a sensor. In the web interface there is a spot for the sensor but the window tile says "coming soon" so maybe there will be some features. I would like to manually adjust the settings a bit with the sensor. I do not see where I can average the settings or weight the settings.I should say that after my first experience it was exhilarating that the touch screen actually worked.Fortunately the device seems to be amenable to firmware and web interface upgrades that will be hopefully down the road. I bought this instead of the Nest solely due to the remote sensor. Also, the Honeywell device is too cumbersome to connect the remote sensors as they require the Red Link interface.The visual appearance is good.If you wish to have an easy thermostat to control and web interface and Android and iOS Aps and also wish to have a remote sensor then this is really the only device I could find that does all these things in a simple fashion for a decent price. It is for these reasons that I bought another one to see if it lived up to my expectations and it did.Good luck!

The idea behind this device is solid. I won't go into the pluses and minuses that are covered in the other reviews posted here. My issue is that this a WiFi thermostat and the WiFi capability sucks. I have it located 10 ft. from a brand new Apple AirPort Extreme in my home theater. This room is full of WiFi devices and each of them maintain a constant connection. But the Ecobee drops out and does not reconnect on a regular basis. The only way to reconnect it is to reboot the AirPort Extreme.So the only thing that really makes it any more significant than a normal thermostat is it's biggest failing. Wish it wasn't so and I hope they can address this with an update but I doubt it. It is likely a hardware rather software issue.2/16/2016 update: I overcame the Wi-Fi issues by installing a stand alone Airport Express to service the two Ecobee3 thermostats. That solved the dropout issues. I have two furnaces/AC units that have two zones each in a master/slave configuration. The two thermostats that are now up and running are both operating as slave units on separate furnaces. So on to attempting to install additional Ecobee3s in the master configuration. I want to note here that before I began purchasing these units (4 x $250 = a $1,000 total investment) I contacted Ecobee and was assured that the Ecobee3 was fully compatible with my zone controllers in either the master or zone configuration. I have now spent two months attempting to get the master configuration working. I have been dealing with multiple support advisors at Ecobee. I have run additional thermostat wire and purchased auxiliary transformers separately to power the Ecobee3s. Quite frankly I have been given so much conflicting advice that I question how capable their staff is when it comes to dealing with anything but the most basic installations.The most recent decision by the support supervisor was that the Ecobee3 was incompatible with a master/slave zone controller configuration and to ship the third Ecobee3 back to them for a refund. I did that and when they requested the receipt I found the printed copy of the original statement by a Mr. Salleem stating that the Ecobee3 offered full functionality in a master/slave zone controller system. I forwarded that copy to them and days have passed with no reply.So my advice is if you have a simple HVAC setup and you don't encounter Wi-Fi issues the Ecobee3 will likely be a fine thermostat. But with anything beyond that you can expect to encounter suspect technical advice and even get dropped by advisors when you have in-depth questions about your installation.Update 8/14/2015: The longer I have the Ecobee3 the more certain I am that this is/was a software issue. I figured out that when the issue would rise up I could log out of the mobile software and after re-logging in the wifi would reconnect with no problem. After several software updates from Ecobee this problem seems to have subsided.I do however have another issue with Ecobee. When I chose this thermostat I did so with the understanding it would be compatible with Apple HomeKit down the road. Ecobee specifically used that in their marketing. Now they offer no upgrade for the present units and expect a customer to doubledown to get that feature. Thermostats are a utilitarian device and spending $250 for a few added features is a leap for the average consumer. Asking the consumer to pay that twice is a little bit too much PT Barnum for me.

Pretty, but useless. This thermostat is a great idea just functions too poorly to be useful. After spending an additional $229.00 to have an Ecobee recommended installer come to the house to "install" the unit(changed improper factory set heat pump settings), it has been continual problems. False and fluctuating temp readings, not issuing alerts to me but rather to the installer, and running the emergency heat nearly every time the heat comes on. Ecobee's customer service updated the firmware saying that it should solve the problems but it hasn't.

Everyone loves these very high priced toys because they look good, are web enabled and are supposed to be high tech.They are however not going to be compatible if you home if you buy newer higher efficiency HVAC systems. Variable speed blowers (that move air through vents at a range of speeds instead of only either just on or off) are much more efficient. Blowing air at full speed actually uses a lot of wasted energy and also can be noisy.Blowers have evolved to have this much better solution for your home unfortunately the Nest does NOT support variable speeds. They only provide either all on or all off. Even more damning about Nest is that they claim that they do support variable speed blowers - what they don't tell you is that they only pass on to them either 100% on or 100% off and so you lose all of the advantage of having just bought a new, more expensive, but more efficient variable speed blower. This seems like a total no brainer and is extremely disappointing - Nest can confirm but they also seem incapable of curing this with a software fix and so you will likely, eventually need to throw these high-priced units away.

There are a lot of reviews here so I'll just state my main points and be gone.Nest was easy to install since I had a "C" wire. It does jut from the wall more than most thermostats I've seen. I have to be sure to maneuver around it as I walk through the hall where it is installed. The temperature display sometimes reads 5 degrees higher than actual. Then, on next glance, it will have dropped down 3 degrees or so. Eventually it will coast to the right temp over a few hours but you never know when it will go nuts again. That is not helping my power bill at all. I've tried insulating the wall behind it but that did not help. Temperature control for cooling is not good. If I set the A/C for 78 the unit powers on at 79 and turns off at 77. The temperature just never feels right and I feel uncomfortable most of the time. My Honeywell thermostat allowed a tighter band and even had a feature that would randomly kick on the fan to help even out the temp in the house. The difference in the "feel" of the properly conditioned living space is substantial and remarkable. Nest, with all its elegant fine points notwithstanding, is fundamentally a poor thermostat based on my experience living with it.Furthermore, I've decided that I will not trust my system to the Nest. Since installing, I've read too many reports of failures of the solid state switches on the base plate. Many claim their A/C compressors or heaters were run continually or even at the same time. There seems to be a problem with this, but Nest does not address it nor provide encouraging words in support of this design. I have decided I did not need to spend all this money to buy a problem. I'm going back to my Honeywell. It is also Wi-Fi but has actual relays to control the components and not tiny solid state switches. Relays are more reliable, I think, and failures won't necessarily damage my system.

Just returned ours. Was having network issues, plus Nest does NOT support Apple HomeKit. This is a major setback for the Nest products. Will be replacing this Nest with either a Honeywell Lyric, or a Ecobee3. The Lyric does support HomeKit. No word yet from Ecobee on whether their smart thermostat will support it, but most people feel it will.Another big set back for the Nest is it’s scheduling procedure. If you’re on a set schedule which NEVER changes in any way, shape or form, 24/7 every day of the year, then the Nest works fine. You just type in your schedule and it will stick to it. However, if your schedule sometimes changes, then the Nest is a pain in the butt to own. It’s “supposed” to learn your routine, but it never worked correctly for us. It was always coming on when it shouldn’t, or it would turn off when it was supposed to be on. I would have to be constantly be fixing it’s settings. It was very frustrating to have bought a smart thermostat that just wouldn’t learn anything. The Ecobee3 and the Lyric are both much better at knowing when to correctly turn on and off, so they will save you more money on operating cost.Also, if you're not interested in ANY kind of home automation, and you don't mind fussing with your network settings, then the Nest might be fine for you. They have incredibly good customer service, I was very impressed with their level of service, and the unit is well built out of glass and stainless steel. It's just that moving forward for most people the Nest (since they were bought out by google) has taken the product a major step backward, and without HomeKit support this product simply can't compete with the other smart thermostats on the market.This product had so much promise, but in the end it choked. I was very disappointed that I had to return it because it didn’t live up to all the hype. It was a good product when it first came out because back then it was the only player in town, but now there are other smart thermostats on the market, and they offer key features like support for HomeKit, and they actually work as promised. If this product only cost 10.00 then it wouldn’t be a big deal, but it cost 250.00 and at that price level it should be more reliable and offer features similar to the other smart thermostats on the market offer.

Lets' state the obvious. At $250, you'd better have your act together.They Don't.Google just bought them this week. Let's hope their DNA and engineers fix what should be a flawless experience.Summary: New furnace bought and installed along with new nest in December. Worked well for 2 weeks the infamous 4.0 update. Then the dreaded under volt errors and low battery warnings and functionality limitation began appearing.The 4.0 update did three things:1. added functionality2. made the nest nearly unfunctional3. destroyed nests reputation in one swift stroke.I have rarely seen worse internet chatter about any, ANY, software/hardware combination than the 4.0 update for nest. Unbelievable. Their discussion boards, independent boards, amazon reviews. wow… a blood bath.Anyway, they pushed a new software update out that seems -I THINK!- to have fixed the battery issue. Time will tell.Finally, the way nest handled the software fiasco was incredibly bad. It ruined my opinion of the company and it's designs. I was going to get a protect… not now.It's pretty, but, buyer beware.

I've had the Nest Learning Thermostat 2nd gen. installed now for just over 6 months and have been pleased with most of the functions, but it falls short of promised performance in 2 key areas.The good- beautiful design, easy install in my newer condo unit. Install took around 20 minutes and worked right away. The apps for IPhone and IPad are clean and easy to use, schedule programming is very easy.The shortfalls- AutoAway function- this function is supposed to sense when you've left your dwelling and then let the temperature stay within a pre-selected range. I use 60 degrees as my low point and 80 degrees as my high point. As long as you pass by the Nest unit on a regular basis, it works. When I work at home in a bedroom purposed as an office, the unit doesn't detect that I'm home and will go to Auto-Away status. This is curious to me, as I'm using the same wireless network as the Nest does, but it doesn't detect through that method apparently. Auto-Away also seems to override my programmed temperature settings sometimes. For example, I'm out of my home at work and the temperature is programmed to go to 70 degrees at 5PM, Auto-Away will not allow my programmed temperature setting to happen automatically. I have to use the app to change from Auto-Away to Home from my workplace in order the achieve my desired temperature by the time I arrive home.My other major disappointment is the Early-On function. This function is supposed to learn how long it takes to heat your home from the energy-saving low temperature I program for when I'm sleeping at night and get your heat up to the programmed waking temperature. My unit fails miserably in this regard, missing my programmed temp and time by 60 minutes in some cases. Really disappointing.I find myself having to check and manually make adjustments when I'm out of my home to get the desired temperature effect. It's great that the Nest is internet connected and I can do that, but the company's promise of learning your schedule and getting the temperature reasonably close has not been delivered for me. The premium for internet connectivity vs. Honeywell programmable thermostat for me was $200. If I knew that before, I would not have purchased the Nest 2nd gen. thermostat.

(Updates Below)I am stuck between giving this 1 or 2 stars. The thermostat works very well, but then it died. A thermostat is not something you want to fail when the temperature outside is around zero degrees. I went through the troubleshooting on the Nest website, which resulted in a trouble case number, and an email telling me to call for further assistance. When I called, there was no option for technical support. The closest option was for people having trouble with installation. the recording told me it would take over 30 minutes before I could be assisted. I did not have 30 minutes at the time, so I bought another thermostat to install temporarily, as I needed heat in the house.The device was nice, and I was willing to accept that I may have gotten a bad unit, as I have heard good things about these. But the fact that on multiple occasions now I have tried to call with an existing case number and been told by a robot that it will be more than thirty minutes before someone can assist me with installation has soured me on any product from Nest. If this were a bargain device, I would understand. However, this is a premium device, from a company that seems to want to be like Apple, and the level or service is simply not there.** Update (December 2013) **I called Amazon to see if they could help me with this. I no longer want the device at this point as I do not feel I can count on Nest to provide support. I recognize I an 20 days past my return window, and I hoped perhaps something could be done with store credit or some other option. Instead, they elected to call Nest on my behalf, and I once again am sitting on hold, and this call has been running for 26 minutes. The hold music just changed from that of Amazon, back the the constantly repeating installation instructions from the Nest phone system. Apparently I was transferred into the Nest system after 26 minutes on hold with Amazon, with no verbal hand-off from the Amazon rep I was talking to.** Update 2 (1/30/2014) **I called Nest again recently, and they seem to have made a substantial improvement to the call center. First, there is now a phone tree option for a device failure resulting in no heat. To see if the wait time problem was corrected, I elected to go the normal route, skipping the no-heat option, and was still routed to a representative in less than two minutes. In troubleshooting the problem, we discovered what has now been documented in other reviews.. My home uses a four wire system. two wires for heating, and two for cooling. The Nest thermostat is powered by the cooling line first, and then by the heating line (if cooling is not present). My cooling line does not provide enough power to run the Nest for any length of time. This leaves me with three options. 1. Disconnect the cooling line (Nest only works for heating). 2. Run a 5th wire to my furnace (common line). 3. Use any other thermostat, which works fine with this wiring configuration.It would be a shame to have a device with the abilities of the Nest, and not be able to use it in the summer, so option one is out. I can run the new wire, but I do not have the time to mess with it right now, so I have instead install a regular thermostat again, and my home is warm.Word of caution: The Nest has a built-in battery that will run it for a few days before it fails. In my case, I installed a replacement Nest, thinking it was the problem. The new unit worked, so I left town for a few days. Two days in, the Nest battery ran out, and the thermostat was dead. I came home to frozen pipes. I was lucky though, none of the pipes broke, but it was a bear thawing everything out.

The thermostat operated as advertised for approximately 2 months and then it stopped signaling for air conditioning when the outdoor temperature was 95 degrees. I thought my AC had gone out and called a technician who diagnosed the problem as the thermostat was not sending a signal to the unit to turn on. I reinstalled my old thermostat and the AC works fine. This could have been very costly if I didn't have an honest AC tech who didn't charge me and recommended I reinstall my old thermostat.From the information I have read, I get the feeling the thermostat system is still in the developmental stages.

Temperature reading goes UP when A/C is on.Upper left corner of the unit must be housing some component, relay or MOSFET or something, that cannot handle tiny relay included in the extender kit and heats up.This is terrible all around since my A/C system is keep overshooting target and stays off for an extended period of time until Ecobee's temperature reading returns to the normal operating range. Extended off period creates a multiple hot zone in my apartment where it totally defeats the purpose of purchasing a smart thermostat.I will evaluate this issue for the next few days and will decide to return or not.

I feel ripped off. Bought 2 of these to replace my honeywell thermostats along with several more remote sensors. The wifi on both drops and will not reconnect. I have tried everything I can think of to remedy this but nothing works. On top of the wifi issues a couple sensors lose connection every single day...one of them being my sons room which is the room I monitor closest.

These are very temperamental. If you have a newer forced air furnace with one stage AC then it is a good buy. If your furnace is older then stay away. And avoid EcoBee's tech support at all cost. They tried to tell us to start crossing wiring to make it work. Luckily I knew enough to not do that. It could have fried my furnace.

Update: This used to work. Now, twice this week, on the hottest evenings, it decides it doesn't want to cool to the upstairs bedroom sensor temperature like its programmed to do every evening. Of course we don't notice this until we go upstairs to bed and realize it's hot upstairs. After confirming/checking all the settings for the 20th time, it still won't turn the AC on.Tonight, I had to reboot (remove from the wall) the ecobee, take the unit's main sensor completely out of all the settings, remove the remote sensors battery (to ensure its still good), & just for good measure I rebooted my wifi/router & somehow it finally began using the upstairs remote sensor temp & finally clicked on the AC.Save yourself an argument with your wife & get something you actually have control over - like the perfectly good thermostat you pulled out of your wall.

I have 8 year old ruud achiever heat pumps. 3 of them to be exact. I ordered 3 of the ecobee3 thermostats and an extra pack of sensors. They were easy and fast to install. The problem is that 2 of the 3 continually run the fan!!! I spent a full day on the phone with 4 different techs. No help.At this point I was ready to rip them out and go honeywell, but I really want the sensors, unit run time tracking, etc. So I suck it up and have an ac guy come out to install them and talk to support at $90 an hour. Needless to say that after 4 hours or swapping equipment, etc ... the end result is that I now have honeywell wifi thermostats. Not neat, cool, or advanced, but they WORK.

I bought a nest 2nd generation thermostat about 3 months ago and have had constant issues with it. I didn't have a C common wire connected since my house was made in the 70s, so I got the Nest since it's advertised as a smart thermostat that can work without the C wire. I later learned that this is only half true.Although it's able to power on and work somewhat, I had constant issues where it would say it's heating, but the furnace wouldn't be on. I read that there's a bug where the Nest would suck up all the power that should be going to the furnace to recharge it's batteries and thus it thinks the furnace is on, but really it's not giving the furnace enough power to turn on. I could get the nest to turn the furnace on if I turn the temp way down and then back up again which restarts the Nest's process for thinking it needs to turn the furnace on. I obviously can't be doing this all day, however, so I wound up waking up to a freezing house almost every night this winter.Now, the next issue I had...I couldn't test A/C because of how cold it was when I first installed the Nest and it doesn't let you test it when it's that cold. So, lately it's been getting warmer and I wanted to try out the Heat+Cold setting. The other night, I wake up to the furnace blaring heat and it's 90 degrees F in my house. The wiring somehow thought A/C meant furnace.I had an HVAC guy come over yesterday and we determined the wiring was okay (it worked fine for the previous thermostat). He rewired a bit to get the C wire powered and we tried that. The Nest couldn't recognize that any power was being given to it. We tried two other thermostats and they both worked perfectly fine.And of course since I wasn't able to test my A/C before, its gone past the return date, so I'm stuck with this broken Nest. I guess I'll gut it and see what I can do with the electronic innards..TLDR summary: Don't buy a nest. I drove out to Lowes and bought a Honeywell Wifi thermostat last night. Works perfectly

Nest thermostats used to be great, but they "upgraded" the software in November to version 4.3.3 and ended up disabling remote operations for many users (check the forums at Nest.com and see for yourself before buying). The thermostat will go to sleep (to preserve battery, even if you have it connected to a 24v common wire for power), and it will show as offline on Nest's web site and iPhone app. Walking up to the Nest "wakes it up" and it re-connects, but that is of little help if you aren't home.At first they tried to blame it on people's routers and networks and denied the update broke anything, even though it worked fine before the update; now a few support people admit there is an issue (although some people still don't), but there is no ETA for a fix. To me, that says they either don't know how to fix it, or it isn't a priority.This was an upgrade that I didn't ask for, nor could I have refused it (not that I was even given the option). Requests to be rolled back to the previous version have been denied. I guess my thermostats are really owned by Nest instead of me.Nest corporate has yet to admit there is a problem; they're probably still smarting from the recall of the Protect and all the negative publicity they received from that.When it works, the Nest is great and until this botched update I was a satisfied customer. If they would publicly admit their error and tell me when it will be fixed, I'd be OK with it (nobody is perfect), but the lack of support and accountability makes me wish I had nothing to do with them.UPDATE 10/16/15: Almost a year later, and they still haven't fixed the problem. It's better than it was, but most of the time I look at the app on my phone, one out of four thermostats is offline. I'll be switching to the Ecobee3.

After installing the thermostat it worked properly for 1 hour. After that, it went through heat cycles but the fan ran continually between cycles. The end result was cool air circulating in the house for 90% of the time (when the heat wasn't actually being called for). I called Nest and they sent me a replacement. This unit did the same thing. After spending an hour on the phone with a very polite but ignorant CSR she bumped the question up to advanced tech support promising that they would contact me in 10-15 days. So, bottom line, I have a $250 paperweight on my desk and currently have the heat properly running using my old tried and true Honeywell thermostat. Money down the drain.(On a side note, there are tons of websites [just do a quick Google search for "fan running continuously with Nest"], including Nest's support discussion boards, that report this fan running continuously issue but when I mentioned that to the CSR she said they had no reports of an issue. They seem to ignore or gloss over the issues that people may have.)

I don't recommend this thermostat. A software upgrade resulted in our battery constantly dying and the thermostat going offline. Since it is in a mountain cabin we were unsure if the device was working or not. The Nest webpage said the affected devices would be fixed in a "few days". Mine is still not working after a month. Customer support is relatively friendly but worthless. They told me that the upgrade knocked out 5% of the units, but the company did not wish to make everybody go back to the old version just for those 5%. Well, 5% failure is disastrous upgrade, specially given that failure of a thermostat can cause massive damage. The professional approach would be to take all units back to the old operating system. It seems like the engineering time was spent on making the device look cool, but engineering of the product function was left to amateurs. This product is not ready yet and probably won't ever be given the poor response of the company to a massive upgrade failure.The upgrade causes the battery to be drained by constant attempts to connect with the Wi-Fi. This could be fixed by just shutting off the WiFi connection on the Nest, turning it into a regular thermostat until they manage to fix the software issue. However, you can't turn off the Wi-Fi connection with a low battery.Constant draining of a battery will lessen its lifetime. So in addition to being stuck with a nonfunctioning device I now have one that will die an early death. Don't ask customer service to be connected to anyone to discuss this unless you want to say on hold forever.I wish I had never purchased this device. It is a failure of a product from a sub-standard company.

I'm an HVAC contractor who's installed and troubleshooted this product in customer's homes for the past couple years and experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let's start with the good.Pros:-It looks great. Personally I don't really care what my thermostat looks like but I know that is very important to many people and the Nest is unmatched in this area.-When it works, it is hands down the easiest thermostat to install. The ability to sense wires and automatically configure the thermostat is a cool feature you don't see too often. They have a nifty wizard on their website that where you check the wires you have and it figures out what type of system you have and whether or not it will be compatible. Not that I really care, since this is what I do for a living, but for DIYers who have never done something like this before, it's nice.-In theory, it can control quite a wide range of HVAC systems, including 4 stages of heating, 2 stages of cooling, dual fuel systems, and humidification/dehumidification.-The customer service reps do genuinely seem to want to help, and there have been cases of them giving refunds even outside of the return period, or paying for visits by HVAC contractors to troubleshoot issues or repair damage caused by the thermostat.-The auto away and auto learning seem to work as advertised for the most part and IF, a big IF, you didn't program your previous thermostat, they will save you energy. However your money would be put to much better use by spending 10 minutes reading the manual of your traditional thermostat and programming it (even if its unintuitive, it's not something you have to do often). Then, take that $250 and put it towards something that will REALLY save energy, such as tightening up your house.-It has energy reporting which the Honeywell wifi thermostats lack (although the Honeywells are better thermostats in every other regard)Cons:-Reliability has been less than satisfactory. Instead of using good old reliable relays like most thermostats Nest decided to use what they call FETs (Field Effect Transistors) to control the equipment. They probably did this so they could give the thermostat its small form factor. Unfortunately, they aren't so reliable and tend to fail in the on position. The Y terminal (compressor) seems to fail pretty frequently causing A/C to run in the winter, sometimes at the same time as the heat. Some people do not have this issue, but for those that do, it seems to happen again and again no matter how many new baseplates Nest sends out. IMO it doesn't matter how many people don't have issues, the technology is plain unreliable and they need to stop using it. Besides the FET issue, software updates are pushed to the thermostat and the user has no choice on whether or not to accept them. Sometimes, they have bugs. The most recent one, 4.0, which the only purpose of was to add support for the Nest Protect, caused issues with some thermostats unable to power themselves. Some Nest owners found their thermostats unable to connect to wifi. Others found their pipes frozen as the Nest failed to turn on their equipment. Again, not everyone had an issue. But a thermostat is not an iPod. A buggy update is going to cause a much bigger problem than being without your music if you are part of the group that does have problems. They need to stop forcing updates on people (have a way to apply them at will) and test them extensively on their own systems before release.-It's a power stealing thermostat. One big issue when you upgrade to any wifi thermostat is how to power it. To understand this issue, I will give a brief history of thermostats. Back in the old days, we had simple mercury thermostats. No need to power them at all! But then along came digital programmable thermostats. They needed power for their displays, memory, and possibly a backlight. The most common HVAC system in US consists of a basic single stage gas furnace, matched with a single speed central air conditioner. To control this setup, you need four wires in your wall going to your thermostat. This worked fine for old mercury thermostats. To actually enable the thermostat to power itself, though, you need a 5th "common" wire. But, most people only had 4 wires going to their thermostat location. Programmable thermostat manufacturers came up with two solutions to this. The most common solution was to make the thermostats battery powered. These were simple enough to install and worked fine, the only con was that you had to replace the batteries periodically. Another solution was called a "power stealing" thermostat. This thermostat robbed enough current from the HVAC control wires to power itself, but NOT enough to trigger the HVAC system. On older HVAC systems that just ran off relays, this worked fine. Fast-forward to the age of wifi thermostats. How to power these things? AA Batteries wouldn't work, because the wifi drew too much power. What MOST wifi thermostat manufacturers decided to do was FORCE customers to run a common wire to power the thermostat. Nest was not satisfied with this as they wanted to make their thermostat easy to DIY install, so they decided to implement power stealing. Nowadays, though, most HVAC systems run off control boards, which are often sensitive to attempts by a thermostat to rob power for itself and may not let it at all. So sadly, the Nest actually works better with old standing pilot furnaces than newer efficient ones, even though it is a thermostat that promotes efficiency. Huh? Luckily, Nest gives you the option to connect a common wire if you have one, so you don't need to rely on the power stealing. Unfortunately, this issue has just led to too many problems and too much confusion by consumers who thought that Nest would work with their system and then found they needed a common wire. As you can see, not everyone will experience issues, but enough will that it is not OK to assume it will just work, and also it is possible for problems to occur even if it has been working for a long time due to changes in weather and battery capacity.-"Heat Pump Balance" DOES NOT work as advertised and not only will it not save energy, it will use MORE by running backup aux heat way too much. You can turn that off and set your own lockout temperature for aux heat, but the minimum is only 35 degrees. Most modern heat pump systems can hold their own own down into the 20s. THIS IS A REALLY BAD BUG, IT AFFECTS ALL HEAT PUMP USERS. BE WARNED!-It doesn't run multistage systems properly. If the Nest detects 1st stage is not keeping up, it will kick into 2nd stage. Fine, most thermostats do this. But then, instead of dropping back into 1st stage, it will stay in 2nd until it shuts off, decreasing comfort and efficiency. Finally, when recovering from a setback, it will ONLY use 1st stage, which takes way too long and makes it difficult to recover in time.-Technical support isn't so great. Lately there have been ridiculously long hold times, and they don't seem to know what they're talking about. They are polite and professional, though, and I don't blame this problem on the agents, I blame it on the fact they aren't trained properly, which has to do with the next con...-The overall attitude of the company. They do not communicate with their customers adequately to alert them of updates or problems. There is a community forum on their website that is quite helpful, and I highly recommend you visit it before purchasing. There used to be Nest moderators there, but they have all but abandoned it. There are many Nest users there though who put a lot of time into helping people solve problems and giving advice on how to best use Nest products. There are many complaints there, but they aren't "bashing" the products. Instead they give constructive criticism to Nest on where to improve, and ask for basic updates on what Nest is doing and whether they will fix these numerous issues. Unfortunately, instead of responding to the community members, they decided to make it un-indexable by search engines so prospective customers would NOT see this information. You can see for yourself. Go to [...] and view the source code of the page. You'll see <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW" >. You can click "recent discussions" to see what people have been posting and feel free to create an account and ask any questions you may have.-No adjustable temp swing or cycles per hour (other than selecting between radiant and forced air heat)-Can't adjust % RH setpoint for humidifier automatically based on outdoor temperature-Their implementation of emergency heat for heat pumps doesn't work well with the majority of systems installed (see the comments thread for more detail).-The energy reporting is kind of lame. It pales in comparison to Ecobee. Not enough cold, hard, data and too many meaningless statistic like "leaves".-No hold mode. Really guys, $20 programmable thermostats have this.Conclusion: Would I recommend this product? Not currently I wouldn't. If you have a heat pump or multistage system, I absolutely would not recommend it. If you have your heart set on this thermostat and have a basic single stage system, be prepared that it may not work without a common wire, and be prepared for the possible reliability issues. Watch it closely after you install and be ready to return it within the 30 day period if necessary. And really, not even considering the reliability issues, is it worth it? I'm not convinced.UPDATE 1/13/14: Nest has released a new version of their software, version 4.0.1, which claims to have all the new features of 4.0 but the performance of 3.5.3. The jury's still out on whether it does what they say it will: some people are reporting different issues they didn't have before, others say it fixed their issues. The good news, though, is that there is now a moderator on the Nest community, Brian, who is answering people's questions and helping them get the updates they need. While they still have a long way to go, it is good to see them moving in the right direction. Also, for those who don't know: Google owns Nest now. Make of that what you will, I won't comment on the privacy since everyone has a different opinion on that, but I am optimistic that the Google acquisition will accelerate the development of the product.

I purchased two 2nd generation Nests to replace two of my five heat/cooling zones in my house. The house is 3 years old and has "state of the art" HVAC. My problem is that the batteries discharge, the Nest loses connectivity to the Internet and can not be controlled from outside the house which is the vary reason that I bought them ie: have the house warm or cool when you arrive back from a trip. Today was my 12th call to Nest. Now they report that a "common" wire is needed to attach the Nest back to the HVAC device that it is controlling. Thus, I will have to hire a HVAC guy to come in and figure this out. Stephanie at Nest told me how sorry she was that I would have to go through all of this but there is no "work around" on their end. I, for one, am disgusted and will probably replace both with MADE FOR PRIME TIME EQUIPMENT.