Review on 🌡️ Enhance Comfort and Efficiency with the ecobee SmartThermostat with Voice Control in Black by James Hardy

I just upgraded from a 3rd gen Nest thermostat with 2 remote sensors. I loved Nest for its simplicity and design. I have a nest about 6 years old. I'm not a Google fan and now they have Nest. They recently announced that they are closing the Works with Nest program. This would destroy most of my program dependent automation. Google has since reversed course and said they'll let us keep our old accounts and our gadgets will continue to work. Why did I change bearings? Well I was intrigued by the idea of the Follow Me mode. I have several sensors at home. I bought 4 extra plus the one that came with this thermostat. Ecobee knows which room I am in and adjusts the temperature accordingly. It's like magic. This was the only feature worth switching to, as Nest only allows you to use your sensors on a schedule. I also love that I now have Apple Siri support alongside Alexa and IFTTT. I could control the Nest with Alexa, but I've found Google has other ideas, and worse, they refuse to add Siri support. After a week of using the Ecobee I still haven't seen it enter Smart Away. I can track HomeKit motion sensors and see my cats being triggered constantly throughout the day. I had to disable this feature and use geofencing to trigger away/home mode. Ecobee added support for Apple HomeKit, but I had trouble with that too. I have no idea why, maybe it's because I don't have the strongest cell phone signal at home. I've found that using Life360 and IFTTT is much more reliable and works where HomeKit doesn't. As far as I know, Apple is working on HomeKit geofencing to improve it in iOS 13. Time will tell, but I'm sticking with Life360 for now. It sends a command over IFTTT to disconnect and when I get home it sends a command to continue the schedule. The new room sensors are small and unobtrusive, and they claim to have a 5-year battery life, using the largest button cell battery I've ever come across. . I wonder how much they cost when it comes time to replace them? In terms of design, I like the nest better. The Ecobee interface is complicated and confusing. I have found that some things are easier or even required to be changed on the device itself or in the web interface. The application is missing some settings. I feel like the real LCD panel could have been bigger. Anyway, there's a huge bezel and heaps of wasted space. The bezel houses room mics and a proximity sensor, but there's really no reason why the screen couldn't be bigger. I want the screen to change color, blue for cooling and orange for heating, like the Nest. Many advanced settings are not explained in detail what they actually do. I would not change some of these settings without the advice of a qualified air conditioning technician. This model has very good sound quality. I often use it to listen to music and talk on the radio. From what I've read, the sound quality has improved significantly compared to the old model. So what did I learn about the change? Built-in support for Alexa and Siri. Follow-me mode and additional room sensors. I also had to go through a huge learning curve, but in the end I'm happy with it. EDIT: After a lot of trial and error, I found that I had misconfigured geofencing with HomeKit. The ecobee app itself has a built-in geofence, but only supports one user. If you want multi-user geofencing you'll need to use HomeKit, or if you're an Android user there are probably other steps that I'm not aware of. I had enabled geofencing in the ecobee app and also tried to use geofencing in HomeKit. You cannot use both at the same time. After disabling geofencing in the ecobee app and configuring geofencing in HomeKit, everything worked properly. Edit December 11, 2019: Ecobee released a firmware update and broke one of the main features I liked about this setup, GEOPENCE with Apple HomeKit. Broken. They say you have to turn on eco+ with minimal settings and this feature still works, but that doesn't solve the issue I contacted them about. They broke the feature and either don't understand the problem or don't care. The way it works right now is that the thermostat wants to try to schedule the Home/Away modes based on what it detects through the motion sensors in the house. What should I do if I don't work on vacation or I get sick and stay at home? The thermostat goes into Away mode and I have to switch back to the comfort setting. When you use geofencing, it doesn't go into away mode until the last person has left the house. Do you see the problem? See the email I sent and her reply below. Me: Hello, after receiving a firmware update to enable eco+, I can no longer use HomeKit and Geofencing to select COMFORT settings. This only allows me to select heating or cooling mode and temperature. You broke one of the main functions of the system that I use on a daily basis. I just want HomeKit to put the Ecobee into Away mode when the last person leaves the house and resume the schedule when the first person gets home. Worked great before. Now it isn't. Now I'm forced to use IFTTT and Life360. too difficult for me Get HomeKit working again. You should also consider multi-user/home geofencing support in your own application. It's stupid to have a built-in geofence for just one user. Ecobee: Hello, sorry for the late reply. If you have completely deactivated Eco+, Smart Home/Away will also be deactivated. I would suggest using a very minimal percentage of eco+ for Smart Home/Away to activate. Sincerely, ecobee support, Jay Hanna, December 4th 8:26am EST. Additional correspondence with Ecobee support on this topic. 12:54 PM EST Hello regarding geofencing, yes we are having some issues and our team is investigating. I understand the schedule is tight at the moment and I'm not entirely sure if this triggers an eco+. But I need to contact you and get confirmation about it. I'm not talking about SMART HOME/OUTDOOR SERVICES, I'm talking about GEOFECING features in Apple HomeKit. That's a huge difference. I can see that "Smart Home/Away" is still there, but I want the system to use geofencing to detect when the last person leaves the house and then set the comfort profile to "Away". This is the wiser way as your scheduling system is rigid but GEOFECING is dynamic based on the location of users' phones. What should I do if I return from work on sick leave? Their tight schedule tries to set the system to Smart Away when I'm asleep in bed and there's no movement in the house. Geofencing wouldn't allow this as my phone hasn't left the house so it knows I'm home and won't set the comfort profile to 'no'. see the difference Please fix this issue. Why can't your new eco+ installation work with geofencing? Think about it. They're designing a 'smart thermostat,' so make it smart enough to know when someone's home based on geofencing. This can be an opt-out option if someone doesn't want to use it, but don't disable this feature for the rest of us. December 10, 2019 2:00 PM -0500, support@ecobee.com :ecobee Support December 10, 2:00 PM ESTEDIT 01/30/2020ecobee has quietly updated its iOS app and fixed SMART HOME/AWAY geofencing functionality. It now detects when the last person leaves my house and automatically sets the eco-bee to Away, and when the first person arrives home it continues the schedule. I no longer need to use Life360 and IFTTT to get the same result. I am again satisfied with the operation of this thermostat. Now all they have to do is build a much prettier thermostat. The Nest is by far the prettiest and most intuitive thermostat.