ecobee3 Lite Smart Thermostat - Programmable Wifi Thermostat - Works with Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant - Energy Star Certified - DIY Install, Black

I have never installed something like a thermostat before. I have let this product sit in my cart for the last couple of months while I debated on if I was qualified enough for the daunting task of install. I wish I would’ve just purchased this a LONG time ago. And here is why…. THE APP NOT ONLY TELLS YOU WHAT TO DO STEP BY STEP BUT IS INTERACTIVE!! I have NEVER had a product with such a user friendly (such an under rated term here) interface that tells you what to do BASED ON YOUR WIRING!! That’s right. You remove your old thermostat and tell the app which wires you see and it tells you what you need to do based on your specific situation. I will say I was very lucky and had the common wire and did NOT have to install the adaptor to my HVAC system. However, honestly the apps Instillation guide is so intuitive I’m sure that the extra step would have been easy enough. I know it may seem like I am rambling a bit. In this part of the review however, I want everyone to understand that the biggest reason for my hesitation was not the price of the unit but the installation process. I did not want to have to pay an additional fee for someone else to install. If I could possibly do it myself once I receive the product I had it installed within 15 minutes. The Ecobee Smart Thermostat is in itself, a wonderful and intuitive product. The product itself looks very elegant and doesn’t look like your typical hospitals style look. This looks futuristic and modern. I absolutely love how intuitive the sensor is like when you walk by the screen changing to show you a little bit more information. The software seems to know how to show you the right information to. When I want to look at the weather, it gives me just a glance at what is going on outside, which is wonderful and then I can expand it more to look into the future if I choose. The ecobee app is very user-friendly and easy to use as well. Setting up my thermostat through the ecobee app was super easy and quick. PRO TIP: Once the thermostat is installed, you can access the Apple QR code to connect your thermostat to your HomeKit ecosystem. The QR code is not the QR codes on the actual product cards inside the box. I really love the fact that this thermostat helps save on your heating bill by maximizing the heating and cooling of your HVAC system. But I was really impressed when during the install process, the software prompted me to enter my ZIP Code to show me who my local energy supplier was and allowed me to Request a rate decrease with the new install of the smart thermostat. I have not purchased any of the sensors yet, so I cannot contest to that ability of the software. However, I will be purchasing them in the future and will update my review accordingly.

To sum it up, this thermostat does what it is supposed to do (keep your home comfortable while maximizing energy savings and the environment). Installation was a breeze and the app functions well. End user settings are ADJUSTABLE for your specific home/system requirements. I have the AC temp go up during the day to 75 degrees. In less than a few days the thermostat “learned” how long my system takes to cool my house back down to a comfortable temperature before I return home. I have the swing temperature set to +1 degrees, which seems to be the appropriate level for my home. This allows an AC run time between 20-30 minutes before shutting down the call for cooling. My prior “smart” thermostat swing was set very “tight” and was not adjustable. This caused my cooling system to run for about five minutes or less and turn back on in about the same amount of time and repeated this cycle day and night unless I would manually adjust the temperature. I believe this may have caused issues with my previous 7-year-old single-stage AC compressor. Believe it or not, the +1-swing temp is WAY more comfortable than the previous 0.5-swing temperature. One thing I didn’t realize is the constant compressor on/off process also increased the humidity in my house by about 15%. This thermostat keeps my humidity in the 40% range which is way more comfortable than what the previous thermostat was achieving. I do not understand much about thermostats/HVAC systems and would not have believed a thermostat would have anything to do with the humidity level in the home. I should point out, prior to installing this thermostat, the humidity level in my house was not my main concern, I just notice it is drastically more comfortable after installing this thermostat and wanted to point out that fact. All in all, I have learned a significant amount of HVAC terminology in the past month from the frustration caused by a previous ineffective smart thermostat. With this thermostat, you don’t need to be an HVAC technician to have equipment that operates effectively and/or to have a comfortable home. It is truly SMART. My only negative complaint is the look and color. I wish they had a white color option. We have colored walls in our home with white trim/doors. I did prefer the look of the previous ineffective thermostat. The black color looks a little out of place on my wall! I still rate this thermostat as a five because it does what it is supposed to do. Aesthetics without proper function is a complete deal breaker! I don't usually write too many reviews, but I had a horrible experience with a prior “smart” thermostat, and I would like users to understand thermostats are not all designed the same. If you are having difficulties with your system due to a dumb thermostat, I would highly recommend this product if you don’t mind the aesthetics.

Awesome product...has saved me lots of money in the two years it has been installed. I bought this based on the recommendation of my new furnace installer. He did the installation but I did the programming. Programming features are very nice. It recognizes when I am about 1500 feet from home and changes to the "at home" setting several minutes before I arrive. Very nice to be able to control the device through the internet. I could instantly check status of my house from 9,000 miles away when on an extended trip.

Thermostat is great so far. I like to consider myself somewhat tech savvy and I thought this looked pretty easy to install. My HVAC system had a few extra steps, and because I live in an apartment, a lot of companies didn’t want to install it and the company that did, ended up not showing up. I called maintenance and the guy couldn’t figure it out and left saying that his supervisor said he shouldn’t install it (liability). I was going to return it but saw that ecobee offers installation support. I called them and the tech had me take a few pics and an hour later, I had it installed! The guy I spoke to was very knowledgeable, patient and extremely helpful. He stayed on the phone with me until I had it installed, connected to my Wi-Fi and setup. As for the thermostat, I love it so far. It’s fairly simple to use once you know what all the settings are for and it connects and works with Alexa seamlessly in app and voice control. I can control it on my phone with the Ecobee app, even when I’m at work, which is great because I have a fur baby and I like to make sure she’s not too hot or too cold (Weather fluctuates A LOT where I live) so it’s a feature I appreciate. You can set a schedule if you’d like. It took a while to set mine up because I work nights but it works like magic! I would definitely recommend this thermostat. Comes with everything that you need in the box, the instructions are straightforward and their support is great if you’re not a tech expert.

I had no trouble hooking the unit up. Instead of using the large plate (to cover the wall damage from the replaced thermostat) I opted to patch and paint before installing the ecobee. I think the end result looks a lot better that way. The ecobee app is good, though it seems to anticipate a larger, more complex system than what i have. Because of that, the initial screen is kind of skimpy, just showing a box labeled "thermostat" (my totally uncreative chosen name for the device). That was a bit confusing at first, but I got over it. When I touch the "thermostat" label, a much more interesting screen pops up that allows me to control appropriate aspects of my HVAC system. Features I use often: 1. We have a gas fireplace insert that is adequate to heat our entire main living area. Unfortunately, the house thermostat is in that living area, which means peripheral areas of our home can get pretty cold. Using either the ecobee thermostat touch screen or the ecobee app on an iPad, it's easy to turn the HVAC fan on or off to circulate the air. 2. This was a pleasant surprise. The ecobee connects to a weather service (via the Internet) and this provides current info regarding outside conditions and forecasts. The "weather report" is available from either the ecobee touch screen or the app. Programming of the ecobee to accommodate our daily schedule was easy -- a big improvement over the old thermostat. Since the ecobee is connected to the house network, I assume wrinkles like daylight savings time will be handled automagically. This is small in the overall scheme of things, but addressing time changes w/ our old thermostat was a pain, so I appreciate it. The ecobee seems to run the HVAC more than the old thermostat, though I think much of this has to do with the smart device's efforts to even out the temperature in our home. At installation time, we "told" the device the (rough) size of the home, the number of floors, and the floor where the smart thermostat is located. Though this is an extremely qualitative statement, I do think the temperature in our house this winter is maintained better than it was w/ the old thermostat. One surprise: When I programmed our "wake up time," the ecobee interpreted that as "by this time, the temperature should be at the set point." Of course the old thermostat interpreted that as "turn on the HVAC now." The change surprised me, because when it's been cold, the HVAC can turn on an hour before our wake up time (the fan tends to wake me up, so I noticed the change). I contacted ecobee customer support and asked about this. They consider this a feature. It even has a name: "Smart Recovery." We're not yet deep enough into winter for me to see if we're saving any energy. I did receive the 1st natural gas bill since installation, and we're below our usage from the same month last year. This could be due to differences in the weather, and in any case the ecobee wasn't installed for the entire month. We've had some cold days, so next month should give us a better impression. OTOH, our climate is fairly mild here, so if you live somewhere with greater swings in temperature, you may see different results. All-in-all, I like the device. My wife and I both think it's an esthetic improvement. I'd recommend it.

I had a Nest learning thermostat in my old house, and to be honest, I wasn’t crazy about it. When I bought my new home in 2019, it had a simple, non-programmable digital thermostat with zero features. I haven’t been happy with the way that my AC has been cooling in this hot Texas summer. Even with the fan running 24/7, it still always felt stuffy and a bit too warm, and my electricity bills were always a bit higher than I’d like. I took a chance and chose this one over a Nest, and it’s been the best decision that I could have made. I’m using the huge, white wall plate until I repair and repaint the holes from the other one. It looks a bit out of place, but it just barely covered the old holes. If the plate was any smaller, it wouldn’t cover them. Anyway, in the two weeks that I’ve been running this ecobee, I’ve seen a huge improvement in both my comfort levels and in energy reduction. I didn’t see much of a difference in the first week, but then I started figuring out how it worked with some of the advanced settings. When you can see all of the performance of your system on the website, you can see how everything is working. I initially set it so that it was more or less the same as my old, dumb thermostat, with the exception of changing the home/sleep to different values. My home is mostly one story, with just one upstairs bedroom that my oldest son uses. They system isn’t zoned, so it always gets really hot up there in the summertime. To help combat this, I’ve changed the fan from Auto to On so that air is always being circulated. What I didn’t realize is that actually makes things worse. When I could see the data on the webpage, I could see that the humidity in the home was going up and down like a roller coaster. It would go down when the AC compressor was on, but it would shoot right back up when the compressor turned off but the fan was still blowing through the system. I changed the fan setting back to Auto, and immediately, the humidity went down and stayed down. Previously, I was seeing the humidity in the house going up and down from 65% to 85% several times every hour. With just one setting change, spotted by the system data, I got it to stay at 65%. That still seemed a bit high to me, so I started researching getting a home dehumidifier. Pretty quickly, I found out that this thermostat has a dehumidify feature all ready to use. It uses something called Overcool, where you can set a target humidity and how many degrees you will allow the AC to go below the set point to further reduce the humidity. I set a target of 60% and gave it two degrees to work with. Right away, using the app, I could see that it was working. It still ranged between 62%-65% for the first day, but I could see it trending lower over time. After two days, it was maintaining 60% at the AC set point. Then I lowered it to 58%, and it took about another day to settle there. I repeated this every day until it is now at 50%. It’s holding this humidity level at the regular set point, but it feels much cooler and comfortable in the house now. I’m going to keep going to see if I can hit 40%. Everybody in the house has commented on the difference, and I’ve even bumped the temperature up a little because my wife has started wearing sweaters. What’s even better about this is that the website also graphs how many hours the compressor runs compared to the outside temperature. Over the last week, I’ve seen the ratio of compressor hours vs temperature go down by at least 1/3. Coupled with the fan only being on while the compressor is running, I’m expecting to see my electric bill go down substantially. I wouldn’t be surprised if this pays for itself over the summer. I’m going to invest in a couple of the remote sensors to make the occupied rooms the temperature that I want. Bottom line, this thing is awesome.

I've had two Nest thermostats, one for 7 years, the other even longer brought from my previous home. Both thermostats have been rock solid since and no doubt saved me hundreds of dollars through better management of heating and cooling. My one complaint over the years is that the app has been relatively unchanged with only minor updates - plus it was relatively weak sauce to begin with. Then last month the downstairs Nest went awol - stuck on the home screen. Miraculously, it came back to life the next morning. But this stuck-on-home-screen incident last week didn't work out that way. All interventions failed to bring it back to life. I figure the circuit board is fried somehow. Because I'd read that the quality of Nest thermostats had gone downhill since the Google buyout of the company and new players on the market were making inroads, I decided to investigate some of those options over a newer Nest replacement. Several review references said the Ecobee line edged out the Nest - especially when it came to the app. I also like the idea that I could add sensors to my 2800 sq. ft home to better control temperatures in rooms where there was a variation. I decided on this model because it was on CyberMonday sale and since I have Alexa speakers all over the house, I didn't need the built in Alexa feature of the more expensive version. So far, I absolutely love the Ecobee - especially the app - over my Nest and I suspect that affinity will grow over time as I continue to get used to the interface. (I will update this review at a later date and after more experience with the Ecobee - especially in comparison to my still installed upstairs Nest.) Be sure and document your existing thermostat wiring carefully and read the instructions thoroughly before installation. When I first installed the Ecobee? Nothing on the display. I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with the furnace or the wiring going to it and that was the source of the original problem. However, swapping the upstairs Nest with the downstairs unit showed that indeed the downstairs Nest was on the blink. Then I began wondering if I'd wired the Ecobee correctly. A quick check in the troubleshooting section revealed that the "R" wire - rather than being connected to the "R" terminal should have been connected to the "Rc" terminal - at least in my setup. Once I did that? The Ecobee fired right up and within minutes it was connected to wifi, registered, communicating with Alexa and ready to rock! Highly recommended!

I got the Ecobee and it installed easily, setup was quick and painless, programming is simple, the Homekit connection worked exactly as it should, and so far everything is working perfectly. Except for one issue that brings a five-star product down to one-star. There’s a motion sensor on the face of the unit, this is used to help detect a human presence nearby and help adjust settings in accordance with the other thermostat settings. But one fatal mistake in the programming of the unit is that they decided to also use this motion sensor to wake the unit from its “standby” info screen to its “ready to be programmed and adjusted” screen whenever it detects movement near it. The standby screen shows current temperature, outside temperature and current time, all useful information. You can dim this standby screen separately from the adjustment screen which is wonderful and keeps the device’s presence low-key, but still practical. It’s actually quite nice and smart to have a useful dimmed standby screen. The problem is you’ll never, ever get to use or take advantage of this standby screen because whenever you get close to the device, and in my case, since the unit is next to the kitchen doorway, every time you walk by it, the screen wakes up to full brightness, ready for action and to be interfaced with. You want to yell at the stupid thing, “Calm down! I’m just walking by!!! I don’t want to make any adjustments!!!” This seems like a small silly thing, but when you walk by the unit 15-20 times a day, it’s a massive annoyance to see this thing lighting up and ready for action when nothing is going on and you’re just walking by it. Imagine that every time you walked by your TV and it automatically turned on, how annoying would that be. It also begs the question on why there’s even a standby/info screen in the first place if it can never be used (since as soon as you get close to the unit, the standby screen disappears and the adjustment screen comes on to its full brightness setting), you see, there is no software switch in the settings to turn-off this motion wake-up function and set it so that you have to touch the interface to invoke the adjustment screen. I’m guessing this would be something an intern could program in a day and be pushed out quickly with a software update, just make an option to enable/disable the auto wake-up function. In other words, fix something that should have never shipped this way in the first place. Yet, when trying to find a solution myself on the internet, I’ve found others complaining about the same thing in posts from more than a year ago. I contacted Ecobee support, and just got a canned reply that they’d forward my suggestion to the development team. Not getting a real answer if this is going to be actually fixed doesn’t inspire confidence. What that canned response felt like was somebody crumpling up my concern and tossing it in the trash. So, a really cool product, with lots of potential that has a one-star flaw that completely destroys the entire user experience. Just one setting, all they had to do was add in one small optional setting to make this a five-star device instead of a massive fail.

It does exactly what it says it will do.

I have standard gas ducted heating that had a very old slide thermostat with basic temp readout. I was lucky that my heater board had a ‘C’ terminal for 24v power, however the unit includes an optional power circuit if yours doesn’t. I originally wanted this just to be able to control the heater through wifi coming home or leaving. This unit also includes scheduling which is a huge bonus for me. The thermostat learns how long it takes to heat the area and starts accordingly based on its current temperature when in schedule mode. I will add some of the room sensors down the track to assist with a cool area of the home. Be aware the lite model doesn’t include a motion sensor as part of the thermostat, so is unaware if you are occupying that particular area or not without the add on sensors. The standard model (most expensive) does include this. This is a great add on product that has assisted heating my home much easier than before. Highly recommended

Al fin puedo prender la calefacción de donde este. Fácil configuración.

Si esta muy practico y fácil de usar sobretodo desde la APP

Bought 2, both arrived in good condition although strangely in different manufacturing origin boxes, although in operation identical. Connected to HomeKit and both work flawlessly. They are connected to a mesh network and each to different access points. Have not had a single drop in 5 months of use. Only 1 speed of operation. But this was known from the specs. Connected to AC only, roof HVAC system. Works well, and plenty of customisation options through the web portal. HomeKit app is basic but functional. Recommended.