When you think about smart devices for the home, there is nothing more obvious than your thermostat. A lot of money goes to your electrical and gas bills to run your central air conditioning and heating system. There is nothing more wasteful than a central air system running when no one is home.
What if your thermostat could know your schedule and tone down the unit when you’re away from home? And what if it could know when you’re on vacation and not home at all? And what if it could sense that you’re no longer home even when maybe you should be? And, what if it could know the temperature in each of your rooms and which ones are occupied and then make appropriate adjustments?
All these things are possible with the Ecobee3 Smart Thermostat. The thermostat comes with individual room sensors that measure the temperature and motion in each room. With this information, the thermostat adjusts the temperature based on the desired temperature in the occupied rooms. And, when it’s time to sleep, the thermostat only considers the temperatures in the bedrooms. And, when there has been no motion in any rooms for a period of time, the thermostat concludes that no one is home and adjusts the temperature to save on electricity and gas. Ecobee claims to save you 23% on average. I believe it as I’ve seen a big drop off in our electricity bills.
And, since the Ecobee3 integrates with SmartThings, the Ecobee3 sensors can be used as motion sensors for the SmartThings system. And, of course, you can add the Ecobee3 to your routines like when you leave the house. When you let SmartThings no you’re away and you set the alarm, SmartThings can also let Ecobee3 know that you are away. Ecobee3 will figure it out on its own in due time, but will be instantly aware via SmartThings. You can also ask Amazon Echo what the temperature is in individual rooms and to lower or increase the temperature.
The primary competitor to the Ecobee3 is the Nest Learning Thermostat. Both are very highly rated, but the reason I prefer the Ecobee3 is because of the additional sensors that you can add to rooms. Instead of just having the temperature from the thermostat which is usually located in the hallway (which usually isn’t conditioned, by the way), you have multiple temperatures from several rooms. Also, be aware that Ecobee just came out with the Ecobee4 Alexa-Enabled. I would still go with the Ecobee3 while you can get it and save some money. If you use the SmartThings hub, it makes the Ecobee3 Alexa enabled anyway. The Ecobee4 Alexa-Enabled makes the product Alexa-enabled directly without a hub and also serves as an Alexa device that can take voice commands like the Amazon Echo. While that’s kind of cool, your Ecobee4 Alexa-Enabled will likely be located on a wall in your hallway.
This is a very cool and smart product and the best smart thermostat on the market.
