That’s your opinion, but a lot of people disagree as ecobee thermostats are more and more popular…
And, as I live in the Northeast, I want a reliable thermostat that will help me go through rough winters and heavy summers without having to rely on SmartThings. I don’t want to wake too cold or too hot in the middle of the night.
It really depends where you live and if reliability is critical for you or not.
I personally can live with my lights not turning on/off on time, but relying on a zwave or zigbee thermostat as the main thermostat in my home is the wrong choice, especially with a hub like SmartThings (or any similar hub).
Zwave/Zigbee thermostats are fine for me as secondary thermostats ( I have several in my home for baseboard heaters), but NOT as the main thermostat.
And, I don’t think that your statement about Ecobee is correct: it’s way smarter than any ZWave/Zigbee thermostats, and way more reliable to actually adjust the setpoints according to real data coming from all its remote sensors, not pseudo learning “algorithm” which is supposed to detect your habits… The Nest cannot even correctly detect if you’re home or away as the thermostat relies only on its immediate surroundings to make this assumption. When your Nest is located in a small hallway, how do you think it will work?
Just carefully read the reviews at Amazon about the Nest, and you’ll see that the Nest algorithm is wrong most of the time. And, then,carefully read the Ecobee review, and you’ll see the value of remote sensors.
My 2 cents.
EDIT: And, there are reviews from all those technical magazines that I posted in this thread if you feel that I’m bias…
As a Google home user, I am less tempted to buy an ecobee since I will have no use for Alexa.
I use a Nest and have had no problems with it. (It looks cool, too) If I want to have multiroom sensors all I have to do is avg my zwave/Zigbee sensors and use NST manager.
Truth be told though, averaging the temps throughout the house is not going to get rid of cold/hot spots. It will give you an average of the home, giving you a more accurate representation of temperature, but the cold/hot spots will stay exactly where they are.
You can potentially address cold/hot spots with a higher end variable speed furnace and a dedicated communicating thermostat, but those are not easily integrated into SmartThings.
By the way, why is there a section in the thingsthataresmart wiki touting ecobee as superior? That sort of (extreme) product praise seems out of place there.
See it’s crap like this that makes you less credible.
Now i will agree that the Ecobee API is much more open than Nest’s (at the moment) but Nest’s is more than robust enough to suit almost everybody’s needs.
What bothers me most is you basically stating Nest is a less reliable thermostat in comparison to Ecobee and that’s total BS. I myself live in the Northeast and never have issues with my Nest working ever (accept when i shorted out the backplate doing something i shouldn’t… Nest had me a new one the next morning).
The only reason I even got engaged in this conversation is because you are only posting your “opinions” to drum up business for yourself. If you didn’t post a link to your product every chance you got and I would just look at this like another users opinion and move on. With that said I like what Ecobee offers and have thought about grabbing one to try out because i myself like having access to all available data. I’m not such a diehard Nest fan that I’m not open minded to better products but i don’t feel that it Ecobee is in any way a superior product to the Nest it’s just a different option. Basically like making a choice between Android and iOS. They both work really well.
The Nest is not smarter than a zwave/zigbee thermostat when connected to SmartThings as you need to totally rely on SmartThings for its scheduling, which is not reliable (look up for scheduler fail in the ST community forum, you’ll know what I mean).
With the current Nest APIs, you don’t have access to the following (and you can testify about it as you know the APIs):
The current program
The current programmed setpoints
Any way to resume your current scheduled program
Your runtime data, for example: stats about your running time of your main HVAC components
Your sensors’ motion data
So, yes, the Nest is not really smarter than a zwave/zigbee thermostat when connected to ST.
The ST community wiki is open for everybody and I can post any content I want… Whether you like my content or not. BTW, I was not the only one to contribute to this content, JDRoberts and Rboy contributed as well for the zwave/zigbee thermostats and the comparison with the ecobee.
Again WRONG!..
NST Manager does scheduling and remote sensors and way more the only feature i didn’t add was zoning yet.
Remember when I added scheduling to NST you IM’d me and called me all sorts of names and told me I was stealing your creative spirit.
BTW there is almost 7000 Nest users who connected to ST using NST and all seem to be very happy
Well, that article needs to be updated because almost everything praised about the ecobee there the Nest can do too. You’re just listing features of the ecobee implying that other thermostats aren’t capable of the same thing (which they are). Ecobee and Nest will be neck-and-neck for probably decades, so you’re wasting your energy getting as worked up as you appear to be about this.
I carefully read the reviews and Nest is clearly positioned for future, while Ecobee has positioned as follower, throwing sand in the eye of the leader. Those “technical” reviews you mentioned highlight the cosmetic advantages. Which are true, but that doesn’t justify the statement that Ecobee is more reliable or smarter, because is not. And that’s not an opinion, is a fact.
I don’t think that you read the same technical articles as it’s not about cosmetic features at all…
In fact, some people not aware of the Ecobee Smart features and it’s powerful APIs would argue that the Nest looks better than the ecobee and point to the Nest better look as an argument.
Like it or not, cosmetics matter. I’m sure with some time I could fashion a better thermostat using an ESP8266, some temp/humidity sensors, jumpers and capacitors galore, shlop it all on a protoboard, and stick it on the wall with some hot glue. It’d look great!
I hear you, and I admire your enthusiasm. I don’t think it looks bad either. They both look great, and I feel the minor differences between the two are negligible, and in the end it might, just might, come down to aesthetics and/or personal preference.
I bought my Nest last year, completely unaware of other options. The differences are not enough to warrant me buying an ecobee and going through the trouble of selling my Nest. I don’t know if it’ll ever get to that point, but I’m fairly certain they’ll be competing front runners for the near future.
