Looking to update my Thermostat and it seems Nest and Ecobee are the two top choices. Are both of them Z-waves by chance? And is the AI for Nest really worth it?
I think you are a bit confused. Both of the those are wifi but Nest is not officially supported by Smartthings.
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I love my Ecobees! I’m sure there are many that love their Nest!
When you add one of these to ST, then you open up the possibilities. Yes, both will save you a ton of money.
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Neither of them are Z-Wave. Both are WiFi.
When I was faced with this decision, I decided the Ecobee remote room sensors were far more valuable to me than Nest’s AI.
My house has two separate forced-hot-air HVAC systems: main floor and upstairs/bedrooms. The main floor thermostat is in the front hall, which has a cathedral ceiling and that no one is usually in. It’s also a south facing room. The result was that in the summer it got all the afternoon sun and heated up, and then the old thermostat ran the A/C attempting to cool that room. Meanwhile, the kitchen and family room, on the opposite side of the house, got far too cold. The result would be I’d close the vents in the those rooms to prevent them from getting too cold. In the winter the front hall stayed cold and thus the thermostat ran the heat longer to heat up that room, resulting in the kitchen being too hot.
The best solution to this would have been controllable vents to allow me to reduce the airflow into rooms as their temperature reached the setpoint. There weren’t many options for these 5 years ago. The next best was possibly moving the thermostats.
I realized that the Nest AI solution would never do the right thing, since (1) the room with the thermostat was infrequently occupied and (2) the temperature it would be measuring wasn’t the one that we wanted measured. Also, frankly, I don’t want software making decisions for me.
This is why I bought the Ecobee. It’s got remote sensors. On my main floor, I have a sensor in each of the family room and kitchen, and for all the comfort settings on the thermostat I have it ignore the temperature it reads at the thermostat itself. This means it uses the average temperature of the 2 rooms we regularly occupy as the deciding factor when to run the HVAC.
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We have had the ecobee light at our house for almost 2 years and have really liked it. We also like the fact that it can also work with Apple’s HomeKit, although that will only be relevant to some people. 
as others have mentioned, it also has good smartthings integration, which the nest does not.
I am in a similar situation. I have two HVAC units - 1st floor and 2nd floor, for better or worse. For the 2nd floor, the thermostat is in one of the kid bedrooms which is the complete opposite side of the home? So what ends up happening is that either it get too hot or too cold for them as I adjusting the temperature
for the 1st thermostat - I end up either getting too hot or too cold in my office with the door close.
So how many remote sensors can each eocbee thermostat has? And does it do the average of the temperature?
Yes they average and also there is a follow me option which will only use the active sensors to satisfy the set point.
The remote sensors really do help with adjusting the dampers and/or registers to even out temps throughout the house. They do take about 30 minutes to register a room being unoccupied. I use presence sensors to change the quick settings for away/home which makes for quicker adjustments of the set points. Also, I use webCoRE with some Pistons to sync the modes, circulate the air, turn off systems if doors or windows are open and to change from heating and cooling based on outside temperatures. Way better than Auto and again, saves a ton of money!
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32 !! that is crazy
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I’ve got 3 remote sensors on the upstairs Ecobee and 10 remote sensors on the main floor Ecobee. Ecobee kept gifting them to me for various reasons, so I kept deploying them.
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I’ve got Ecobee and been very happy with it. Using 4 remote sensors between two thermostats. The only real problems I’ve had are the sensors disconnecting. They don’t seem to have great range and there is no mesh. Note I am using the first gen sensors and per marketing materials the gen 2 have improved connectivity. Actually, their cloud seems down more often than I would expect. I’d estimate maybe once every other month I go to use the app and find I can’t access the thermostats.
I use Webcore to set it away when people are aren’t using the floor by using motion sensors which works great. . . but given the trajectory of ST I’m not sure I would buy in based on that at this point, but even without that, been very happy with it. Then again there is stock ST integration (but I’m using Yves code) vs I don’t think Nest has that.