Smart Thermostats

This is the next thing that I want to integrate. I have a two-zoned home. One thermostat upstairs and one downstairs.

Which one do you have and how do you like it? Any regrets? Any savings?

I know Nest is not officially supported yet but not opposed to it.

Just trying to narrow it down.
Thanks

I dont have any input on dual zone setup, but I love my Ecobee3. I dont integrate it into ST, mostly cause I dont see a need to. The only benefit I see is faster switching to away mode. But standalone the Ecobee3 has been great. Had it for almost a year now, with 5 external sensors. It has kept the house a great temp and I think its saved me money…cant really tell for sure cause it was one of the first things I installed once I bought the house little over a year ago.

I have two Nest Thermostats that I bought to replace standard mechanical thermostats. I do not currently have a SmartThings Hub, but I am looking to pick up one soon. I joined this community to do some research before making a purchase and I am very glad that I did.
As for the Nest Thermostats, I am very pleased with them. They work well with each other and the setup and operation is simple and easy to understand/use. I get a monthly email from Nest that tells me how much energy I have saved each month compared to the previous months and possibilities/suggestions as to why this happened and also what I can do to further improve on my energy savings. I also have two Nest Protects and the Thermostats work with the Protects to shut off the furnace if Carbon Dioxide is detected.
I do use my Nest Thermostats with my Echo and it is nice to be able to ask Alexa to turn up or down the thermostat. I do want to get a SmartThings Hub and start automating things further,but at this time the Nest is a great thermostat in my opinion.

I have 3 Nest integrated with Smartthings. The Nest Manager app works great and adds lots of functionality (e.g. remote sensor). I have only read good things about Ecobee, so this is probably personal preference which one to pick.

Thermostat integration allows you to be more sophisticated managing them (e.g. keep a thermostat on when a guest is home and you leave, use a temp sensor in another room, only turn on heat on floors where light is on…)

Nest, Honeywell and Ecobee are all good. While Nest is not supported yet, there is a community app called Nest Manager that works great. Nest is also supported my Amazon Echo - Alexa, something else to consider. Honeywell probably has the least connectivity of the three brands as far as ST goes.

I a two zone system, up and down stairs. I use two Honeywell 8320 zwave thermostats. I use CoRE for the programming. Never had a problem with them.

They connect directly to the ST hub with full integration. Alexa controls then with no problems at all.

The house stays comfortable and for the price of both you only get one nest.

They are fully controllable and programmable at the device as well, for those times that ST isn’t working.

I’m very happy with them.

Oh, they also act as zwave repeaters.

Second what @bamarayne said. Two zones, two Honeywell zwave, for two years connected directly to ST. Cannot be happier…

You also might want to check with your local utility for any rebates. Mine offers $125 back on a Nest although it has a couple of strings attached. You have to allow Nest to automatically adjust the temp on high energy use days but you can still override it.

Thanks everyone for the feedback!

Do you created your own schedule or does it do it automatically?

You mean internal schedule? I disabled the internal scheduler and I use routines and a custom app to adjust the temperatures

Thanks! Yep, that is what I meant.

I use this app in conjunction with a few routines…

Continuing my reseach…

I read this article on the thermostats.

Having a 2 zone system I think this would kill the option of the Nest as they both stay on.

Anyone with Nest and 2 zones can verify?

“However, if one thermostat senses movement, both zones remain on. This
arrangement was not ideal in our test home’s situation, where one person
worked from home downstairs all day and didn’t need the upstairs to be
heated or cooled until the children came home in the afternoon. In
theory, the upstairs Nest would learn that schedule, but with the
downstairs Nest giving it signals that someone was home, our tester’s
only option was to manually shut it off via the app during the day—not a
terribly smart system. The temporary solution we tried was to have a
different smart thermostat upstairs from the one downstairs so that they
couldn’t talk to each other. (CNET came to a similar conclusion during its build-out of a 5,800-square-foot smart home with two heating and cooling zones.)”

I have 3 zones with 1 Nest for each zone and it works well.

It is true that when you use the Nest presence detection (or motion sensors), all the thermostats for a location are always in the same mode (Home/Away).

In my setup I do not use the motion/presence sensor that is built into Nest but rather a combination of detailed scheduling, SmartThings motion sensors and state of light switches.

Presence detection for a thermostat is great but in reality you need to get good at scheduling, too because it often takes some time for your home to heat or cool to be at the desired temperature when you get home or when you typically enter a zone (e.g. 1st floor is off at night but needs to be at target temp right when people come down from 2nd floor for breakfast, 2nd floor is off during the day but needs to be at target temp right when people go to bed).