Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsDumbest smart thermostat on the market. Not worth the constant hassles!
Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2022
Update 2023: here we go again. Another winter and the Amazon thermostat is cooling when it thinks it's heating. It's setup exactly how other working systems are setup. These thermostats are simply broken. Don't get baited by the low prices. They are unusable.
You couldn't pay me to take one of these. Unfortunately I bought 8 for an apartment complex I manage to upgrade to "smart home." The hours spent trying to get it to work and then troubleshoot are not worth it. If you set it up wrong the app just says "error". They give you know actual troubleshooting steps or way to reset the device and start over. You'll just get into an endless loop of resetting your device and trying the poorly written app-only setup instructions over and over. I have brand new Rheem HVAC systems on a new construction home. There is nothing unusual about my setup.
The app told me to not connect the O/B wire I had connected on my old thermostat, now Amazon one won't cool. I called their customer service (I ONLY found from their reply to this review, apparently the only way to get it is to write a 1 start review), and they had me reset the device a couple times then change the wiring recommendation the app provided. Each configuration you select causes the thermostat to function differently even if you have the same wires connected in the end result, so the selection of the prior thermostat config is critical and not intuitive - is W1/E just W/E or is it W or E? For a wire that is Orange that is connected to B that goes to O/B selected as O or B? I selected B but the thermostat assumes the wrong O configuration and thus heats instead of cooling. I left it this way for a day as I went out of town and thankfully checked in later the next day - my house was 113 degrees and the heat was still pumping!! This thermostat is so low budget it can't even determine that it's on a runaway heating/cooling expedition even though it's 113 degrees in the house?! Had I not caught this my heating coils would be dead and I'd have a nice 4k replacement bill to take care of. Nice job Amazon.
App:
The Alexa app control is very low feature and low budget. It takes a long time to load the information for your thermostat and if you have multiple thermostats, good luck! You have to navigate back to Devices -> Thermostats, Select the Thermostat, then the options are all buried in pages of options. Setting a schedule is a real pain - they make you enter a single thermostat at a time, select each day at a time and select each schedule type at a time to edit. Good luck if you own a vacation rental and have to adjust automation for dates.
It does not show the current state of the system whether it's on cooling or heating. It only gives you the temp reading and hot/cool settings. It doesn't show you temperature history or any important information one might want to glean about their home HVAC usage and is typical from any other wifi thermostat on the market. That's indeed the entire point of a thermostat, to monitor your temperature. What a major miss. The app also will not show you usage history. I want to know when and how long I've been cooling and heating to adjust my set points or see if the thermostat is being left on in poor settings. Give me a chart of the temp reading and temp settings over time. Not that hard people.
Separate zone reading is also not supported.
I have not yet found a device that will work with routines to automate setting this thermostat to away mode. This is not smart like the Nest or other brands where it detects your presence on its own. Now it can use Alexa to make "hunches" about if you're away. But if guests do not have the Alexa connected or you don't have enough Alexa's, you cannot trust this to automate.
I recommend just buying a quality branded thermostat that will save you a ton of hassle and prevent you from destroying your A/C system. I have spent over a dozen hours dealing with multiple identical systems to get them working or get them back online after they randomly fail to connect to the internet for some reason.
Comparison: I had previously purchased Sensi for just a few bucks more than this, it plugged right in, connected, and worked immediately, the app interface is intuitive and I have not had to touch it in 3 years. It automates with Ring away settings through SmartThings to adjust temp.
Wall Device:
Also annoying is when you press the control, you have to first cycle through the different modes to change the set point. Normally you just select the high or low set point on other units and adjust from there. It's confusing to the user. If you just press the arrows it defaults to the cooling settings when you're currently in heating mode. But to activate the device, you press the center button it will change your cooling mode.
In addition, several of these devices keep disconnecting from wifi randomly and show the "!" symbol. I lose control over the app and can't figure out how to get it back on. The support line has me walk through the setup steps over and over again. If you reconnect to the same wifi you select wifi setting in the app and follow the instructions to reset, which appear to only work if you're connecting to the same wifi router.
You might think you're saving money here, but you aren't. Save yourself the hassle and buy a reputable brand that won't accidentally cook your home like an oven and actually shows you temperature and usage history.
