Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsGreat look but...
Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2023
I replaced my 4 with this one as much more attractive, the air quality sensor interested me, and easier temperature adjust. And a classy looking thermostat.
However found that looks can be deceiving. It does not work as well as the 4 did, plus they did away with the direct duel-fuel setup, so trouble there for me.
Did ok in the cooling mode but overheats by 3 to even 4 degrees on the gas furnace. Dug through reviews and found a couple other similar reviews. Surprised there aren't more as worse at temperature control than the 4 was.
I have a heat pump with a gas furnace, running the heat pump above 40. Do not buy one of these if you have this system! Saw another frustrated reviewer with this setup. Normally this setup is simple, just set a changeover temperature. Not on this software nightmare. You set them separately. Ok except they can't be the same temperature! The first morning they were both on at the same time which could damage the heat pump. I don't recall having any issue with this on the 4. So much for expecting newer to be better.
Ecobee seems to be one of those companies where the marketing people outshine the engineering people. Thats sad.
The air quality sensor is disappointing. It is mostly calibrating, or reads clean. I was hoping it would change as the co2 goes up, as they mention co2. They do say not a direct co2 sensor so guess I was too optimistic that it could be helpful there. Even when my co2 got above 1000 it still said clean. Guess clean doesn't necessarily mean it's also healthy.
Scheduling has always been cumbersome with Ecobee. Having to set time and temperature separately is a nuisance haven't encountered on other thermostats. And if you want to add another time schedule you have to start with the temperature first, not logical and caused me frustration until I figured that out. No wonder their tech support is overworked, subpar software.
Why do I still use one despite the shortcomings? If I only had an Apple phone it would be gone. However with an Android phone there is a wonderful 3rd party app called Ecobee Wrap. It shows the temperature in tenths plus a great feature is runtime. It shows every hour the runtime which can be also viewed weekly and monthly. Not of interest to all but it is to me. Also has a lot of information on the main screen that you have to hunt around for on the Ecobee app. I can tell monthly operating cost for both heat pump and gas furnace if I wish. So that app makes it hard for me to give up on this stat in favor of a better performing one.
Another unusual drawback of Ecobee is slow and erratic update times of information to your phone. Sometimes up to 5 minutes, so if you want to see what is running on your phone it may not be actual. The Wrap app shows you the last update time. You won't learn that on the regular Ecobee app so you won't realize you are likely looking at outdated information.
If you go on their website and check their Energy IQ (think that is what they call it) their idea of your savings is a head scratcher. They compare your results to a steady 72 degrees. So since we do 74 day and 70 night they show negative savings. After being in tbe hvac business for 38 years that's the wackiest idea of computing savings I've ever heard of.
But it is a great looking thermostat!
