A smart thermostat that you can control from your iPhone is nice, but if you’re a fan of Siri then HomeKit-compatibly is a must. The ecobee3 Wi-Fi thermostat can be controlled using Siri on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, and it uses remote sensors to determine temperature and presence around your home to be smarter about automating your HVAC system. Overall, the thermostat itself is rather slick and the software experience behind it holds up well. If you’re curious about HomeKit and in the market for a smart thermostat, the ecobee3 just might be the best option yet …
As with any new thermostat, smart or not, there’s a hardware installation process required at setup. You’re mileage may vary depending on conditions and experience, but using a combination of the setup instructions and the geniuses of YouTube, we got our ecobee3 up and running in under an hour. Wiring configuration will vary and this is where it can get complicated, but assuming your setup is already standard and you follow instructions carefully, you likely won’t need the pros to do the job. Once you replace your previous thermostat for ecobee3, the real fun begins.
At a distance, ecobee3 displays just the current inside temperature prominently above an icon for the local weather condition next to the current outside temperature. When ecobee3 detects your presence, the display animates to reveal an on-screen target temperature slider, current relative humidity, menu button, full weather report, and quick changes button. Heating and cooling are distinguished by orange and blue bars.
While the main view shows you the current outside temperature, you can actually get a detailed weather report right on the ecobee3. This includes a temperature forecast for the next several hours. It’s a small thing and already available on my other devices, but it makes ecobee3 feel smarter knowing and presenting the outside weather next to the inside temperature. You’ll also find a full menu of settings for your temperature preferences and managing ecobee3, but most of these tasks are just easier from the iPhone, iPad, or the web when available.
The ecobee3 unit itself has a built-in sensor for detecting presence and current temperature, but you can optionally place additional sensors around your house to more accurately monitor and manage temperature. My kit came bundled with three sensors, bringing the total number to four including the unit.
I’ve placed a sensor in my bedroom, living room, and office, and have the ecobee3 located in the center of the home in the hallway. These detect both temperature and presence, making ecobee3 more intelligent when using the system to cool or warm your home.
You can buy additional ecobee3 Remote Sensors in 2 packs for $79.
As a smart thermostat, you can already control ecobee3 remotely from your iPhone or iPad from the iOS app, but turning on HomeKit enables Siri control and a lot of automation capabilities. Being able to change the temperature and make my home and office cooler or warmer without interrupting my work or watching a TV show is super convenient with the app alone, but being able to use Siri makes it super fast.
Siri works from the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch for changing the target temperature or asking where the current temperature is around the house. You can also set target temperatures as triggers and scenes with other HomeKit-compatible accessories. For example, saying “Netflix and chill” to Siri could mean locking the door, dimming the lights, and setting the temperature to be cooler in the summer.
ecobee3 lets you set your system to heating, cooling, or automate between both based on target temperatures. Back in December when I first setup ecobee3, configuring HomeKit disabled Auto Mode which lets you set target cool and heat temperatures, which was an interesting limitation.
But just last week the iPhone app prompted me to the message above, noting that HomeKit now works with Auto Mode. What would have been a knock just a week earlier turned into a positive that reminded me that smart thermostats only get smarter over time.
For Apple Watch owners, ecobee has a nice watchOS 2 app that lets you monitor temperatures and tweak settings. You need to use Siri to set a specific temperature, but the Apple Watch app lets you view the current target temperature as well as what temperature each sensor including the ecobee3’s currently reads. Force Touching within the app brings up options to turn your system’s fan on or off, or manually set ecobee3 to Home or Away mode.
There’s also a watch face complication, or widget, which tells you what mode ecobee3 is in as well as current target temperature. For fans of glances, the app has a card that you can swipe up to access from the watch face to view current temperature, target temperature, and mode. The watch app is nice, especially for viewing temperature readers from various rooms, but Siri control from the Apple Watch is my favorite part.
The ecobee iPhone app actually looks almost identical to the user interface on the actual thermostat, which is nice because it creates a familiar experience on the unit and on your iPhone. The animations on the iPhone app are noticeably laggy, though, which I hope improves in the future.
For the ecobee iPad app, the same user interface is cleverly spread across of grid that requires fewer menus and more features. It feels futuristic and just plain cool controlling and managing the ecobee3 from the modular view on a tablet.
Whether you’re using the thermostat, iPhone app, or iPad app, ecobee3 has some handy intelligence behind it. For example, you can set target temperatures for when you’re at home and away then using the motion sensors to track presence.
The ecobee system also has alert and reminder options for extreme temperature and humidity levels and maintenance reminders. We changed the air filter at our house when we installed ecobee3, then turned on the three-month reminder to change the filter in the future (which I tend to be terrible about remembering).
For me, the ecobee3 thermostat’s appeal is mostly in controlling remotely using Siri and the mobile apps, but the ecobee app also offers insights into system usage over time in the Home IQ section. The iPad app offers some data here, but the web interface shows even more.
According to ecobee, my Home Energy Efficiency rating puts me in the top 20% of homes in my state and I should work on lowering my runtimes. During the month of January (my first full month with ecobee), Home IQ says I’ve saved 13 hours of runtime and $4.80 based on my equipment’s runtime and local electricity rates. This should be fun to game over time.
Finally, there’s the web interface that you can access from ecobee’s website where you can remotely control the temperature, manage settings, view sensor data, and everything else you can access from the iOS apps. The screenshot above captured in Safari features a nearly identical layout to the ecobee iPad app. This makes accessing and controlling the thermostat from anywhere a familiar experience which I like a lot.
Overall, I’ve really enjoyed using the ecobee3 since December and can easily recommend it as a quality HomeKit accessory. Siri control for turning on the heat from my desk is super convenient, especially using the Apple Watch, and using the iPhone app to change the temperature has almost entirely replaced walking over to the thermostat.
I also really enjoy seeing the local outside weather next to the current inside temperature, viewing temperatures by room with multiple sensors is helpful, and I appreciate that the user interface is similar from the thermostat to the iPhone app to the iPad version to the website. Round thermostats like the Nest (no HomeKit, reviewed) and new Honeywell Lyric (HomeKit) can’t quite pull this off.
Lastly, ecobee’s ability to adjust temperature based on my preferences for when I’m home and away or awake and asleep is really helpful in saving energy. I’m still optimizing my preferences after the first month but also finding new features like the ability to schedule vacation temperature levels in advanced.
Being deep in the Apple ecosystem means HomeKit and Siri control enable a lot of the ecobee3 experience, but in general the software and intelligence make it a quality competitor in the smart thermostat space on its own.
Aside from HomeKit and Siri, ecobee3 is getting smarter with new connections like the recently added Amazon Echo for voice control. You can grab the ecobee3 Smarter Wi-Fi Thermostat with Remote Sensor (2nd Generation) from $243, or the 3 Sensor Bundle I have from $318.
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This makes my Nest look “meh”. That dashboard looks great. Nice review.
If you knew thermostats in 2011, the Nest was “meh” from the beginning, and it only got worse when Google acquired the company.
I was looking at the Ecobee as well specifically for this but now have the Nest thermostat bridged through to HomeKit with other sensors and the excellent Home app, it is doing everything I was looking for, no need to switch. I do wish thought that Nest would allow their Protects to share temp data and act as remote sensors.
How did you bridge the Nest to Homekit? I’m having issues doing this.
Zac, I’m using Homebridge (from NFarina) with the Nest fork from KraigM which works great, ping me if you want any help. That is a very simple way of doing it. I have also integrated into the mix the SmartThings platform by bridging through SmartThings sensors (and a number of other accessories from that platform) through homebridge into HomeKit that then allow me to trigger or created nested triggers using the excellent Home app in iOS. That way I can have HomeKit read and act on SmartThings temp sensors, adjust the thermostat based on that and then control the other HomeKit native and bridged devices based on characteristics etc, works really well after setting it all up. You can then also use the best of other platforms if you wanted to as well such as Rule Machine smart app in SmartThings and have a rule tied to a virtual switch that you trigger from HomeKit through the bridge and when HomeKit accessories hit certain thresholds. Getting a little deep for a simple reply but just wanted to lay our what was possible.
Have it and love it.
I’m trying really hard to enjoy this thermostat; it doesn’t recognize when we have left the house and adjust accordingly, and it continues to “lose” and reconnect with the one sensor that is about 35 feet from the thermostat. I also had to take apart and reassemble the sensor because it was manufactured incorrectly. So far, it’s been a sloppy product on the details.
Does the ecobee allow you to control your humidifier too? I like that ability with the nest. Recently though, the nest has been acting up with the last few updates.
From the docs, yes it does. But I don’t have a humidifier in my home to test.
Does this support geofencing yet?
Yes
Yes it does.
yup
replaced, and the new one started disconnecting and reconnecting. I have enough extra sensors that I have two sitting side by side in certain locations, and I know that the sensors that are consistently having issues are not doing so because of the location – since another sensor sitting right next has no issues.
As for Siri support, it’s a gimmick. Unfortunately, I’m staring to realize that HomeKit is a gimmick altogether. Besides the fact that Apple never released an official HomeKit app, the ecobee current HomeKit integration is flawed. For example, sensors are not HomeKit compatible whereas the thermostats are. Therefore, the sensor cannot be placed in the HomeKit “room”, and if you name the sensor the same as a “room” in HomeKit, then Siri can no longer query the sensor. For example, if I have a HomeKit “room” named “office,” I cannot assign a remote sensor to this HomeKit “room”. Only ecobee thermostats themselves can be assigned to HomeKit rooms. If place an Ecobee sensor in my office, I have to call it something other than “office”. So, I ended up calling it “study” to be able to query it with Siri. If I name it “office,” Siri cannot see it because it already sees “office” as the HomeKit room. For example, if I say, “List temperature in the office,” Siri will say, “Sorry, I wasn’t able to find any devices in the Office this time”. However, if I say, “List temperature in the study,” Siri will show me the temperature in the office where I placed the Ecobee sensor that I called “study”.
Another problem is that if you query the temperature by the HomeKit “room” where the Ecobee thermostat is installed, Siri gives you a range of the temperatures on all sensors (the thermostat itself as well as the remote sensors registered with the thermostat). So, if my thermostat is in the HomeKit room called “hallway,” and my “study” thermostat that’s placed in my office is registered with the Ecobee thermostat located in the hallway, when I ask Siri, “List the temperature in the hallway,” it gives me a range of temperatures on several sensors, including the sensor called “study,” which is in my office. So obviously, this is a complete disaster. Moreover, sometimes, when I say, “List the temperature in the study,” Siri correctly reports the temperature of the sensor located in my office. But other times, the same exact query addressed to Siri results in Siri giving me the range of temperatures among all sensors registered to the same thermostat to which my “study” sensor (located in the office) is registered. So, you may bet the correct response with only the temperature of the sensor you are querying or you may get the response as though you were queuing the temperature in HomeKit “room” where the thermostat is installed.
Additionally, if you use a third-party HomeKit app like Home, there are many settings for the Ecobee thermostat that are available in this app with sliders to adjust the settings that all have exactly the same generic name. Some of these settings may not even be available for adjustment from the Ecobee app (or their web portal). I am scared to even open Ecobee thermostats in the Home app because I may accidentally move one of these sliders while scrolling up and down the page. This may have an adverse effect on the operation of my thermostat and may require many hours on the phone with Ecobee to troubleshot the issue, or worse yet, I may not notice any difference but the thermostat will become less efficient in managing my heating and cooling.
All in all, this is a awesome device, but I question the usability of its integration with HomeKit and the use of Siri in managing it at this point. The Ecobee apps are great, and you can pretty much control any feature you would ever want via the apps or the Web portal (from within your home network, or while being away). Siri is so finicky that relying on it for controlling complex devices like this thermostat is silly in my opinion.
I purchased the HomeKit compatible version of this thermostat, which is $30 more expensive than the version that’s not compatible with HomeKit, but several months later, I see absolutely no reason to use this with HomeKit. I also have other HomeKit compatible smart devices in my house, and after having used them for several months, I’m really disappointing with the lack of progress in the evolution of HomeKit. Apple seems to have abandoned this project like they abandoned iCloud, Maps, Photos, etc. I’m sad about what’s happening with Apple as a shareholder who owns a very considerable amount of AAPL shares.
I installed 2 of these in my 167 year old house about 6 weeks ago. Last week in Boston the temps dropped to -15º (without windchill). My Ecobee warned me that the temp in one part of the house was dropping dangerously low despite the heat being on and I was able to get a space heater in there before any damage occurred. As far as I am concerned it paid for itself that night. Even without that, I love the device. It looks good, was easy to install (I just had to run a new thermostat wire as I didn’t have a C wire – I did this myself in about 2 hours), and the house is much more comfortable. I am not expecting to save money on heating, but we’ll see.
Where I can buy it ? I like the product, beatiful & many features :)
read this review as well as the Lyric, still wondering how the external temperature and humidity is gathered ? Is it using a wired or remote sensor or is it using the forecast found on internet ? Or is the forecast computed with the presure change ?
Thanks.
About to pull the trigger on this but I had one question that I hope someone can answer. I have 2 4th gen Apple TV’s so controlling this thermostat remotely wouldn’t be an issue. My question is, do either one of my Apple TV’s need to be On in order to control remotely ?
can you point me in the right direction how to move the sensors to the correct room in HomeKit. i do see the two icons per sensor with the temp and the triggered. but I can’t figure out how to move them over. I created the correct rooms. thanks