Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

NOTE: (This review is for the non-HomeKit-Enabled Ecobee3, which is exactly the same as the HomeKit-Enabled one except for the HomeKit functionality). I really believe this is the best thermostat on the market, for a number of reasons. 1) This is the biggie: External sensors! You can place multiple external sensors around the house so that the Ecobee3 (E3) knows that the temperature is in different parts of the house. Now, the E3 doesn't do zoning, meaning it can't selectively heat/cool different parts of the house, but it can *average* the temperature across multiple sensors to try to "even out" comfort across your home, instead of only "caring" about the temperature where the thermostat is. Now, these little external sensors ALSO have another feature: occupancy detection! Which brings me to the next feature: 2) "Follow Me": So, since the E3 knows both the temperature in other parts of the house AND if someone is present, it can dynamically "care" about the temperature only in rooms that have recently seen occupancy! So, if you enter a room and start moving around, the E3 begins to "care" about the temp on that sensor and includes that sensor in the "average" temp of the house. And if a sensor hasn't seen movement in a while, it will stop caring about that sensor's temp. This is the "Follow Me" feature. (PS - This feature is disabled for the "Sleep" comfort profile because no one will be moving around the house while they're sleeping) 3) "Smart Home/Away": This feature also uses the occupancy detection feature of the sensors (and E3 itself). If the E3 and all of the sensors haven't seen occupancy in a few hours, the E3 can assume no one is home and enter "Away" mode even when the E3's schedule is telling it you should be home (like after work, or in the morning, etc). So if you unexpectedly leave and it's not part of your usual schedule, the E3 can adapt. The reverse is also true: If the E3 or sensors sees a bunch of occupancy happening when you're supposed to be in "Away" mode, it'll switch back to "Home" mode. (PS - This feature is disabled for the "Sleep" comfort profile because no one will be moving around the house while they're sleeping) 3) "Care" About Different Sensors Per-Comfort-Profile: Why would you care what temperature it is in your living room when you're sleeping upstairs at night? Answer: You don't! So the E3 lets you set which external sensors to "care" about depending on what comfort profile is being used. For instance, at night I tell the E3 to only "care" about the temperature in our 3 bedrooms and to ignore the rest of the house/sensors. So it's always the temp I want for sleeping at night. 4) Accessory/Humidifier control: The E3 can run an accessory piece of equipment, like a dehumidifier, humidifier, or whole house ventilator. I have mine hooked up to my humidifier (whole-house one on the side of the furnace ductwork). So the E3 uses the humidistat inside of it instead of the "dumb dial" humidistat near your furnace to decide when to turn on the humidifier during heating season. Now, one awesome thing about letting the E3 control your humidifier is that you can do "frost control" functionality WITHOUT an external temp sensor sticking out of the side of your house! Frost control is where the humidifier doesn't run as often when it's *really* cold outside, as some houses get frost on the inside of windows/window frames when the humidity is at a "normal" level. More modern humidifiers allow you drill a small hole in the side of your house and stick a little temp probe out the hole. This means the thermostat can automatically "dial back" the humidity when it's super-cold so you don't get window frost. BUT, because the E3 is internet-connected, it KNOWS the temp outside without a temp probe! So you don't have to install a temp probe and get the same benefit of frost reduction. Awesome! 5) Super-Granular Control: This thing has so many controls for minor things, it's awesome (although default settings work just fine if you want to plug-and-play). Partial list I can think of off the top of my head: --Control minimum rest period between A/C cycles (to protect A/C compressor from damage) --Control minimum outdoor temp that A/C will run at (to protect A/C compressor from damage) --Allow A/C to "overcool" house by a degree or two to reduce excess humidity (adjustable) --Set amount of time blower fan will run after A/C turns off (to clear ducts of cold air) --Set a minimum amount of time the blower fan will run each hour (to circulate air in the home if the A/C or heat hasn't run recently) --A ton of other things I can't remember 6) Amazing Web Reports: On the Ecobee website, you can see a huge plethora of reports related to your energy use. --You can see a timeline graph of when heat/cooling/humidifier/blower were running along with the "calculated" indoor temp, outdoor temp, etc so you can see the activity for the previous day. --You can see a "heating/cooling hours vs outdoor temp" graph (per day) so you can see the effect of the outdoor temp on how much you run heat/cool. --You can download a spreadsheet of data with 5-minute granularity (up to a month at a time) that shows the status of EVERYTHING: blower/heat/cool/humidifier on/off, temperature of each sensor, occupancy of each sensor, outdoor temp, outdoor humidity, indoor temp, indoor humidity, etc. I easily used this data to determine exactly how much electricity I used on HVAC last month (blower+A/C compressor+A/C compressor fan run times * amps * voltage = watt hours). Anyway, this thing absolutely blows my mind. Nerd paradise, yet would work fine with ZERO configuration. Oh, AND it has an IFTTT (If This, Then That) channel so you can make the E3 change temperature profiles, home/away/etc profiles, via IFTTT triggers.