ecobee by Generac

Update from original. They apparently fixed whatever problems and app is working fine again although I haven’t tried to reinstall the sensor. Still, I have a lot of smart home devices and apps. This product is the must troublesome. Biggest heartburn is that whenever there is a hiccup with my wifi, the ecobee products don’t reconnect automatically like all the others. I have to manually reconnect using device. Other than that happy with product. My app starting popping up a screen that says one of my sensors is low on battery. I click ok and it says reconnected them comes right back and says low battery again. Changed the battery twice with no luck. The worst part is that I can’t get past that screen to do anything else. Can’t remove the sensor, change temp or anything, just see a screen with low battery warning. I went to desk top version and I can change temps and all, I removed that sensor from any thermostat setting on the desktop version but app still keeps popping up that screen. Freakin annoying as hell. Finally figured out how to unpair the sensor but that didn’t fix the problem. App still says low battery. The apps are totally worthless at this point as all I can do is see a screen that says sensor battery low. Infuriating to say the least. I wonder if the Nest product had these kind of issues

Overall I give the product and services four stars. The thermostat itself functions well. I have no complaints about the device. The app leaves some things to be desired. You can get lost easily in menus and have difficulty remembering where they place each function. The app has been built up over time and could use some spring cleaning and reorganizing. I will also admit that the most recent app update removed all the iconic bee interfaces and replaced them with boring ‘e’ symbols. It definitely shows the device is going mainstream and is killing its unique brand history in the process. That aside beware of the in-app subscription service. They now offer filters direct however, and this is a big however, the filters contain no labeling and I can tell you from first hand experience they do not appear to met the MERV ratings you are paying for. I ordered MERV 13 and based on appearance alone, it’s a MERV 7 fabric at best. I advised Ecobee of this and they didn’t even apologize or offer to fix it. There is clearly no satisfaction guarantee or customer resolution practice. All I was told is that they would pass my concerns along. So buyer beware. The devices are good, the app is functional but leaves some to be desired, and the in-app filter service is suspicious and likely fraudulent at this time.

I installed my ecobee 2 more than 3 years ago. I did have an issue with the first remote sensor, but after contacting support, they sent me an additional one and it works flawlessly. I relocated the original sensor to a room adjacent to the thermostat and it now works as expected also. I have had times where I could not connect with my thermostat via the iPhone app, but I could not connect with other apps at my home at that same time, indicating that my very poor internet connection was temporarily down. I can find no fault with the ecobee app, and I have found their support to be extremely good. They talked me through an issue that was similar to the “learning” that a competing product performed that I did not want. I would certainly recommend this product, and would definitely buy another if I ever need a new thermostat! However, it seems unlikely that I will need a new one as this one does everything I want it to and more. Additionally, I find this product much more cosmetically pleasing on the wall than other similar products. The LED display is not too bright in the dark, yet bright enough to easily read in daylight.

I generally like my Ecobee thermostats, and the app works pretty well. But there is one long-standing issue that I find is very user-unfriendly. Just about every day, various room sensors will become “not detected” by the thermostat (which prompts an email alert). Usually within a few minutes, or maybe an hour or so, the sensor will be detected again, which causes another email alert. This is annoying, but is nothing compared to the hassle that greets me the next time I happen to open the app to make a temperature change... a series of alerts will pop up, a new one appearing each time I dismiss one, until all of the “built-up” alerts since the last time I used the app have been displayed, turning a quick temperature adjustment into a much longer ordeal. This could VERY easily be solved with an option in the settings to control how long a sensor has to be undetected before an alert is generated. Yes, if a room sensor is undetected for 24 hours, I want to know about it. But i don’t need to receive an alert every time the thermostat doesn’t hear from the sensor right when expected... let us select how much “undetected” time must pass before we get an alert, as it will probably reconnect within an hour (or less).

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I have an Ecobee3 at my house and a latest generation Nest thermostat at my mother’s. On paper the Ecobee3 seems like it is better. More customizations, remote sensors have both temperature and occupancy information, native Apple Watch app (Nest discontinued theirs however there is 3rd party support although Google has caused some problems with that), Homekit, IFTTT support. Unfortunately the user experience can be frustrating. App updates break features. Ecobee servers go down regularly (either scheduled or unscheduled). Emails take several days to get a response and the first response will be a canned response without any value. It will take several replies to their response before you will get a reply that indicates they are paying attention to what you are saying. They really seem to be trying but it seems to be a perpetually unpolished product. The Nest thermostat and app generally just work (I’ve only contacted support once and once had to search google for a remote sensor problem). The Ecobee3 works well enough that I’m not going to replace it with a Nest (especially after Google’s takeover and Works with Nest discontinuation). But if the Ecobee3 died I’d probably buy a Nest.