Ecobee allows its sensors to be visible in Homekit, so there's no reason to go with Nest. Waiting for some quality outdoor cams that support multi-platforms and will get rid of Nest Cams. Google drops services too easily and increase prices on services too much for my taste.
Nest was a great product until google ! Cameras was great… Now you can’t use Nest app with new cameras! Everything has to go with google home app which is sloppy and slow! I’m waiting for new cameras to change everything!
@evinte, what is the best Ecobee Thermostat you recommend? I'm looking for the latest one with Homekit support and that is easy to set up. I would appreciate any link to the product. Thank you.
Thread is useless junk. It’s a solution without a problem. It’s technically just poorly designed. They’ve taken a bunch of great ideas and made it insanely noisy and inefficient. Bottom line is if I have a zigbee, or even better, espnow device, it runs for years without a battery swap and if designed properly works fantastically. Similar thread/matter devices tend to require batteries three times the size. Which you could have just done with zigbee (more power opens up more potential for low latency design) Also if they used zigbee you wouldn’t technically need any app at all. Argue with the market and physics.
@@threepe0 Thread is awesome. It's almost instant. On top of that, when I bought a thread HomePod, my thread enabled smart lock went from 2-3 months battery life, to almost 12 months. So thread is not useless junk.
I don’t understand why having Thread matters, especially when this has Matter. That means you can use the with HomeKit. Sure, setup, you’d have to use the Google Home app - but who cares? It’s not the worst thing and the new Google Home is built off of HomeKit (Apple gave HomeKits underpinning as part of their Matter support when developing Matter). And here’s the kicker: I actually like Google Home better than Alexa app or HomeKit. And I really don’t like the Alexa app but I also like HomeKit. Both GH and HK are nice, clean and relatively easy to use compared to Alexa.
On my 3rd ecobee and smart sensors already up and running with no issues. My bill is down even in crazy Chicago heat lately. Considering the door sensors next waiting for a sale as they are pricey. I feel that if they do what they say and turn off my hvac when my wife opens all the windows lol it a win win.
Been us Ecobee for years and see nothing in the new Nest to interest me even a little bit. Don't forget that the smart sensors used by Ecobee can be used in automations in HK which can be useful. Frankly, the new Ecobee Premium, which I have in my home, looks pretty cool as well.
I think Ecobee has a lot of great features like the sensors you mention but their touch screens on the thermostats are very dated and their UI is not as nice a Nest.
I love the large numbers that specify what they tell like indoor or outdoor. It’s way better than the 3rd gen. My dad likes to get confused that the big number is what the house is set to and tell me it’s cold because I have the heat set to 64 so it doesn’t turn on when the window air conditioners are on. These specifically say “indoor” and “set temperature”. I love that
I have 5 ecobee thermostats and I am super disappointed. I just can't believe how inaccurate the actual temperature is on all of them. Every single one is at least 2 degrees off and 2 of them are 7 degrees off. I adjusted them and they still fluctuate by a couple degrees.
@@jareds6611 As a measurement expert, I find your post interesting. What standard are you using to determine the true temperature? Two degrees in my book is not much but 7 degrees is horrible (it’s why I never use the HomePod Mini temp sensors - they are usually way off). I do not have a highly accurate gold standard for temperature so I use a more common method of multiple sensors from different manufacturers to estimate “true” temperature. My Eve devices tend to be the most accurate temp sensors, but the EcoBee sensors are either 0 or at most 1 degree off of the Eve sensors in all of my rooms (and the degree of separation varies throughout the day and across rooms, as I would expect).
@@Dr_Cole it all started with the master bedroom. Long story but we had geothermal installed when we completely remodeled our house and added a 4000 sq ft addition in our house. One HVAC unit for the first floor and basement, one for the second floor but had 5 zones between them. HVAC company screwed up on the calcs and the MB was always cold (Winter). The other upstairs bedrooms were cold also but was maintaining temps according to the ecobee. I woke up one morning and the MB said 56 degrees and the heat was running ALL night but it felt warmer than that, I mean 56 is freaking cold in a bedroom! I bought a cheap digital thermostat on Amazon just to double check. Sure enough it was 7 degrees off so I checked the other thermostat upstairs and it was 7 degrees off. I adjusted it in the ecobee settings and it was ok until summer (AC) came and it was off again by 4-5 degrees, both of them so I adjusted again. The other 3 thermostats were about 2 to 5 degrees as well. The HVAC company did put in a 3rd unit and had to add another geothermal loop in the yard at their expense, A huge screw up but not relevant to the thermostats. Even now, after adjusting the temps in the settings I am looking at one thermostat that has a difference of 2 degrees. These are all on interior walls near the return vents so it's not outside air, it's just terrible calibration with ecobee. I had nest thermostats before the geothermal and they were perfect or at least I didn't notice. I wanted to stick with nest, I even told the HVAC company to just put cheap thermostats in and I will replace with nest. They did, then one day when they came to install the registers after paint I came home and I had ecobees installed so I just left them. I think I will replace them with nest when I see a sale or something. I can't justify spending 1100 bucks on thermostats right now but I can never recommend an ecobee thermostat or anything else from them after this experience. I probably should have called customer service to express my frustrations but I did look online and there are certainly a lot of complaints with ecobee for this same reason.
I have a 3rd gen and starling hub currently. I would never update to a newer Nest thermostat. Google just doesn’t give it the support and updates they require. They seem to abandon the 3rd gen for way too long! I would go with Ecobee if I was upgrading.
No, the subscription is not applicable here. If you are a Georgia Power customer, you can get $200.00 off the original price of this device. Again, GA Power is located in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia only. Please check with your Utility company.
Can you schedule which sensor is being used? That was one of the key reasons I switched to ecobee, I hated having to manually switch the sensor priority all the time. The other reason was the inability to set the temperature differentiator. The default 1 degree just mean my AC was kicking on non stop and driving me nuts.
way tooo reflective, can tell throughout the video, but maybe depends where you have it in your place. Good review. Interesting design, but will stick with my 3rd gen. Just really love the heat/cool setting on Nests....
I didn’t have luck with the previous nest thermostat. It would abruptly turn off the air conditioner and a second later turn the unit back on. I had an HVAC company come out and tell me they don’t recommend them due to a lot of issues people have with their heating/cooling systems. He recommended Emerson Sensi. I purchased one and never looked back. No issues whatsoever.
looks a heck of a lot better than the Nest that had the flat mirror design. the glint off that must be terrible get blinded every time the sun hits it. i like the bubble design i still have a thermostat E and prefer the lowkey white look.
having matter support but not official apple home kit support means limited capability within HomeKit and you're better off just using the native app. Ecobee has better support within HomeKit as it was built from the ground up to support it.
If I were to need a new one , not having an existing smart thermostat, maybe. I'd look at other options as well. I've had the Gen 3 for years now and it works great for my needs. An upgrade is not worth the cost... they are expensive for what I consider are minor updates over the Gen 3.
I have an older 3rd Gen Nest thermostat but mine wouldn't work for longer than 6 months without a common wire ran. Both apartments I've had to run a new C wire or use an additional wire in the installation. I also have 4 temp probes.
For what a smart thermostat does I’d really have a difficult time convincing myself I need an “upgrade”. I have a second gen nest and it looks nice and works great. If it does die I will get another smart thermostat, but really can’t say I’d either stay or leave the platform to another provider. It’s just a thermostat in the end.
Great review but I am NEVER buying an IoT gadget from Google or Amazon. As far as I’m concerned, both companies are absolute vipers concerning privacy and security.
Good timing. Starting the research now for a new smart thermostat. I definitely want Apple Home capability. I still need to research the Ecobee options, which from what little I have seen is really the only other one to consider to the Nest.
I have an Ecobee in my Apple home. Easy to set up. App did an excellent job of walking me through everything. And if you need more help, call them. They have U.S. based HVAC engineers available to answer all your questions. I called before buying, just to be sure the Ecobee thermostat would work in my home. The guy had me go from my existing thermostat to my HVAC area. Asked about wire colors, assured me it would work. Then he emailed me three pages of detailed instructions. This was all before I even purchased an Ecobee product. A year later and the thermostat continues to perform flawlessly. You will want (need?) the Ecobee app. It adds a lot of functionality.
It’s a tough question. I think if you like the third generation and don’t need to integrate it in Apple Home and don’t plan to sell your house soon, then just keep it. In those other two circumstances the Matter compatibility would be worth it, but it’s always also increased time for you to do yet another install assuming you already set up the third gen.
never heard of "thread" or "matter" before this video, i guess it's time to do some reading also, my problem with the Nest thermostat concept is that it's super-cool to have this sexy-looking round thing on the wall you can grab and twist to quickly change the temperature, but quickly and frequently changing your thermostat temp is exactly what you _don't want to do!_ for efficiency and the longevity of your HVAC that's something that should be thought out and programmed to where it's not changing so often, then _left alone_ the nest has ergonomics that nudge you into "bad behavior" from the standpoint of your heating and cooling system
Would’ve liked more information about the materials themselves used in the upgraded device and discussion about how that felt hands-on - is the ring still steel? Is the bubble glass? If it’s just schlocky plastic, I’m less interested.
If the front cover is plastic, they certainly did a good job hiding it. It looks like glass. The other ring is metal that looks a lot like chrome bathroom fixtures in my silver finish choice
In the past people were saying matter support would be added for legacy devices, that's like saying a wifi 6e device would get wifi 7 support with a software update, so needless to say this hasn't and won't happen for a variety of reasons. You have to replace everything with devices that have matter support in reality.
The temperature is great, but the only problem I have with this, if the sensor is in my bedroom, and it's hot in the bedroom, this just means that its going to freeze the living room to get the bedroom to the desired temperature. unless you are going to invest in automated vents or duct valves...
Using a temperature sensor to detect whose in the room or schedule to use the sensor in the bedroom may have limitations if you live with other people like most families or even if you have roommates.
Our Nest thermostat is unreliable. Randomly shuts the system down with an error code for missing “C” wire. It has the “C” wire connected just fine and works without issue for months but then decides no.
I definitely like the design and matter on it. They should have gone all out though with having there sensors being able to be added with matter to HomeKit and also having those sensors include occupancy sensors. If they had all that it would be enough to make me upgrade to this but without that the price is too high to upgrade.
I love the screen and display. But HATE how far it is from the wall. That alone makes it a hard sell for me. But add in required Google Home, and I'm even more dead set against it. (Almost as much as I'd be dead set against anything that requires Alexa setup) I have a 2nd Gen Nest that I've wanted to upgrade, but I refuse to convert my Nest account to a Google one. I guess when they finally pull the rug out from my old Nest, I'll be moving to EcoBee.
From what I'm reading in the comment section: The only reason to potentially go with Nest is the unit does not require a C-Wire. Too bad EccoBee doesn't offer a thermostat that has a rechargeable lithium ion battery. I have rechargeable lithium ion sensors in my house that go four years with requiring a recharge. EccoBee could do the same. It's not hard.
Consider the source. I have a lot of regular viewers that despise Nest and love ecobee and swarm comments on a video like this. The C wire is a definite advantage of Nest. I also prefer the usability of a circular dial compared to the dated Ecobee touch screens. That said, ecobee does have clear advantages like sensors that are visible in Apple Home. Honestly, I think you can’t go wrong with either brand now that Nest supports Matter on their Learning level thermostat.
@@EricWelander, let's keep our eyes on Aqara (sp?). Someday someone will come out with an EccoBee twin that has batteries just like Aqara came out with a superb battery operated front door camera with local storage (as opposed to cloud) and facial recognition. I'm lucky to have small UPS on my infrastructure. I can run routines and see who is at the door and get notifications even when the power is out. They are on to something there.
Since thermostats are “smart” these days, then why not have a thermostat module somewhere around the air handler so this device or an app wirelessly connects. Still having to run thermostat halfway across the house.
Thanks for the excellent review. I agree with almost all the comments here. I have gen 3 and don't see enough improvements to make me upgrade. Plus I think it is to pricey. I also wish they would let us have temperature increments of .5 degrees. The reason is when I set my Nest gen 3 to 78 degrees we get to cold. But in when we set it to 79 we get to hot. Or maybe let the user set the increment from when the room temp changes when the AC turns on/off. One more simple thing. For years I have been asking Google (feedback) to let me turn on the fan-only for 5 minutes. You can currently only turn it on for only 15 minutes at a minimum.
Google claims that the Nest line of thermostats do not REQUIRE a C-wire , but without a direct power source, they regularly need to be removed and charged, am I right?
When I first installed the prior home owner didn’t connect the c wire and Nest was using the power from the rc wire. After a year my a/c was constantly power cycling because the battery in Nest would die because when the a/c was running it would stop charging the battery. I finally had to run a c wire and no problem since.
Maybe if they added support for variable speed, error handlers and heat pumps. All these years later they've decided not to add something to make that a possibility. Or so it seems.
Heat pump works fine. Variable speed air handler as well. I’m not sure about the condensing unit, mine is 2 stage instead of variable speed. Many variable speed (aka inverters) require proprietary thermostats that are fully communicating. Bosch doesn’t but they recommend you don’t use a smart thermostat with their IDS systems.
Every system is different, but the wires across systems all have letter labels. Nest and all other thermostats give you little stickers to label your wires and you put them into the corresponding spots in the new thermostat. I don’t think it’s too hard to upgrade but of course the first time is maybe a little more nerve-racking.
I still don't get the point of the external temp sensors if you have a simple single zone A/C system in your house (no smart diverters). If you slap that sensor in the farthest room from your A/C output and tell it you want 75° in that room, the Nest is going to have to crank down way below that to get that far room to the desired temp. That means the closest room to the thermostat will be way cooler. I know because my bedroom is right off the A/C output at my house and my nest is right outside my bedroom, and my guest bedroom which is the farthest room away from it is 7 to 8 degrees warmer. I obviously need to get some sort of duct pusher setup to get over my high ceilings to that room, but without zones, I see these external temp sensors as being useless.
It utterly baffles me that nest haven’t gone for opentherm modulation accreditation which is mandatory now in eu and still haven’t intergrated multi source heating eg water and set heat typical of system and traditional boiler heating in eu /uk that would allow alternative source such as heat pump and solar divert to control energy use at cylinder and it still requires an internet connection 24/7 that’s why Honeywell and ech are superior, safe your money folks
when google purchased nest I disconnected mine from the internet and will never buy another nest ever again. honywell makes some great smart thermostats and their business doesn't revolve around selling people's data, as is Google's business model...
I have the previous version. Just wondered if the new 4th get would just 'pop into' the wall socket from the older version without unhooking any wires etc.
I still have the Nest Learning Thermostat Gen 2 and it's already PAID for itself several times over now over the YEARS and works with Alexa so, I NEVER touch or ever look at it as it is. For me if it ain't broke then NO need to fu@k with it and spend EXTRA cash! Even the Gen 2 version will pair with SmartThings and do Routines with other devices. As you mentioned, this "new" model is way more domed and creates WAY more reflections and have way more glass to collect fingerprints. When my Gen 2 finally dies, I will indeed buy a new Nest but I have NO need until that time comes...
@@EricWelander Yeah, the Apple Home thing does NOTHING for me as I don't live in that ecosystem but it is nice to see more and more products support Apple.
I had been so tempted by Nest for the looks, but no Thread, no Matter code in-box, and must setup with Google Home first, nah. Thanks for all this info!
They need to add the ability to set Filter reminders to something other the one a month. Mine are rated for 90 days. My old dumb thermostat had that ability.
Great review. Didn't even think of reflectivity ... my current Nest sits where there's direct sun hitting it late afternoon/early evening. That, coupled with the fact that it doesn't expose everything to Apple Home (or Home Assistant, I presume) makes me think I'll skip this one. Maybe once I get blinds on that one bare window, though. It does look really slick.
Thanks Bryan! Yeah you probably have all you need with the previous generation right now, and running something like Starling, HomeBridge, or HomeAssistant is easy for you.
seeing that start delay reminds me of how it doesn't really work without a c wire and sometimes even with one. It's trying to say turning it on and off too much is bad which is why it's doing that but I'm not so sure unless you just turned it off which may be possible since you're playing around with adjusting the temp in the clip. Also, it should be the case that you can adjust the temp even when it's off like you can with a mechanical thermostat.
I just upgraded from gen1 nest…i cant find the filter reminder setting on the gen4 an i can’t connect it on the google nest app. I can Only control it from google home app unlike my old thermostat.
When is Google start doing local control??? Max hub is useless when the Internet goes down!!! So far every devices out there you must have the company app not just matter... once again Google missed the mark with no thread...sorry it's a no go...
I'm very cynical with Google these days. I think the decision to use Matter over WiFi was purely about trawling for more data in your home network if not maliciously snooping other device traffic then at the very minimum phoning home climate readings for their analytics. I would not buy this product to be quite honest. Maybe Ecobee will make a Matter over Thread model and I'll upgrade to those...
If you have the Nest Learning Thermostat 3rd gen then the 4th gen thermostat is a downgrade. You're forced to use the crappy Google Home app and you actually need to use the app to use the thermostat. On the bright side it looks like a mushroom growing out of your wall and if you accidentally touch it, it will change your settings which was never an issue with the third gen.
Expensive coat hanger. I’ve had a bad experience with a closed source „clever“ thermostat in the past. Company killed the product support and app / web platform so I was stuck with a pos on the wall that I had to replace again with another thermostat. The only thing I would trust now is something open source, since I don’t think a big company will support the product once it’s out to cater compatibility with special applications . The future, especially in Europe will be so different in terms of energy and heating systems for your house that I wouldn’t immediately choose an American company for a thermostat because the development there,isn’t moving in the same direction. It may work for many systems now , like opentherm, modulating heaters etc, but you’re out of luck if something else comes along. Also the fact that you can’t connect to the ble sensors gives me bad vibes. Also I don’t want a closed system to control my automations . I want to be able to automate scenarios from within home assistant and have that control over it
Horrible advice if something is better that is more efficient or makes your workflow much more productive thus earning more money for less effort or something that makes you more efficient where it literally makes money that it absolutely is more efficient. About a 25% more efficient thermostat from an old one on a $400 a month gas bill in the winter mix back money in a single winter.
Been doing H-vac since I was 5 born into the trade . I use a eco bee pro & it knows when I leave the house & return via Wi-Fi & saves me 20-30 hours of run time a month without going into the app and turning it off myself .( It gives me a monthly update of run time/energy saved ) Not trying to sell anything other than your comment is flawed , one man’s opinion. My T-stat paid for itself with in the first 3 months 👍
I disagree about the UI. It’s worse than the previous versions and it’s so crazy dim. Also for some reason google decided to remove the brightness setting which absolutely makes no sense
