ecobee3 Lite Smart Thermostat – Programmable Wifi Thermostat – Works with Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant – Energy Star Certified – DIY Install, Black

Software could use some improvement. PEK is useless for most people. Every part of this is ridiculously expensive. So first of all I want to tell people about a strange thing that happened with mine. I honestly thought I had a C-wire when I ordered this and then find out the hard way that I, in fact, do not. (Curiously enough the installer even ran five wires through the wall and just left the C-wire disconnected.) So when I found out I just figured I would simply connect the C-wire and no trouble (ok, it was a bit of trouble since I had to figure out exactly where to connect it — despite all the pictures they may show in their manual not all devices will have a nice simple board with properly labeled terminals and all for you to connect to. Mine just has wires running to a transformer and various relays all unlabeled. Fun. If anyone is looking into this, you want to connect the C-wire to the other side of the same end of the transformer that the R-wire runs from — you should read about 24V AC between the terminals +/- maybe as much as 4 or 5V while idle, but not much more than that. If you get 40+ or something you’re on the wrong terminals and absolutely _must_ not connect it this way.) But for some reason this didn’t work. At first… I thought I must have been doing something wrong, so I got an external power kit wanting to do this thing right and proper (and this way if I ever change thermostats again to anything newer in the future I’ll be able to power the new one too.) It still didn’t work. It wouldn’t even turn on either via the C-wire or external power, so you can imagine my surprise and how unhappy I was. I was beginning to think I must have a defective unit. I even disconnected it and ran a couple of alligator clips to the external power supply (and nothing else) just to see if it would turn on and it still wouldn’t. In sheer desperation I install the “Power Extender Kit” (PEK) mostly just so I could be sure I wasn’t just somehow doing something horrendously wrong. Now suddenly it turns on. But with caveats (more on that in a moment.) Since the PEK wasn’t working out I decide I’m going to call them and find out what’s going on, but of course since I’m a night person and this has already taken many hours their phone lines are all closed down. Meanwhile, I take the PEK out and connect the wires normally again. In sheer frustration I put the thing back in one more time just because. This time it turns on FROM the C-wire. So apparently it had to be powered once via the PEK to function. This is obviously not as intended and not normal, but now it has worked 100% perfectly since then running entirely from the C-wire with zero troubles. Anyway, the moral of this little story is: if yours won’t turn on, maybe try the PEK for just a few minutes and then try the C-wire again. No, this doesn’t make any sense at all. But apparently it works…——————————————————————————Anyway, on to the actual review. Firstly, for the most part it works very well. Like some others I really wonder why it can’t let you just connect directly to the thermostat while you’re in the same house though. It’s great that it uses the cloud for maximum connectivity, but there’s no reason it couldn’t run a local server (it’s not like it needs anything really complex just to run on the LAN.) When your connection goes down you can only control it — as others have said — by actually walking up to the thermostat. And this isn’t just a question of laziness. It takes a lot more fiddling with the small low resolution touchscreen than the much easier to operate interface with a mouse or even phone/tablet touchscreen to do things like adjusting comfort settings or even just manually turning on the fan or something. Though if you just need to do a quick temperature override it does this quickly and easily enough on the touchscreen. (You can even set it to ask every time which sort of override you want, so this is a nice plus at least.) It’s very worthwhile here to take note of the fact that cloud-only functionality means that if they ever take down their servers or if the servers are ever seriously hacked or anything then you won’t be able to control it away from the actual thermostat anymore… They likely won’t support the same old hardware forever, so someday these may ultimately just quit working outside of controlling directly at the thermostat essentially (thus they go from being a “smart” thermostat to being a classic dumb one just with a touchscreen.) Some people can afford to update expensive things like this every time a new revision comes out. Some of us have to keep using the same thing as long as there is no new functionality added by something new that we actually require (and what else is a new one going to do?) There is no technical reason the device can’t do this — in fact, if nothing else they could give us software that connects to the same interface it uses going to the Internet instead of it doing two services — it just does not.Also, it looks like if you want more complex programming it CAN do it now. It looks like you can simply add more comfort settings and put them in the schedule at different times to suit your needs. It’s probably a bit more complex to set up scheduling than it is on simpler thermostats, but overall it isn’t too bad. I saw reviews saying it only had two programming settings which (if you exclude away) is technically true only in that by default this is all that is on there. More accurately it only understands three main situations: home and away (sleep apparently is just plain separate.) But you can add multiple comfort settings in each of these two categories. I’ll admit I haven’t played around with this though. I prefer to keep it relatively simple. Especially with the addition of actual sensors to detect when I’m away since that’s the main time I would want it to stop cooling or heating as much. Perhaps other reviews are right in that it doesn’t actually allow the temperature to go far from the normal setting in away mode though. I haven’t tested that. Still, it’s going to save a little bit of power versus no away mode as with a standard thermostat at the very least. It does have a vacation mode which I presume sets things much more loosely. I haven’t tested this at all.One big plus though is the support for external sensors. Very few “smart thermostats” support external sensors. In fact, at the time this was the only actual smart thermostat I could find that didn’t have horrendous software. Seems even the Nest doesn’t? Maybe I’m missing something, but regardless, this one definitely does support sensors. Unfortunately, the sensors come only in a two pack and this two pack is ridiculously expensive for how little they ultimately actually do. (A person with the appropriate know-how could get an Arduino or RPi and temperature sensors and connect them up — assuming they don’t use some sort of encryption or something — for maybe between half to a third of the cost because the actual hardware involved is very uncomplicated. Unfortunately this is beyond most of us and they are taking advantage of that. Actually, someone with the know-how to do these could rig up an external sensor controlling even a Nest or whatever, but again, beyond my abilities sadly.) I feel like every part of this is more expensive than its competitors, but I did need the sensors and couldn’t build my own.One problem would definitely be the power extender kit (the “PEK.”) Many buying this already know if they have a C-wire or not I suppose, so probably not many are counting on having to use this, but I should warn those that do: it basically downgrades this thing to barely being able to do anything. For starters, when I set it up there was absolutely no point in the configuration in which I could specify that a wire was connected to PEK. It always showed that slot as being disconnected in all the menus and nothing would allow me to set otherwise. Worse still though, it basically removed almost all functionality. Since it used the green wire as some sort of virtualized common wire (or at least seems to? I didn’t actually test the system using the PEK) it can’t even so much as control the fan. There was no cooling option at all, so it was stuck only in heat mode (not a good thing in the summer!) I guess because the W-wire is still connected to the W-wire connection even with the PEK but the Y-wire is not. I had assumed the PEK had done something such as just running the green wire together with the others (eg force the fan to be immediately on and off with cooling and heat) but it seems not. Or if it does there’s no way to configure the device to recognize this. Given that I wasn’t sure it was even setting itself up right though I didn’t really test out the PEK by actually turning anything on, so it may be that this isn’t even right (for example, maybe it really was supposed to be as I guessed and the software simply wasn’t setting itself up right.) Regardless, I think it may be a really bad idea to buy this intending to use the PEK. I think you should expect to either install a proper C-wire (it’s not that hard — it’s just a common ground that doesn’t connect through any relays as the other wires would do and I don’t know why people don’t tell you this) or run an external power kit (they sell plugs that provide 24V AC — you just connect the external hot to Rc with your system’s own R going to Rh — and the neutral to C. Well, this may not work with two transformer systems. _Perhaps_ you could use its neutral alone without the hot wire. I’m not sure how well that would work out, but presumably the potential is about the same.) I guess the only value the actual PEK may have is powering on the system that first time if it acts up like mine did — which is obviously not its intended purpose, but whatever I guess. Otherwise you’re going to be stuck with only heat functionality. (I guess you could try to trick the system by connecting the cooling to W instead — assuming it actually works and doesn’t blow something up — but if you did this it would get very confused and you’d basically have to just manually run the cooler since it would otherwise keep trying to cool more and more trying to get the temperature up while it only goes down in heat mode. At that point I’m not sure a smart thermostat would be a good idea anymore.)As long as you can stand the extra expense, you get the advantage of fairly decent software and the surprisingly rare advantage of sensors that just work right out of the box with no significant setup or any soldering involved. Just make sure you do either have a C-wire or external power kit — do not count on using the PEK if you want to use this thing normally (perhaps the PEK is supposed to be able to, but all I know is the software won’t actually allow it to do so and it has been long enough that they would have updated it by now if this were just a minor bug — and I know mine updated itself at some point in the process of setting it up.) Unfortunately it will probably never be possible to control it via software via the LAN without connecting through the Internet which is kind of silly, but this seems to be the norm among smart thermostats. (I just don’t agree that it should be, so this is a negative on them all IMO. The cloud should be secondary — a convenience only — not only.)

Almost perfect. I bought this thermostat after trying and failing to get a Honeywell model to connect to my WiFi with zero success. This one had no issues, though I did have to switch to WPA2 from WPA that my router was set to. The support team I chatted with was great and got me back on track quickly and politely. Kudos that good help can still be found.The unit allows you to set daily schedules with any combination of events from presets like “Home”, “Away” and “Sleep” to user created events. Plus, you can easily override those events by locking it to a particular preset. A nice touch is having the weather forecast available on the unit.You can add additional sensors to help balance out cold or warm areas, though I opted not to do that since my old house has a little too much variance to do that with my one zone boiler system. The sensors can also sense occupancy if you choose so it can adjust to when people are home or away or rooms are in use. If you have a multi-zone forced air system, this could be a real money saver. A hot water radiator system with one zone like I have, not so much. I turn that feature off.A few other nice features include:- Of course, the money feature is the app that allows you to monitor and adjust the unit from afar. It’s nice to pull out my smart phone and be able to see all is well at home. For the most part, it mirrors the interface on the unit itself.- Reminders to change filters or schedule annual servicing.- High or low temperature warnings.- The ability to customize the point where heat or cooling kicks in (within a degree or within multiple degrees).- The ability to track how often the heat or cooling activates and for how long (sort of).- The ability to track heating or cooling in comparison to the outdoor temperature, which can indicate the need for weatherproofing.With the energy tracking features mentioned above, some of it requires the system to work for at least 30 days to build a full data set. I will say, some of it is a bit nebulous since it assumes you only started a “Home” and “Away” pattern upon installing this thermostat when it comes to energy savings reports. It doesn’t take into account manually doing that sort of thing with a manual thermostat, which is what I always did.- You can download usage data to an Excel spreadsheet, but it’s just a blob of 5 minute intervals that show whether the system was active or not. There are no totals for usage, no temperature averages or no totals for how long the system was on each schedule (see the nits section below).In the setup section, you can give information about the age of the house, the size and the type of heating so it can optimize how it runs the system. This can include provisions to avoid short cycles as well as adjusting for how long it takes for the system to generate heat when it fires up (for example, radiators take longer to produce heat following a cold start verses forced air systems).The system can also use geo-fencing to sense when a smart phone is within range to know that you’ve left or are headed home. However, there are a couple of gotchas, as noted below.The system does recover well after a power outage. So far, with the couple of short outages that have occurred here (less than 5 minutes), the unit has re-connected with the WiFi as well upon restoration of power. I’m not sure why a couple of other reviewers ran into situations where it didn’t, but I can only speak from my own experience.So, what’s not to like:- The system can be set to anticipate a temperature change time and begin heating or cooling prior in order to be at the target temperature by the preset time. That sounds great in theory, but in practice it really doesn’t work well. I found that it would begin heating from Away to Home far too early and be wasting heat well before my “Home” time. I shut the feature off when it seemed to get worse and worse as the first week went on.- The times for temperature changes are in 30 minute increments. That’s a royally stupid setup. It’s a computer. I should be able to set any time, to the minute, that I want. If I want the Home temperature to begin at 2:15PM, I should be able to set it for 2:15PM instead of having to choose between 2PM or 2:30PM.- The features of each interface (the thermostat itself, the app and the online interface) are a mishmash. Only the online interface contains every feature. For example, the “Home IQ” data, which shows usage data, is only available in the online browser interface, with the exception of the Kindle Fire App, that does contain the feature. The Android phone app (which I also got from the same source) doesn’t have the option. Both app interfaces should be identical since they both are Android based. The thermostat itself shows none of the Home IQ data, which is annoying. It would be nice to get summary of run time and temperature on the unit.- In the Home IQ section, there’s an inaccessible section called “Smart Features”, which as apparently been “Coming Soon” for years now. It’s to the point where if they aren’t going to actually roll it out, they should just remove the link for it. I have no idea what would be in that section since everything seems covered in other areas. However, I suppose Ecobee could potentially release other add on products like cameras and smart doorbells that could interface with the thermostat…possibly…maybe. Who knows?- While there are add on sensors for indoors, the one notable lacking feature is outdoor sensors. While the weather feature is nice, the temperature comes form the airport over 25 miles away at the airport. It would be nice to have an outdoor sensor to get the temperature and humidity at my house instead since it is often far different than the online weather.- The geo-fencing feature is poorly implemented. It really only works well if you’re the only occupant of the property and you work a good distance away from home. The issue is, you can only tie the system to one smart phone, so you run the risk of leaving other people in the cold or heat if you leave the house. Further, if you only work a few miles from home, the geo-fence is so wide, it may never consider you to be “Away” since it uses that range to anticipate your arrival and begin heating or cooling. Further, you run the risk of the system going into away mode just for a quick trip to the store, then having to fire up again upon returning after only a short period. For a forced air system, that’s not as bad, but radiator systems would waste fuel doing that. I shut that feature off.- The system needs to be clearer (as in directly state) how long the heat or cooling has run each day. As it is, you kind of have to zoom into the graph and click on the begin and end of each heat cycle to get the start and end times. Computer, please do the math since you are designed to do that sort of thing. I prefer colorful graphs, as well. Seriously, be smart or don’t be smart. Don’t go halfway.Finally, it would be nice if there was a sticker in the box or the manual with the MAC Address on it instead of only being on screen in the unit. I ended up taking a picture with my phone so I could enter it in my router since I use MAC Address filtering to only allow accepted addresses to connect. It’s still better than the Honeywell, which printed it on the back of the unit, making it impossible to see it when on the wall – you know, when you’re trying to connect to WiFi).Further, it would be nice if the instructions specifically mentioned the need to use WPA2 so I wouldn’t have chat with the help team online (which was actually a pleasurable experience since the person helping knew exactly what the issue was). It just would have saved the need for the support chat knowing that. It wasn’t a big deal since the very nice person I chatted with knew precisely what the issue was and got me back on track in a matter of a couple minutes.One warning (and this isn’t really a nit, just a note), this unit is smaller than your average battery power electronic thermostat. In fact, it’s about the size of one of those old school round ones, just like a nest unit is. The result is, if you have a larger rectangular unit, you may have to do some wall patching to hide evidence of the old unit. I do not recommend the cover plate you can get to fill in around it since it’s really huge and ugly. It looks like one of those giant wall protectors for light switches that are used by people with dirty hands. I got one as a temporary fix due to a previous home owner butchering the wall when installing the previous thermostat. It’s really ugly and I plan to fix it once the weather warms up and I can shut the system down long enough to repair and paint the wall. So if you have a large gaping hole behind a larger unit, be aware this guy likely won’t cover it. It’s about the size of a Roku 2 or 3 to give you some idea. Factor in the screws that hold the bracket are inset a bit further.Overall, I like the unit. I had to add a transformer to power it, since I didn’t have the necessary wiring due to being set up for a manual battery powered unit. I bought this transformer, which does the job just fine:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075PN6NCV/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1The few things I’m disappointed in aren’t deal killers, but do take away some of the potential of the product. In the case of things like the Geo-Fencing, that may affect others more than me, so take that into account if the feature is important to you. The data summaries are more my thing, so that is something I’d like to see improved.Plus, I’d like to see some of the limitations imposed via software removed, such as the hard 30 minute time presets. Don’t artificially limit me via software for no good reason.Finally, I’d like to see the Android app be unified across all platforms to include the Home IQ section. It’s silly I can see it on my Kindle Fire, but not on my Android phone. Further, there needs to be a Windows App, which currently only offers a browser interface as an option. However, that is by far the most powerful interface since it includes everything.

Trouble with install. In reality it only took 5 min to wire after understanding why my set up was different.Pros:Excellent product, easily affordable. Smart purchase. I did many reviews of many products and kept coming back to ecobee. They provide all you need for an install. If you are on the fence – go for it. My final push was I went on vacation for the first time in many many years. I realized it would be nice to control house temp while I was away. Now I can. Hooray technology.Take images of thermostat connections and furnace control board connections before you remove anything. You should call ecobee support for help but this may help you also.Super small Con: Con is only due to my particular wiring – not the device.I did not have a “C” wire at the thermostat, only White, red, green and yellow so this install is with using the PEK device supplied with thermostat purchase, my colored wiring set up and my pre existing connections. If you have questions – Call ecobee support – they sent me images and instructions(3 of the included images) for my set up.Per the wiring image. I had a separate red and white harness in my furnace going to my AC compressor and had to tie it into the PEK device supplied with thermostat which is used with 4 wire cable with no C wire at the thermostat end. If you have 5 (or more) wires you may have a C: wire or other wires for 2 stage heat or AC. I had a single stage everything. Your wire colors may be different it is more important to know what color wire goes to what connection. You should use the supplied stickers to label the wires. For example my yellow wire could be orange or blue in your set up. Put a Y label on it This based more on where you disconnected the cable from more then color though. If you dis connect a orange wire from Y or Y1 – label it Y or Y/Y1Original Thermostat connections and wiresI had a Red wire going to Rh with a Jumper to Rc (which can be ignored)Green to GYellow to YWhite to WFurnace end controller boardRed to RGreen to GYellow wire tied to red of seperate 2 wire cable to my AC compressor (Not to Y on furnace controller board) 2nd white wire of AC comporsser tied to wire nut then a white wire (shown as blue in wiring diagram) to C connection on controller boardWhite to WConnections for ecobee thermostat with No C wireThermostat endRed to RcGreen to CYellow to PEKWhite to W1PEK is magnetic and sticks to wall inside furnace in between wiring from thermostat and furnace control boardWiring from thermostat (4 wires) to PEK device suppliedRed to PEK “R”Green to PEK “G”Yellow to PEK “Y”White to PEK “W”PEK to furnace and AC compressor and furnace control board (5 wires on the other end of PEK device) If you happen to have 2 wires to any one terminal – Only disconnect the wire that went to thermostat. Leave the other wire connected as this may go to another device you have such as a humidifier. Leave any other wires on the furnace control board connected. Again – only remove the wires that went direct to furnace.Red (R) to furnace control board “R”Green (G) to furnace control board “G”Yellow (Y) to AC compressor red (with wire nut).White (W) – label looks Grey) to furnace control board “W”Blue (C) to AC compressor wire nut tying AC compressor white wire – PEK blue (C) wire and my short white colored wire (shown as Blue wire in wiring image) to furnace control board “C”Note:My original wiring connections on the furnace control board had no wire to “Y’ since my original yellow wire connected to wire nut with Red AC compressor. With ecobee I had to plug the yellow wire to PEK “Y” and the opposite end of PEK device went back to wire nut with Red AC compressor wire.The wiring image shows white AC compressor white tied with wire nut to PEK Blue wire AND a white wire(Shown in blue on Right wire image) to “C’ on furnace control board. – don’t let color confuse you it could be any color, where it comes from and where it plugs into is more important.

El termostato funciona muy bien, pero para poder enlazar Alexa con Ecobee se tiene que hacer desde la app de Ecobee, ya que en las skill de Alexa en México no aparece.1. Instala tu Ecobee.2. Configura tu cuenta Ecobee.3. Agrega el termostato a tu app.4. Toca el monito de arriba a la derecha en la pantalla principal. Y en la parte inferior, podrás enlazar a Alexa.Como ya agregaste tu dispositivo, Alexa lo reconocerá y podrás conectarlo.

Al fin puedo prender la calefacción de donde este. Fácil configuración.

Easiest App for Install. I have never installed something like a thermostat before. I have let this product sit in my cart for the last couple of months while I debated on if I was qualified enough for the daunting task of install. I wish I would’ve just purchased this a LONG time ago. And here is why….THE APP NOT ONLY TELLS YOU WHAT TO DO STEP BY STEP BUT IS INTERACTIVE!! I have NEVER had a product with such a user friendly (such an under rated term here) interface that tells you what to do BASED ON YOUR WIRING!!That’s right. You remove your old thermostat and tell the app which wires you see and it tells you what you need to do based on your specific situation. I will say I was very lucky and had the common wire and did NOT have to install the adaptor to my HVAC system. However, honestly the apps Instillation guide is so intuitive I’m sure that the extra step would have been easy enough. I know it may seem like I am rambling a bit. In this part of the review however, I want everyone to understand that the biggest reason for my hesitation was not the price of the unit but the installation process. I did not want to have to pay an additional fee for someone else to install. If I could possibly do it myself once I receive the product I had it installed within 15 minutes.The Ecobee Smart Thermostat is in itself, a wonderful and intuitive product. The product itself looks very elegant and doesn’t look like your typical hospitals style look. This looks futuristic and modern. I absolutely love how intuitive the sensor is like when you walk by the screen changing to show you a little bit more information. The software seems to know how to show you the right information to. When I want to look at the weather, it gives me just a glance at what is going on outside, which is wonderful and then I can expand it more to look into the future if I choose.The ecobee app is very user-friendly and easy to use as well. Setting up my thermostat through the ecobee app was super easy and quick.PRO TIP: Once the thermostat is installed, you can access the Apple QR code to connect your thermostat to your HomeKit ecosystem. The QR code is not the QR codes on the actual product cards inside the box.I really love the fact that this thermostat helps save on your heating bill by maximizing the heating and cooling of your HVAC system. But I was really impressed when during the install process, the software prompted me to enter my ZIP Code to show me who my local energy supplier was and allowed me to Request a rate decrease with the new install of the smart thermostat.I have not purchased any of the sensors yet, so I cannot contest to that ability of the software. However, I will be purchasing them in the future and will update my review accordingly.

Ecobee3 Lite Smart Thermostat. Because a local HVAC company installed my heatpump last week, a tech came out to install this thermostat free of charge minus my involvement in completing the installation wirh providing my Internet designation and password. The installation process was seamless and smooth. I can monitor the heatpump functions from anywhete now. I can also see the current temp away from the wall as the digiral temp display is large and stays lit. This thermostat is smart as it calibrated the temp setting we set and AI does the rest by communicating with me. I bought the back plate separately from Amazon (black) and it is very pleasing to look. Its too early to talk about the longevity of the system but it is functioning beautifully at this time. It is fully capable of accommodating one’s individual scheduling but I programm it to have it at constant 72 degrees. This us todays kind of thermostat!

Ecobee3 Lite Smart Thermostat. Because a local HVAC company installed my heatpump last week, a tech came out to install this thermostat free of charge minus my involvement in completing the installation wirh providing my Internet designation and password. The installation process was seamless and smooth. I can monitor the heatpump functions from anywhete now. I can also see the current temp away from the wall as the digiral temp display is large and stays lit. This thermostat is smart as it calibrated the temp setting we set and AI does the rest by communicating with me. I bought the back plate separately from Amazon (black) and it is very pleasing to look. Its too early to talk about the longevity of the system but it is functioning beautifully at this time. It is fully capable of accommodating one’s individual scheduling but I programm it to have it at constant 72 degrees. This us todays kind of thermostat!

Great purchase! Love it. I’ve had mine for about a year now and it’s worked flawless from day one. Highly recommended. Phone app and Alexa voice command are so cool. I love controlling it when I’m not home and when I’m sitting on the couch I can either tell Alexa to change the temperature or do it on my phone. The daily programming feature is perfect as well. Install was easy as long as you follow the instructions. Great product.

Great thermostat, packed with options. This is a solid thermostat packed with multiple options. Unlike most, it has a selectable temperature swing (i.e temp differential) that you can customize to improve overall HVAC system efficiency and eliminate unneeded start/stop cycles on your equipment extending its life. Both the phone app and the website provide easy programming options with historical data capture for run times, indoor/outdoor temps and humidity. Both 4 and 5 wire setups are provided with a large mounting plate and a step by step startup process. As a HVAC guy, an impressive unit for the money. Highly recommend.