Ecobee Smart Thermostat With Voice Control Review, Pros & Cons and Specs 2022

THE BOTTOM LINE for Ecobee Smart Thermostat With Voice Control

The Ecobee Smart Thermostat with Voice Control is packed with features including Alexa support, a touch display, a remote room sensor, and interoperability with many other smart home devices.

Ecobee Smart Thermostat With Voice Control PROS

Advanced Alexa functionality.

Remote room sensor.

Dual-band Wi-Fi.

Lots of third-party integrations.

Easy to install.

Ecobee Smart Thermostat With Voice Control CONS

Pricey.

ECOBEE SMART THERMOSTAT WITH VOICE CONTROL SPECS

Compatibility                                         Multi-stage

C-Wire                                                 Yes

Self-Install                                         Yes

Multiple Zones                                 Yes

Sensors                                                 Yes

Motion Activation                                 Yes

Geofencing                                         Yes

Smart Home Integration Apple HomeKit, IFTTT

The new Ecobee Smart Thermostat With Voice Control ($ 249) is the company's fifth generation model, and as with every Ecobee release, this new model offers more features than its predecessor, the Ecobee4. Improved Alexa and multimedia support, more powerful audio components, and dual band Wi-Fi are just a few examples of what this thermostat has to offer. A user-friendly app, lots of third-party support, and easy installation, and you've got a selection of our new editors for the smart thermostat.

Design and features

At first glance, the smart thermostat with voice control looks exactly like the Ecobee4. It is the same size (4.2 x 4.2 x 1.0 inches, HWD) and has a shiny black screen / bezel on the white wall. You won't know it by sight, but the new thermostat uses a glass screen to cover a 3.5-inch, 480-by-320-pixel color touch display. The two microphone holes on either side of the screen cover a pair of digital microphones that offer more advanced audio processing than the echo cancellation and analog microphones used in the Ecobee4.

The new thermostat is equipped with a speaker (below the enclosure) that is twice as powerful as the one used in the previous model and also offers a wide dynamic range. At the top of the device is an LED strip that turns blue when you use the Alexa Voice command and turns red when the built-in microphone is turned off. The back plate has 12 terminals for heating and connecting to air conditioning, humidifiers, dehumidifiers, air ventilation devices, and other HVAC accessories.

The Ecobee includes a remote room smart sensor (pictured below) that helps keep the temperature uniform throughout your home, especially in rooms that are far from the thermostat. The new sensor offers an extended range and longer battery life (up to five years) than the previous model. Additional SmartSensors can be purchased for two packets at $ 79.

The thermostat is powered by a 1.5GHz quad-core CPU, 4GB of flash memory, and 512MB of DDR4 RAM. Inside there are sensors for temperature, humidity, proximity, and capture, as well as remote sound technology. Proximity and occupancy sensors tell the thermostat whether you are at home or away and allow it to switch to the default target temperature to save energy, and remote field tech allows you to Allows to issue voice commands from the room. Also under the hood is a dual band Wi-Fi circuit that allows you to connect the thermostat to a 2.4GHz or 5GHz Wi-Fi radio band (Ecobee4 is limited to the 2.4GHz band).

Like the Ecobee4, Smart Thermostat With Voice supports Amazon Alexa voice technology, which means you can use it as an Amazon Echo device, but this time Ecobee has Alexa calling, messaging and drop support for them. Added In addition to streaming Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, and Pandora Music, you can now stream Spotify music and play it directly from a thermostat or play it over a Bluetooth speaker.

The thermostat also works with Apple's HomeKit platform, supports Google Assistant and Siri Voice commands, communicates with other smart home devices that support IFTTT (if they do) applets, and It can be integrated into SmartThings, Vera, and Wink home automation systems.

You control the thermostat using the same Android and iOS mobile app that is Ecobee4. It can also be controlled from a PC using a touch screen, voice services described above, or a web console. The app's home screen displays the current room temperature and has a slider to set the target temperature.

Below the temperature redout are four icons. The settings icon presents several tabs for configuring the thermostat. Use the System tab to enable and disable heating, cooling, and fans. The Sensors tab is where you go to enable the Smart Home / Oye feature, which adjusts your heating and cooling settings if the thermostat sensors detect that no one is in the house, and the Schedule tab lets you Allows daily and weekly heating and cooling schedules. In the Comfort Settings menu you can set the temperature limits for indoors and outdoors, and you can set the temperature of the thermostat switch while you're sleeping or on vacation. The Reminders and Alerts menu lets you set low and high temperature and humidity alerts and set up maintenance reminders.

To see current weather conditions and a five-day forecast, tap the weather icon. The gear icon takes you to the Quick Changes screen where you can switch from Home to Oye modes, and the microphone icon opens a screen where you can adjust the speaker volume, enable or disable the microphone. Alexa can be linked to Spotify, and the thermostat can be connected to it. A Bluetooth speaker. To take advantage of the Home IQ feature, you need to use the web console, which includes performance reports, HVAC usage history data, and how external conditions have affected your HVAC system.

Installation and performance

The Smart Thermostat with Voice comes with a detailed installation guide and is easy to install, but if you are not comfortable working with electrical wires (even low voltage wires), you will need an installation professional. There should be a professional handle.

I started by turning off the breaker for my thermostat circuit and took a picture of the existing wiring. Like other Ecobee thermostats, it comes with a label that you can use to mark your wires, which makes things easier when it comes time to wire the Ecobee backplate. I disconnected the old thermostat, fed the wires through the back plate, and attached the plate to the wall using the built-in level to ensure straight installation. My system has a C-wire so I was able to connect my wires directly to the backplate terminals. If you do not have a C wire, use the included PEK (Power Extender Kit) and follow the wiring instructions in the printed guide. Once the back plate was wired, I lowered the thermostat to the base plate, registered it using the mobile app and the verification code provided, and the installation was complete.

The thermostat reacted quickly to my temperature change orders regardless of whether I used the touch screen, mobile app, web console, or Alexa and Siri voice commands. I made a daily heating schedule after which it is a tea. Like the Ecobee4, the thermostat worked amazingly with the Home Kit Scene that turns off the porch light when it switches to sleep mode, and an IFTTT applet that includes a TP-Link Casa Smart Wi-Fi power strip. The HS300 outlet turns on when there is humidity. Hit a certain limit.

SmartSensor did a great job of maintaining a stable target temperature in the basement bedroom, and when the temperature and humidity levels reached my set, push and email alerts arrived immediately.

Alexa's performance in the test was equally impressive. I had no trouble singing from my Amazon Music account or getting the latest news and baseball scores. Furthermore, the thermostat had no trouble handling voice commands from all over the room, and I was able to control the devices connected to my Alexa account as easily as if I were using an Echo device. The audio output is significantly higher and richer than the Ecobee4, but still not as strong as the output from a dedicated Amazon EcoPlus speaker.

Conclusions

With a smart thermostat with voice control, Ecobee improves on its predecessor by adding a more powerful speaker, digital microphone, dual-band Wi-Fi radios, and better Alexa capabilities. Like Ecobee4, it works with a number of third-party smart devices and hubs, supports Apple's HomeKit platform and Alexa, Google, and Siri Voice commands, and performs brilliantly. At 9 249 it's a bit expensive, but you'll be hard pressed to find a thermostat that offers many features, including the popular Nest Learning Thermostat. As such, it earns a selection of our editors for smart thermostats.