Ecobee4 Thermostat

We've featured a number of thermostats here on Modal Man, and I have been on a quest to find the best one for my needs. I've tried Nest and the Lyric by Honeywell. My home is single zone, which means it is rather difficult to maintain a consistent temperature throughout the house. Seeing that the Ecobee comes with a remote sensor, I was immediately interested.

Out of the box, Ecobee4 comes with the thermostat and backplate, a simple trim plate, and a Power Extender Kit (which you most likely won't need). While the box comes with an installation guide, I found myself using the mobile app to walk myself through the process. The app is available for both Android and iPhone.

The installation process was simple and required only a few tools. Make sure you have two screwdrivers (a flathead and a phillips), and a drill. I unscrewed my old stat, and hooked up the Ecobee using the wire mapping guide in the application. Overall, the installation process only took me roughly 15 minutes before I was up and running.

The previous version of the Ecobee was similar, but lacked one key feature...the Ecobee4 has Amazon Alexa integration which allows me to control temperature changes without lifting a finger, or pulling out my phone. It's a solid feature convenient for when I am having trouble finding my phone.

The display on the device displays a bit more data at a glance than alternative Nest or Honeywell products. Without scrolling through screens, the device displays the following information:

• Current Temperature Inside
• Current Mode (Heat/Cool/Both)
• Humidity

It also has a button to view the local weather and two additional buttons for accessing the settings of your thermostat. The first settings button opens a menu displaying the full control panel for your thermostat, which includes a view of your external sensors and there current temperature readings.

In my house, the upstairs is typically hotter than the downstairs by 2 degrees. The other temperature sensor is in the thermostat on the main level. The Ecobee4 will attempt to create an average temperature according to my settings. For example, if I have my thermostat set to 70 degrees, it attempts to keep the upstairs reading a temperature of about 71, while the downstairs maintains a temperature around 69. If my external sensor or thermostat is reading that a particular area of the house is unoccupied, it attempts to make a decision for how to conserve energy and keep you comfortable. For my two level home, I only have one external sensor, but Ecobee4 supports up to 32 different sensors!

My one gripe about the thermostat is that the beautiful design is slightly marred by the display used for the screen of the thermostat. From certain angles you can see the edges of the rectangular screen due to the difference in black levels between the device itself and the display. In my opinion, Ecobee could have increased the price a bit and put a nice OLED or other screen with equivalent black levels. Other than that, I have been extremely pleased with this stat feel confident I will be keeping this one in operation for quite some time.