How would you rate it on a scale of "big tech obtrusiveness"?
I ask because I've just moved in to a new condo which has ye olde thermostat that I find impossible to program properly, so I'd like to replace it with a modern one, but unfortunately Nest is owned by Google. :( I'd like something that doesn't connect to the cloud.
Unfortunately, it does connect to the cloud, but as far as I know, it's not under the control of any big-tech yet (although, I could, admittedly, be naive in that regard). I have the 3, which isn't alexa-enabled, but the 4 is. It's a nice UI that's easy to program, and has a lot of options like room sensors that detect temp and whether the room is occupied (some may not like that, but the sensors are an add-on). I suppose I'd rate it a 3 or 4 on an intrusiveness scale of 10.
I can understand the worry about big tech due to the scale, but on a personal decision like that, I'm much more worried about giving my data away to an ecobee type company.
As an owner of an ecobee, I’d say it falls into the category of “ok” overall. The remote sensors feature is neat, but the home IQ calculator is clearly meaningless. They even managed to mess up weather forecasting. It’s functionally reliable, but definitely some disappointments. In short, it does not really benefit from internet access at all. In fact, I may just disconnect it and see if it still serves me well enough.
I've been pretty happy with my ecobee - the HomeIQ stuff seems like a gimmick (and is geared toward making the Ecobee seem like it's saving you money), so I don't really care about it, but the thermostat does a good job of it's core function of warming my house to the setpoint at the right time.
I used to set my old programmable thermostat to turn on the heat an hour before I wake up and sometimes the house was too cold, the Ecobee turns on the heat somewhere between 30 and 90 minutes before I wake up to get the temperature up at the right time. Not sure if it uses weather data or just looks at how cold the house is to make that decision, but it does a good job.
The internet connectivity is useful for me since I'm away from home a lot, so I like the ability to get low temperature alerts as well as the ability to turn on vacation mode remotely or adjust the temperature (so if the forecast is going to be below 0F, I can turn up the heat from the normal 50 vacation temp to 60 to make frozen pipes in exterior walls less likely). If you don't care about that, then yeah, the internet access is not really necessary.
I'm super happy with my Ecobee. On multiple occasions I've gone on long trips and forgotten to put the A/C on vacation mode. It's real nice to be able to control it from my phone.
Similarly, the City of Austin has an energy savings program in summer where on hot days they will (with your consent) remotely turn up all connected smart A/Cs by a few degrees, which drastically reduces strain on the electric grid. I think I got $75 when I joined. And it can be overridden, so overall it has been a great boon.
Same here, though I like the connectivity because it lets me do things like turn the heating or AC on remotely if I’m heading home at an unusual time. Otherwise, I get no real benefit from it being connected.
Love my Ecobee.