The valedictorian of smart thermostats

Adding a modern thermostat is one of the best ways to level up your smart home. Automating climate routines saves you money on energy in the long run and keeps you more comfortable daily. And when it comes to smart thermostats, you can do plenty of shopping around. Some entry-level ones lack advanced features, some are for certain smart assistants, and even some are for older homes with uncommon HVAC systems.

One of the most well-known smart home names is Ecobee, and Ecobee’s most premium smart thermostat is, well, the Premium smart thermostat. You’ll quickly notice that it’s the most expensive — but justifiably so.

Price, availability, and specs

Regarding national electronics retailers, Ecobee’s top-shelf thermostat is widely available. The Ecobee Premium smart thermostat retails for $250, but you may be lucky enough to catch it on sale now and then — Amazon, for example, currently offers it for $20 off. Ecobee’s website, Best Buy, and Home Depot are great places to shop for the Premium.

Need to scale up your system beyond the Premium? Through some retailers, including Amazon, the thermostat can be purchased by itself, in bundles with home sensors for entry and temperature, or in a larger security bundle with Ecobee’s video doorbell.

What’s good about the Ecobee Premium smart thermostat?

This device’s chief purpose is to police the heating and cooling of your home. Sure, you can set routines to heat and cool the home at certain times and days of the week. You can turn on vacation mode, too. That’s all run-of-the-mill smart thermostat stuff by this point. But the Premium’s capabilities go beyond that; after a period of habit learning, if the thermostat notices that your household is generally awake and moving about by 7 a.m., it’ll know exactly when to kick on to heat or cool your home to your preferred daytime temperature. While I certainly can’t ignore the Ecobee Premium’s strengths as a thermostat, that’ll only scratch the surface. You will still be impressed if you purchase this device solely for its climate-controlling capabilities.

Making sure this is done by 7 a.m., instead of starting at 7 a.m., may seem like an insignificant feature, but the smart thermostat has insights into how long adjusting the home’s climate will take that you don’t — unless you’re an actual HVAC professional — based on a variety of factors ranging from outdoor temperature to humidity to the state of your furnace filters. The Premium also uses geofencing for climate control and security; it can drop the heat and arm your home while you’re away.

This thermostat replaced a midrange Ecobee thermostat in my home, and the build quality in moving up a tier is noticeable.

A huge perk of the Premium is its onboard mic and speaker. The mic makes the Premium’s built-in Siri and Alexa possible, but the speaker is even more of a game changer. It’s much louder than you’d expect a speaker this size to be, and with Spotify integration, playing your favorite playlists or podcasts is as easy as a simple voice command. The Ecobee Premium’s built-in assistants (sans Google Assistant, unfortunately) mean you can change your home climate without walking over to the thermostat or even touching your phone. My Premium was installed about 15 feet from my living area and still picked up on my voice commands even from this distance.

This thermostat replaced a midrange Ecobee thermostat in my home, and the build quality in moving up a tier is noticeable. The Premium’s metal body catches the eye and exudes elegance compared to the Smart Thermostat Enhanced plastic housing.

Before I dive into the Premium’s security features, I’ll just reiterate that this thermostat excels in monitoring your home’s climate for maximum comfort and energy efficiency. An onboard air filter checks for carbon monoxide and other potentially harmful substances in the house. With most carbon monoxide detectors being battery-operated, I love the thought of having a continually powered device on constant lookout for carbon monoxide emergencies. While it’s a paid subscription feature, it’s worth mentioning that the Premium also listens for the sound of a smoke alarm (it doesn’t detect smoke itself, though) and will ping your phone if one is detected.

Coupled with Ecobee’s entry sensors, the Premium sends you a heads-up through the mobile app when a window or door has been left open. If you wish, it’ll even pause the HVAC system when an open window or door (that has an Ecobee entry sensor on) is detected.

The Ecobee Premium’s multifunctionality beyond its primary purpose as a mere thermostat means it can act as a hub for many smart homes. It is an extension of your eyes, ears, and even voice throughout the house. Utilizing the Ecobee Premium to its full potential through added hardware is actually pretty easy, even for beginners.

Ecobee offers enough native components to build an entire basic smart home system — a video doorbell, smart thermostats, climate sensors, indoor cameras, and entry sensors — and the Premium smart thermostat is the thread binding them all together. For example, if you have Ecobee’s video doorbell and the Premium, the Premium’s 3-square-inch 540p screen displays a live feed of the doorbell’s view when a motion event is detected. With built-in Alexa, you can also ask the Premium questions like who’s at the door?

Guiding you through setting up the Premium and any harmonizing Ecobee components is blissfully easy with the native app. Thermostat installation tends to intimidate — as any endeavor resulting in exposed wires dangling out of a hole in your wall is wont to do — but as long as you’re comfortable enough to flip off the breaker switch responsible for your HVAC system, Ecobee’s concise, illustration-guided installation is a breeze.

What’s bad about the Ecobee Premium smart thermostat?

Honestly, very little. It’s one of the most expensive smart thermostats you can buy, but that’s to be expected, given its feature list. I do wish the Premium used the same mounting bracket as the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Enhanced, which it dethroned for testing, or at least the same screw configuration. The screw holes were arranged differently by very minute degrees, so I had to drill all new holes for the new thermostat.

You can’t really complain about this when switching between different thermostat brands, but it would be nice to have universality among one brand’s very similarly sized thermostats. Also, the Ecobee Premium requires a common wire (or c-wire) for power, which may be a hindrance in some homes.

One more thing: there’s one quirk to the Ecobee Premium that I can’t explain. Every day, without fail, the thermostat pings me for a “significant drop in air quality” — in roughly the same one-hour window between 8 and 9 p.m. This happens regardless of whether the HVAC system is on or off, whether it is heating or cooling, whether windows are open, and whether there are high activity levels in the home (like using gas stoves or dryers).

It happens if my entire household is home with windows open or if the house is vacant and shuttered. Whether it’s something the Ecobee was trying to alert me to or some hidden shortcoming of the system, I still don’t know, weeks after use.

Like any other smart home brand, Ecobee’s paid subscription plans are worth considering. Ecobee offers two paid tiers, Standard and Complete. Without a paid plan, Premium users miss out on most of the security strengths Ecobee gave this thermostat, including professional monitoring, an automatic siren when motion is detected while the thermostat is armed, entry and exit delays after arming, and even the ability to arm your home through the Premium at all. You also miss out on the Ecobee listening for smoke alarms without a paid plan, but you do still get freeze detection.

However, Ecobee’s plans are super affordable ($5 for Standard, $10 for Complete), so even without any Ecobee hardware besides the Premium, I’d recommend at least signing up for the $5 monthly plan to get that smoke alarm detection.

Should you buy it?

After witnessing how harmoniously the Ecobee devices (the Premium, Ecobee’s video doorbell, and its entry and occupancy sensors) work together, I strongly recommend at least adding both sensor types to your purchase. But wait a minute — this is a review of the Premium smart thermostat, not the entire Ecobee system. Is Ecobee’s most expensive thermostat worth it without all of the extra purchases, like a doorbell and sensors and a monthly subscription?

Well, if you don’t already have a smart base — like a Google Nest Hub, Apple HomePod, or Samsung SmartThings Hub — then I’d absolutely recommend the Ecobee Premium for not only upgrading your thermostat but bumping up the IQ of your smart home as a whole. Even when acting alone, the Premium has a powerful thermostat and a nice speaker for ambient music. By autonomously responding to windows forgotten open, air filter change reminders, and advanced routine learning, the Premium’s energy consciousness is incredible for busy households.

With homes that already have a smart base, this is where my enthusiastic endorsement pauses. Only because, in this case, the Premium is a bit overkill. You can get by with midrange smart thermostats, including Ecobee’s, especially if another smart speaker isn’t your priority. However, with its advanced learning, eco-conscious climate control, and a very reasonably-priced optional monthly subscription, the Premium shows us that overkill isn’t always a bad thing.