Smart Thermostat with Touchscreen - Alexa Compatible - Black | Energy-Efficient Home Technology

So I’ve had this for about a week now and I gotta day this thing is awesome. I bought a house and was having problems with one of the thermostats so I decided to replace them both. I looked at various thermostats before deciding on this one partially due to the looks of the thermostat. Nest I feel is overrated and I don’t like the look. The Ecobee I probably would have bought but it only comes in black and my wife wants white and frankly so do I. I rated tech support as 5 only because I didn’t need tech support. You open the app and it walks you through the process thoroughly and simply. I don’t know anything about HomeKit on my iPhone but that was ok because the app walked me through that and what buttons to push to get to it. HomeKit is what allows Siri integration by the way and it is smart! If I say “hey Siri, set my thermostats at 77 degrees” she repeats it back what she did and it will set both but if I only tell her to do one she will only do one. I also have been at work and turn my a/c on when I’m leaving so it starts to cool the house for when I get home (rest of my family’s is on vacation). In all the fact I can control my thermostat with my voice (which I didn’t think I would like) and from my phone remotely is awesome. It also kicks on my a/c immediately where I had to wait for my old ones. The menu is so simple to use they really took anything difficult out of the equation. The only thing you might need to use the menu for is maybe to turn the backlight on. This product exceeded my expectations. I don’t use Alexa so I didn’t rate it. I will try and include some pictures. Looks like may have rotated my pictures for some reason.

I received this Emerson (White Rodgers) thermostat within 5 days of ordering it. My BIG BOX store did not have the white color in stock, so I ordered it from the site. Install should be easy enough replacing the same colored wires from old to new, BUT replacing anything old with new has it challenges. My challenge was that the idiot Trane install people that installed my new furnace a few years back as I added AC for my home, did not hook up the C (blue) wire in the wire bundle to the old thermostat I found out. This caused my install for something that should have been a 10 minute project, into a call to a pro to figure out what my issue was. So it cost me the pro call cost to get this Sensi thermostat 24V power working. The C wire was connected on my old thermostat and at the control board that actually had 24V working power, but was left unconnected in route to the old thermostat. So I had no R (red) and C (blue) wire power that I could measure, but the old thermostat AC and heat worked fine with the old White Rodgers. Easy fix on his part tracing the wire bundle to the unconnected C (blue) wire with no connection to it. Other than that, which is not Emerson Sensi thermostat fault, everything is good so far after the power issue was resolved. The Sensi app GUI is easy enough to program, but like everything else that I come to learn how to use, there are challenges with getting the setting right, so the programming works as it should. I learned that the upper and lower temp limits will affect how your programming cycle works, so make sure you set the upper and lower limits to the ranges that are needed or your programming cycle may or may not work as anticipated. That means if you are using heat only, you still need to adjust your cool limit in the app.

I like everything about this thermostat I have four of these that have been working for two years so far. Three at my business and one in my home. The negative reviews on this product come from people not understanding that this unit requires power at the thermostat not all AC units have been wired for that if you put batteries in your current unit you may need the dc cord for this to work. If you don’t have power at the thermostat you can buy a dc power cord specifically made for that but it will have to be plugged in and you will have a wire running from the thermostat to the outlet. I had to do this at my business not a big deal there because no one cares could be a problem for wives at the house. This is probably one of the best investments a small business person can make employees will eat you alive running the AC at max all day long. With the scheduling and lock feature your employees can’t change the temperature the unit is set to go off thirty minutes before close on thirty minutes before open. When I rented the building from the previous tenant I had to pay a 1600 dollar deposit equal to the highest bill they had the year before. Scary right? We have never had a bill higher than 550.00 these work great with Alexa the app is responsive always connects and performs flawlessly. These can be had very cheap from open box vendors because of the dc requirement at the thermostat many are returned with nothing wrong with them except the box destroyed and unimportant parts missing. I bought three of mine that way all worked perfectly at a fraction of the retail price.

Overall this is a solid thermostat. It is cheaper than some of the more trendy models by other manufactures. The installation assistance is top notch. These require the "c" wire which is the constant power source for the thermostat. They do not use batteries, so it requires the extra wire to make it work. (Not having to replace batteries is awesome, and if there is no power the furnace wouldn't work anyway.) There is really good information on how to make this happen if you don't have the power line. In my case there was an extra wire in the existing wire stand which just needed to be hooked up at the furnace. If you have the extra wire already and can access the furnace easily, you can do this yourself. Installation was straight forward and the application itself walks you through the install. The unit even has a built in bubble level, so I could level the thermostat when attaching it to the wall. My furnace is in the attic, so I had a handyman get in the attic to attach the last wire. (There are good detailed instructions on how to do this and alternate instructions if you don't have the extra wire already behind your existing thermostat.) The system works very well with Alexa. I had to download the extra "Sensi" app which works with this thermostat. I had hoped I could get it to work with my existing "Smart Life" app, but I could not get it to work in that app. No big deal, except I have to keep one more app on my phone. We have two AC systems and hence two thermostats. We had no problem having two systems, and the app allows multiple systems running at the same time. We simply named them differently for the Alexa app (i.e. North AC Unit, South AC Unit, etc.) Both my wife and I have the app and can control the AC system separately with no issues. Overall the unit is attractive. The back light option is just that, optional. It is nice at night for gently lighting the hallway, but can be easily turned off. The back light function is only a soft white color and no other colors available. The interface is intuitive and easy to use. Not a whole lot of options, but what do you really need for a thermostat? The program settings are also easy to use. One slight negative is that there is no "hold" feature. If you set a temperature on the unit, the schedule will override that temp when you get to the time it is set. I suppose some would say this is a good feature because you can't forget to leave it set really low or really high as it will revert to the program when that time is hit. However if you set a more comfortable temperature a short time before the programmed temp kicks in, you would have to remember to override the temp again. Again, not a huge deal, and perhaps a bit of a safety measure that you don't set a temperature (like really low for AC or really high for heating) then leave town or go to work and leave it running. Obviously if you remember later it is easy to change anywhere you have internet access. The display screen only has one color, so you have to like blue (or the more subdued blue when in sleep mode). You can turn off the screen when it sleeps as an option. It might be nice to have other colors available. It does not have a learning function that learns your habits and changes accordingly. But, again the scheduling feature is straight forward and easy to use. Time is set automatically from the internet. Overall a very good unit, that is attractive and easy to use.

I asked my HVAC buddy about a nest device and was advised against it. His exact words were “nests suck! Over hyped” so I picked up 2 of these super sleek touchscreen units for my new house and WOW what an awesome working device! Super easy to install. I was worried this wouldn’t work without having a C wire as my old units were only using 3 wires a red, a white and a green. Luckily there was a blue wire tucked back behind the old units. So all I had to do was go in the attic and connect the blue wires to the C terminal on the furnaces and was able to get the 2 thermostats up and running in less than 20 minutes. Super easy setup to my WiFi and Alexa system! Now I can change the heat from bed! Also the app works great as well! 5 stars all the way zero complaints! Think it’s safe to say this unit is better than a nest thermostat!