Editor's Review
Companion apps for smart home hardware are only as useful as the equipment they attach to, and this one is no exception: with no ecobee thermostat, sensor or camera installed, there is nothing to open. Given the hardware, it becomes the way most owners actually interact with the system day to day.
It handles temperature setting and scheduling, switching between comfort profiles such as home, away and sleep, and reading the room sensors that let the thermostat average across rooms rather than heating to whatever the hallway happens to feel. Remote access is the everyday case, whether that means turning the heating down after leaving or warming the house before a drive home. Energy and runtime reports summarise how long the system has been working, which gives you something concrete to argue with when a bill looks wrong, and owners of ecobee cameras and door sensors see those feeds in the same place.
The familiar weaknesses of the category apply here too. Control runs through the manufacturer's cloud, so an outage on their side leaves you walking to the thermostat on the wall, and some monitoring and video features are tied to a paid plan rather than included with the device you already bought. Local control remains limited.
Features
Remote temperature control from anywhere with a connection
Comfort profiles for home, away and sleep
Schedules with per-day setpoints
Room sensor readings and sensor-based averaging
Energy and runtime reporting
Camera and door sensor feeds for owners of that hardware
Pros
Turns the thermostat into something adjustable from the car or the office
Room sensors fix the classic problem of heating to the hallway temperature
Runtime reports give a real basis for changing a schedule
Cons
It controls ecobee hardware only, so it does nothing on its own
Cloud dependent, meaning a service outage takes remote control with it
Some monitoring and video features need a paid plan on top of the device
Questions people ask
Does it work without ecobee hardware?
No. The app is a controller for ecobee thermostats, sensors and cameras. Without one of those devices paired to an account it has nothing to display.
Is a subscription required?
Basic thermostat control comes with the hardware. Ecobee also sells a paid plan adding monitoring and extended video features, so check what your particular device includes.
