We researched dozens of smart thermostats to find the best ones based on factors like ease of use, advanced features, smart home integration, and performance. The Ecobee Smart Thermostat with Voice Control is our top recommendation due to its overall performance, a remote sensor that allows you to monitor an additional room, a built-in microphone and speaker combo, and built-in Siri and Alexa. Here are the rest of our picks for the best smart thermostats. If you don’t use Alexa, the fifth-generation Ecobee also has built-in support for Siri as long as you have a HomePod or HomePod Mini on your network. You can also connect to Google Home, but Google Assistant doesn’t work directly on Ecobee. That means Google Home users need to issue voice commands to the Ecobee through a connected Nest speaker or the phone app. Ecobee supports remote sensors that monitor both temperature and presence, and you get one when you buy the thermostat. This sensor allows the system to monitor the temperature at the thermostat and somewhere else in your home, know whether people are there, and adjust the heating or cooling accordingly. Small homes get by just fine with one sensor, but you can add up to 32 sensors if you have a large home with many rooms across multiple floors. Price at time of publish: $220 Price at time of publish: $60 The Nest works well with Google Assistant and Alexa for voice controls but doesn’t have HomeKit support. Voice controls and smart home integration aren’t absolutely necessary, though, since you typically only need to change the temperature manually whenever you need it to be hotter or colder than your established norm. This model also lacks a remote sensor, but you can purchase Nest Temperature sensors separately for more control over conditions in certain spaces. Price at time of publish: $300 The thermostat controls allow you to set up to four temperature changes per day, and the mobile app makes scheduling easy—letting you add additional changes in increments as small as 15 minutes. It doesn’t have a presence sensor, and you can’t add remote sensors, but it does support geofencing. That means you can have the heat or air conditioning turned on only when you’re actually home, which the system determines based on the location of your phone. Price at time of publish: $169 The monochrome display is easy to read but looks a little dated compared to other smart thermostats. The app looks better and allows you to control the thermostat remotely. This thermostat supports highly customized scheduling to control the temperature at different times of day and on different days. It also supports geofencing to switch off when you leave the house and back on when you return. Price at time of publish: $127 The Honeywell T9 doesn’t have zone control, but you can use multiples of this thermostat model if your house has multiple zones. Each zone needs its own thermostat and sensors, and then you can control the entire system through the Resideo app or your connected smart home system. For smart home connectivity, the T9 supports Alexa, Google Assistant, SmartThings, and HomeKit. Price at time of publish: $180 While this smart thermostat doesn’t come with remote sensors, it supports these units, which you can purchase separately. Remote sensors allow you to monitor the temperature in different areas of your home and set the Ecobee3 Lite accordingly, and they also work with the occupancy detection feature. That means the Ecobee3 can automatically adjust the temperature if it notices the presence of someone in a room where you have placed a sensor. Price at time of publish: $150 While the display is less informative than other models, the Mysa app allows you to monitor and control all of your Mysa smart thermostats from a central location. That includes scheduling when each heater should turn on and off, geofencing to turn the heaters off when you leave and on when you get back, and manual controls. The app also provides energy insights, which allow you to see exactly how much power your heaters are using and make adjustments to save money on your power bill. Price at time of publish: $139 Setup is easier with this smart thermostat than most others because it controls your A/C unit wirelessly using the same method as your existing A/C remote. The only caveat is that you need to install the Cielo Breez Pro in an area with a clear line of sight between it and your A/C unit. Price at time of publish: $150
Features
The level of features included with a smart thermostat directly affects the price. The most basic feature is the ability to remotely control the thermostat via a phone app, which every smart thermostat can do. Other useful features include built-in virtual assistant functionality for voice control and the option to add additional room sensors, which could be particularly useful for large homes. If you want more control over your system, you might look for advanced traits like geofencing, to turn the system on and off depending on whether you’re home, and automatic controls that use machine learning to set the temperature automatically.
Ease of Installation
There are a few levels of difficulty to consider when looking at smart thermostats, and difficulty also depends on the type of thermostat you’re replacing. If your old thermostat had a C-wire, installation is a matter of removing the old thermostat and wiring in the new one. If your old thermostat didn’t have a C-wire, the easiest option is to look for a smart thermostat that doesn’t need this wire. The other option is to install a C-wire adapter, which is a more complicated job.
Why Trust The Spruce?
This article was written by Jeremy Laukkonen, a freelance writer and product tester for The Spruce. His home HVAC system is managed to perfection by a smart Honeywell thermostat configured to work with Alexa Hunches, and he has over a decade of experience reviewing electronics for outlets like Lifewire and Digital Trends, in addition to the Spruce. “Other advantages include tracking energy usage, learning your cooling/heating patterns, and providing maintenance alerts,” adds Faisal. She notes that “it’s just so convenient not to have to get up and enter settings on your thermostat. You can view and adjust your home temperature settings from anywhere using your phone.” To get a better handle on the inner workings of smart thermostats, Laukkonen contacted Bariyah Faisal, content specialist from Cielo WiGle. With Faisal’s insights, Laukkonen looked at smart features like automatic scheduling, geofencing, and energy usage reports alongside factors like compatibility and ease of installation to identify the best smart thermostats on the market.
