Greetings from Tucson, all. The local electric utility company is offering a free smart thermostat, and they’re allowing the customer to choose between these 2 options. This would be my first-ever home automation item. I do have WiFi, and I do have a (“budget”) smartphone (a Google Pixel 3a, as it happens). (I will probably be buying a new phone 1 year from now, unfortunately.) My home is a 793-sq ft, 1-bedroom, downstairs condo unit. I turned 50 this year, and I have come to value “buy it once for life” products. Any thoughts and experiences would be most welcome. Thank you for your time.
I agree with a few other posts suggesting an Ecobee, but between the two choices you have I’d go with the nest. I bought a Honeywell last year for my new home (the builders put in a regular 7 day Honeywell, and I found I could replace it with a smart Honeywell T9 without replacing the baseplate).
About 1 week after I installed it, it factory reset itself and I had to go through the setup again. I pulled it off the wall immediately and returned it (thanks, Amazon), then ordered an Ecobee. I absolutely will not mess around with any kind of instabiity with a thermostat.
I found out later that Honeywell had pushed a firmware update that had caused the factory reset, which is worse then a local glitch, as far as I’m concerned. Not touching them again with a 10-foot pole.
I had a Nest Learning Thermostat in my old place and it was fine. I have a “Nest Thermostat Snow” in my garage (only had 2 wires, and the Nest power connector is nice). I hate the UI on the actual thermostat though - no touchscreen, you have to use a crappy touchpanel on the side. Not a big deal for me since I just use it via homeassistant.