I have both.

Nest malfunctioned at my coast house. Cause AC to run non stop. Froze up then shut down

Ice melted and caused about $2k in damage

They reimbursed me. Installed another one.

Have to be real careful with C wire!!!

Love my Ecobee too

And best thing I just got was Vivint home security NO CONTRACT from Best Buy. Awesome!

I had one added to my alarm system. Then I know if someones trying to Steal my dog, Burn her, or poison her with CO =)

JJ

For smoke detectors I use one of these near the fireplace and the non-carbon monoxide version everywhere else. This is in combination with a Smart Things hub not Iris.

http://www.lowes.com/pd/First-Alert-Battery-Operated-Carbon-Monoxide-Smoke-Detector-Works-with-Iris/4780109

As for thermostats, an IFTTT enabled thermostat will save you money if you aren't always home. You can say just turn it up manually when you leave the house, but you will often forget. You don't have to remember with IFTTT. It does it automatically. I've only been using it for a few months, but I can see a difference in my bill. Some months are better than others, but I know I'm saving money. With my system I set the thermostat 3 degrees higher when nobody is home. When someone arrives home it is back to target temp within an hour. Totally acceptable to me.

As for the remote sensors, "follow me" just doesn't work well for me, but the sensors allow me to be very in tune with the temperature variance in my house. I noticed that on a hot sunny day I have 3 very hot rooms compared to the others. On a hot overcast day, all the rooms are much closer in temp. I found that the rooms that are hot have a 2x2 section of uninsulated ceiling. That explains the huge variance on a hot day. Still need to get up there and fix it though.

Funny, Just got a small cold spell here and my furnace turned on for the first time in months, checked the temp on my 2gig ct100 thermo and it actually has settings in half degree increments, never noticed it before..fyi

Late to the party...

I have two Nests. I recently bought a really old house (two family) and the energy costs for it were a big concern. We live on the second and third floors. The second floor is forced air with no easy way to control room to room heating. The third floor (for now) is electric.

I did a ton of research and ended up with the Nest above the Ecobee because I didn't have any need for the additional settings. It then came specifically down to design, and the engineering behind the Nest is just incredible.

I enjoyed it so much, when our tenants air conditioning was upgraded, I bought a second unit for them. Again, there is no easy way to do room by room controls, but the simplicity and functionality of the Nest won out for me.

According to year on year electrical history, we are savings for our part of the house nearly $100 per month in electrical. Part of that isn't the Nest, it's other things like LED light bulbs, but having the thermostat automatically go out at night and restart so my wife isn't freezing when she walks down in the morning, well, it's already been worth it!

Final verdict for me - if you don't have a use for the extra controls, get a Nest. If you are getting fancy heat or air upgrades, get the Ecobee.

FYI, there's an Ecobee Lite that just came out. Don't know much about it but it's supposed to have the majority of the Ecobee 3 features at a lower price, so it might be worth checking out if you're leaning that way.

Ecobee usually offers a sweet deal on the Ecobee 3 around Black Friday. If you can, I'd wait another month.

Yeah, if if the Lite loses the sensors then you made the right choice. My second full one (finally) shipped yesterday so i hope to install this weekend.

I just tore one of these out and put a ecobee 3 in.