For the past few months, I’ve been talking to the thermostat mounted on my wall. And, oddly enough, for the past few months, the thermostat on my wall has been talking back to me. I’ve been testing the $249.99 Ecobee4, a smart thermostat that has both a microphone and speaker built into it. Oh, and Amazon’s Alexa assistant.
As a smart thermostat, the Ecobee4 is excellent. It’s basically the same product as the Ecobee3, and has all of the stuff you want in a smart thermostat: intelligent scheduling, smartphone app control, and presence detection, so it can automatically tell when you’re home or not and adjust your HVAC accordingly. It also uses very handy remote sensors to measure temperature and presence in other areas of your home. The...
