I have an Ecobee which I mildly hate and was considering a nest. You’ve managed to make me rethink it.
My ecobee has connectivity issues over HomeKit and the API requires the cloud (which is annoying for something like home assistant). I’m also convinced it’s intentionally dumb in its scheduling. I always felt I needed to manually update the settings and could never trust it to just maintain temperature.
It does let you manually control the fans and stuff, which is a feature I really liked when I had air filtration built into the HVAC. I would miss it on a Nest I guess. Edit: it seems others are contradicting this claim.
That said, the API doesn’t require a subscription, just a one-time $5 fee (which is likely less than server and ops costs to run the API). And the API seems like a pretty standard rest api based on the docs. Similarly, the ecobee api seems roughly as complicated. The only difference is auth with a Google account or ecobee API key.
I also have an ecobee and find it extremely frustrating how hard it is to get a complete dump of _my_ data from their servers. You have to manually download a bunch of files and piece them together (which would be fine if they documented it some way), but even their web UI to see charts wont let you see very much at a time.
I have a couple Nests and a couple Ecobees. In summary, they're both frustrating. An HVAC contractor told me (and it rings true), the ecobee is like hvac peeps figured out the interwebs, and the nest is like internet peeps figured out HVAC.
I don't think the Nest has any options for local control though, so HomeKit on the Ecobee seems like a win, but I got distracted before I figured out how to do what I want with HomeAssistant.
The Nest does better fan scheduling IMHO, although neither one does anything smart with sequencing multiple units, which is really frustrating.
I went with Venstar because there is an on device API that can be switched on. I don't use it (a schedule and their cloud app do what I need), but I like knowing it is there.
They seem to have been hit pretty hard by supply chain problems too (most online prices 2x or more than what they were).
My ecobee has connectivity issues over HomeKit and the API requires the cloud (which is annoying for something like home assistant). I’m also convinced it’s intentionally dumb in its scheduling. I always felt I needed to manually update the settings and could never trust it to just maintain temperature.
It does let you manually control the fans and stuff, which is a feature I really liked when I had air filtration built into the HVAC. I would miss it on a Nest I guess. Edit: it seems others are contradicting this claim.
That said, the API doesn’t require a subscription, just a one-time $5 fee (which is likely less than server and ops costs to run the API). And the API seems like a pretty standard rest api based on the docs. Similarly, the ecobee api seems roughly as complicated. The only difference is auth with a Google account or ecobee API key.