Emerson Thermostats Sensi Smart Thermostat, Wi-Fi, UP500W, Works With Alexa

My review is mosty "versus the Nest" because I've had three different Nests and know that one well, and I like this one better.When my Nest died last month, I decided I was going to buy a thermostat from a company with a history of making thermostats work reliably.I would have installed this myself, but my A/C guy who installed my system and troubleshot my Nest two years ago ... and then came back and troubleshot the replacement Nest last month said he would remove his loaner 'stat and install whatever I decided to buy.The one feature of the Nest I knew was hooked on was the ability to change the temp from my phone. Sensi and several others do that now, so I had a few to choose from. In my research I learned that my primary complaint the Nest - that the temperature swing was too wide - was addressed by Sensi's "cycle rate" setting.I like that the Sensi wall unit operates like a traditional thermostat. Nest's no-button design is cool, but using a thermostat is not a lecture in UX minimalism, and black-and-chrome doesn't really disappear into the background of my home (white trim and all).The Sensi is actually an easier DIY install than Nest (screw-down terminals vs. push in notwithstanding), and the main thing I would tell other folks is: install the app on your phone first and let it walk you through the installation.This, Sensi, is what I want in a thermostat. Convenient, reliable, programmable, understandable. I am okay with a modest premium for being Internet enabled. It's half the price of Nest and doesn't intimidate non-technical users. You can keep your auto-programming feature - I always fought with the schedule it created and with two young children we're home most of the time anyway. You can keep your monthly energy usage report - it didn't include enough detail to be useful anyway. And you can keep the space-odyssey design - it might be alright in the stainless-and-black kitchen, or media room, but it doesn't work upstairs.Granted, we didn't also install a second Nest to have more temperature sensors, and we didn't buy their $200 talking smoke detectors which also report environmental statistics back to the thermostat. But I've got what I need from my thermostat now.P.S. It took the last Nest two years to go kaput, but I'll update here if that happens to my Sensi.Update: After about a month I'm still very happy with Sensi. Most people won't care about this but being a network security engineer, I'm impressed that the thermostat has exactly 0 open TCP ports, outbound communication is with one IP, and total traffic is very modest. Nest communicated with a whole bunch of different IPs and was much more "noisy" on the network. Good work, Sensi dev team.

Love the remote thermostat. App is simple to use and easy to access.Installation:Step by step instructions in the app were great. Easy for a first timer as well as a diy'er. The app even has you take a picture of the old thermostat wiring before you remove anything, very smart. I had it swapped out and running in 30 minutes, however there was a problem. I have a water source heat pump and the old thermostat did not have a C wire. The sensi thermostat does not require a C wire, however my compressor was short cycling, it would run for 30 seconds or so and then kick off while the fan was still running, because the set point was not reached. After 2 to 3 minutes the compressor would come on again for another 30 seconds and the kick off. I called the help line and received very good help. The technician asked me to email the picture of the old thermostat wiring and a picture of the new wiring. After several minutes the technician determined that with my unit (McQuay) was not supplying enough power to run the wifi radio on the sinsi without a C wire. While trying to come up with a solution, i decided to see if I actually had a C wire available that was not used by the old thermostat. As with most installations, the unused thermostat wires were wrapped up behind the thermostat, Including the blue wire which is most often used as the C wire. With the power off I opened the area on the heat pump where the thermostat wires were connected and the other end of the extra wires were there, including the blue wire. The thermostat wire connections on the heat pump had a C terminal that had nothing attached. I connected the blue wire to the C terminal on the heat pump and the C terminal in the sinsi thermostat, and the problem was resolved.I did not buy the optional back cover plate, but should have, and now have it ordered. If you have not have a small hole for the wires, then the thermostat will cover it, however I have a single gang (switch) box mounted vertically and the thermostat will not cover the hole. The back plate will correct that.Thermostat has now been the service for several days and have had no other issues.UPDATE:The entire reason to get the Wi-Fi enabled thermostat was to be able to check and adjust the thermostat when not present. The Sensi is off-line at least 50% of the time. When I check it with the app, it will say the thermostat is off-line. If I check again in a few minutes, it may (or may not) be back on line. It may not be back on-line for a da or more. When it is on line I feel that I have to quickly make any adjustments before it goes back off-line. The issue is not the home Wi-Fi, but with the Emerson server. This if totally useless as a Wi-Fi thermostat and I am replacing it with a Honeywell Wi-Fi. If I could return it I would. As a non Wi-Fi thermostat it works fine, but I could have saved $50 for a non Wi-Fi model, but I wanted the Wi-Fi function.

I bought this item because I live in the mountains and I am away a week at a time, wanted to turn up temp on my return 2hrs prior, every time the thermostat was offline, does not work, to get it back online you must remove the batteries and reconnect, can't do this when your 100 miles away

Thermostat worked for months until I upgraded our router and internet service. After the new service was installed the thermostat has all kinds of connection issues and connects and disconnects randomly. I emailed the tech department and they blame the router. Which is an xfinity/commcast router thats in 80% of the businesses in my area. They gave me a list of tech crap to try that would likey fly the space ship and way above my tech grade. So I will throw this POS in the trash and buy a honeywell. Judging by the random auto resets and strange connecting issues when I switched the thermostat to the new internet system. It seems that the thermostat is having some kind of issue between the old and new internet switch.