Last Updated on March 4, 2022 by Alarm New England
Over the last few years, home improvement gadgets have progressively become more technologically advanced. Today, most designs offer smart home systems that have secondary functions extending well beyond their core or primary intended purposes.
The Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro and the Ecobee4—the latest smart thermostats on the market—serve as prime examples.
Both thermostats are updated models of earlier products from their respective brands, and both offer greater flexibility and finer home climate control compared to their predecessors.
And both are compatible with a wide range of older generation HVAC systems, making their introduction into your home a relatively effortless process.
But how different are they from each other? And how do you choose one product over the other? Keep reading to see which one is best suited to your needs.
Honeywell Lyric T6
What It Does
The Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro thermostat is a smart home temperature control system. More precisely, its primary function is to assess your location and turn on your heating when you’re home, and turn it off when you’re out.
Main Features
One of the biggest advantages of the Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro is that is uses the same UWP mounting system as all T Series thermostats. This means the installation process will be fairly simple and quick.
Additionally, you have the option of either setting it up and scheduling the smart thermostat like you would with any other thermostat, or you can manage the thermostat with a Honeywell Home app.
Some of the main selling points of the Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro are its connectivity and functionality options, which are as follows:
- Simple Wi-Fi Connectivity. The connection process is easy, and the connection itself is strong. Installers can eliminate the hassle of an installation trip by simply sending customers an email inviting them to complete the connection themselves. This does, however, assume that the user has some degree of technological acumen.
Technology isn’t always friendly though, and certainly not to everyone. Miscommunication can lead to frustration, and the promised convenience might end up being an inconvenience. In the end, depending on the capabilities of the people involved, this simplicity can be either a pro or a con.
- Unlimited control regardless of location. This gives users the option to control the thermostat settings from anywhere via a compatible mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet.
This means if you’re watching that match you’ve been looking forward to for months, you don’t have to leave your couch to adjust the thermostat setting. You just have to simply reach for your phone.
- Location-based temperature control. With geo-fencing, you don’t have to manually switch all your home automation products on or off, or rely on a set schedule.
This feature uses your T6’s sensors to tell when you’ve left home and when you’ve returned. For instance, when you leave your home, the T6 can turn down your heating to save energy.
- Ecosystem integration. The Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro works with Apple HomeKit and Amazon Alexa. This seamless integration allows you to control your system settings from the same app as the other systems if you so choose.
Moreover, you can instantly adjust the settings of your thermostat by simply talking to Siri. The one caveat to this feature is that to control these settings, your phone has to be close to you so that Siri can hear you.
Functionality
For the sake of simplicity and overall better control, the Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro thermostat has three mode settings: “Home,” “Sleep,” and “Away.”
The Sleep mode allows you to set a temperature by specifying at what times the thermostat should be on and when it should be off. In this way, the automatic setting assumes control and you do not need to constantly adjust the settings unless there is a drastic change in the weather.
For both the Home and Away modes, you can set a specific temperature, and the thermostat turns on or off depending on whether or not you are home.
Another option you have is to create your own schedule of when the thermostat should be on and off during the daytime. You can do this by creating identical daily schedules, or designating presets for certain days of the week.
Or, you can have one collective set of settings for weekdays and another for the weekend. But by doing this, you override any location-based automation sequences you may have set up. Any of these options can be useful, you just have to choose the one that’s most convenient for you.
Finally, one of the main selling points of this smart thermostat is its energy savings, as the thermostat heats your home only when someone is in it.
The Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro also offers support for multiple users. That way, everyone in the house can be signed on to the app with their own user account. When the “primary user” goes away, the rest of the family doesn’t have to be stuck with one temperature setting.
Ecobee4
What It Does
Like the T6 Pro, Ecobee’s latest thermostat is a smart home temperature control system that easily replaces your old thermostat. The Ecobee4 comes equipped with a remote sensor (outlined below). In case your home is large enough to warrant more sensors, or you simply want heightened efficiency, you can always purchase more sensors. There is no threat of overloading the system, so you can get as many sensors as you need.
Where the T6 Pro is driven by your location, the Ecobee4 is strongly dependent on the sensors. You can control this function in the following way: simply choose which sensors you want to operate in the comfort settings.
Once this is done, the thermostat will average the readings in these zones and adjust the HVAC system. For example, if you select the sensors in the bedroom, the thermostat will adjust the temperature there to an optimum comfort setting. This saves you from waking up in the middle of the night to make adjustments.
Main Features
The biggest selling point of the Ecobee4 is that while other thermostats like the Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro make adjustments by reading the temperature in a single general area, such as the living room, the Ecobee4 relies on its sensors to detect hot or cold spots, and to safely regulate the temperatures in these areas with little input from you.
Other Ecobee4 features are as follows:
- Temperature display. The efficiency of the sensors is such that the thermostat is capable of reading both inside and outside temperatures. Both values are displayed on the screen along with the humidity of the room.
- Built-in Amazon Alexa voice service. This feature allows you to control your thermostat by talking to it. You don’t have to wonder whether your voice command went through; as soon as you say a command, a blue light on the thermostat will immediately blink in response.
Even better, the Ecobee4 has embedded microphones and a speaker which were designed specifically for far-field voice and sound reception. Due to these features, the Ecobee4 can hear you from across the room. And, you have the option of adjusting the volume.
- Extended smart functions. The Ecobee4 is the perfect embodiment of a smart device designed to function well beyond its core use. The Amazon Alexa feature also comes in handy for other everyday uses, like if you need help finding and following a recipe. You can even set the device to remind you to add selected items to your grocery list; or you can simply command it order them.
- Mobile device compatibility. You can easily adjust the temperature from the mobile app. The app is compatible with Android and iOS devices, including Apple Watches.
- Noticeable energy savings. In addition to being able to easily control one’s immediate climate, smart thermostats are popular because they reduce energy bills and your carbon footprint. Because of its sensors, the Ecobee4 is efficient in detecting when people are home.
This helps the smart system to finetune energy usage and avoid wasting power. The energy savings become more tangible in this way, with an average reduction in energy usage of 23%. For those who want to see exactly how much they’re saving, free energy reports can inform you how much you consume each month.
Functionality
As with the Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro, the Ecobee4 has three mode settings: “Home,” “Away,” and “Sleep.” All of these modes can be accessed through the thermostat itself as well as through the website or app. But unlike the Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro, the Ecobee4 allows for more flexible schedule settings.
For example, you can set the baseline comfort temperature for each of the three modes, meaning that you can count on the temperature to always be within specified limits. If you go away for an extended period and forget to adjust your settings, you will receive a series of alerts and reminders, and you can remotely make adjustments.
How Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro and Ecobee4 Compare
Whether you get the Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro or the Ecobee4 will come down to a few factors. On one hand, as indicated on Amazon, the Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro is cheaper than the Ecobee4.
On the other hand, the Ecobee4 has a few functional advantages over the Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro. These include:
- The room-specific sensors that allow you to more accurately regulate cold and hot areas in your home.
- Flexibility with the heating and cooling schedule; the primary modes and your preferred settings don’t nullify each other.
- Guaranteed compatibility with both Android and iOS devices. Additionally, your phone doesn’t have to be close to you in order for you to change the settings as you can call to Ecobee4 from across the room.
- As a bonus, the secondary functions extend well beyond temperature control.
The Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro has one main advantage over the Ecobee4: It allows multiple primary users. But as the Ecobee4 is primarily driven by its efficient sensor system, this feature is hardly necessary.
Finally, when it comes to choosing home improvement gadgets, some people prefer the aesthetic of one product over another. After all, this device will, by default, form a part of your home decorations for the foreseeable future. In terms of dimensions, the Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro and the Ecobee4 are not that different from each other.
But in terms of looks, the T6 Pro has a more utilitarian keyboard-like appearance while the Ecobee4 has a rounder design closer to the Nest thermostat. As a result, the Honeywell Lyric T6 Pro looks like a digital clock while the Ecobee4 looks a little more sleek and modern.
