Best Smart Thermostats of 2026

The Touch is the ST55 in a better suit: same app, same platform support, same three-year warranty, but a 4.3-inch color LCD where the cheaper unit has a segmented LED and buttons. The screen is the whole upgrade, and it does more for daily use than the spec suggests — temperatures are readable from across a hallway, menus use words rather than codes, and the backlight is soft enough for a middle-of-the-night glance.

We prefer using the Touch and still point most people to the ST55, because the extra money buys interface rather than capability. Both handle schedules, voice commands and filter reminders the same way, and neither learns anything about your routine. If you walk past this thing twenty times a day and want it to feel like a modern device, the touchscreen is responsive and the menus are genuinely clear; if you set a schedule once and run everything from your phone, you are paying for glass.

Auto changeover earns its keep in spring and fall: once the indoor temperature crosses your heat and cool setpoints, the unit picks the right mode without a schedule edit, and geofencing handles the comings and goings. One practical wrinkle — the body is slightly smaller than the ST55's, so check that it covers the paint line the old unit left behind, or plan on a trim plate.

Occupancy sensing is the line between a thermostat that follows a schedule and one that notices the house is empty. The ecobee Enhanced builds that into the unit itself, so it can precool before you get home and let the temperature drift while you are away. For an Apple Home household it is the easiest recommendation here: HomeKit support without a bridge, with Alexa and Google Assistant working alongside it.

Installation is where we formed the firmest opinion. The box includes ecobee's Power Extender Kit, a small module that borrows power from the existing control wires so the thermostat works in a house without a fourth conductor. That is more hardware to fit behind the backplate, and it is the fiddliest part of the job — but the app walks through it with photos of the terminals, and the alternative is running new cable. If you already have a C-wire, leave the module in the box and the install is ordinary.

The rest is competent rather than exciting: a clear 4-inch LCD, a metal body that feels better than the Sensi's plastic, and a trim plate that hides a messy paint edge. One setting worth visiting on a heat pump is the equipment menu, where you decide when the auxiliary strips are allowed to run. The default can bring them on sooner than you want during a cold snap, and five minutes there keeps the system from feeling expensive to run.

The argument for the Premium arrives in the box beside it: ecobee's SmartSensor, a small battery-powered puck you put in the room that never matches the hallway. Once paired, that room becomes the temperature the system works from, so the bedroom over the garage stops being several degrees colder than the thermostat believes. If the complaint is one stubborn room rather than the whole schedule, this accessory does more than any feature on the screen.

The hardware is the nicest here after the Nest: a metal body with a matte finish, a touchscreen that is crisp and quick, and both Alexa and Siri built in, which means voice control without a speaker in the hallway. If you also own an ecobee video doorbell, it can pull up the camera feed — a genuinely useful trick at the front door, and irrelevant if you do not.

We think it is worth the premium for exactly one problem, and an expensive way to buy a thermostat for everyone else: the sensor is the value, and the voice assistants and the metal are extras. One thing to check before you trust it — the reading at the unit can sit a few degrees off a thermometer in the same room, so compare the two and shift your setpoints rather than assuming the schedule is broken.

Round, polished and immediately recognizable, this is the only thermostat here that reads as a design object rather than a wall plate. The display is 60 percent larger than the previous generation's and sits behind a mirrored finish that stays dark until someone walks past, then fades in the time, the weather or the temperature. It is showy, and we liked it more than we expected to in a hallway we walk through a dozen times a day.

The learning is real but unhurried. It watches the adjustments you make and starts shaping a schedule from them; the first week is mostly you teaching it, and after that it settles close to your routine. The bundle is what makes it coherent — the Nest Temperature Sensor comes in the box, so you can favour a bedroom overnight and the hallway during the day, and Matter support means it keeps working with whatever hub you move to next.

One thing to look at before you commit: the body is round, so if the old thermostat was rectangular, the paint line around it may show. Check the wall, or plan on a trim plate. Installation itself is easy, with no C-wire required in most homes and a wiring assistant in the app that checks each connection as you make it.

Start with what it cannot do, because for plenty of houses that settles it: one stage of heat, one stage of cooling, a C-wire required, and no heat pump or second-stage support. If that describes your system — a plain gas furnace and an air conditioner, which is still a great many houses — it is the least expensive way here to get a thermostat you can adjust from your phone.

What you get for that is refreshingly uncomplicated: a big blue LCD with numbers you can read from the doorway, physical buttons, a 7-day schedule you set once, and an app for everything else. The body is small — 4.72 by 3.86 inches and a touch over six ounces — so it drops onto the old footprint without drama, and the display is bright enough to read across a room without turning the hallway into a lighthouse at night.

It earns its place as the second thermostat in a house: the garage, the rental, the workshop, the cabin, where the point is remote control and a schedule rather than a lot of automation. Check that your system really is single-stage before you order, since that is the one mismatch this unit cannot work around. Beyond that it does what the box says without asking you to learn an app first.