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Preface: please don't tell us why we shouldn't use a smart thermostat.
I'll probably need to go on a video rant about this, but smart thermostats are rapidly getting dumber.
My folks got a new heat pump system in the spring. It needed a new two-stage thermostat and the company offered an Ecobee.
"Great!" I thought. People kept telling me Ecobee is better than Nest, and I've had major frustrations with the new Nest thermostat.
Folks. It's just bad in different but equally maddening ways.
The ONE THING Ecobee did better was holding. Y'know, the feature every programmable thermostat has had forever.
Well, in November I went on a trip with them and needed to figure out how to get the thermostat to be dumb for their house/dogsitter.
Where did the hold feature go? It appeared to be gone.
Oh? Now you have to go into the settings and tell it *how long* you want it to hold a temporary change, and one of the options is "indefinitely"
WHO THOUGHT THAT MADE ANY SENSE
Meanwhile, Nest no longer (at least with the basic ones) lets you set different schedules for heating and cooling modes.
Call me crazy, but I actually like my HVAC system to run different schedules in the heating vs. cooling season (and I NEVER let it run on "auto" mode).
You used to be able to do this! The old Nest app supported it and it made perfect sense. The Google Home app doesn't, and the new cheap Nests don't talk to the old app and IT'S ALL SO STUPID
Literally all anybody is asking for is a thermostat which can do scheduling, can be remotely controlled/monitored, and change setpoints based on occupancy.
It needs to be an easier-to-program thermostat with a few smarts on top and THAT'S IT.
Right now, they're all sliding backwards in the name of "comfort presets" or some BS and the experience of using them is much worse than a simple programmable unit.
I cannot fathom who is making these design decisions and why. It's just awful.
@TechConnectify Wait until you find out about the power company deciding what your thermostat setting should be for you. For "the greater good".
https://news.yahoo.com/power-companies-taking-over-smart-185552524.html
@Triply Wait until you find out that I actually think this is a really good idea so long as we can audit how it works and it is done reasonably.
In a future where energy available on the grid may not be so steady, the ability to reduce energy demand (or indeed preemptively *increase* demand when there is abundant energy in preparation for a predicted shortfall) is a tool we will make our lives a lot harder through rejecting.
@Triply because, although you put greater good in quotation marks, that is a thing we're going to need to deal with.
Yeah yeah yeah, more nuclear or whatever. But when the sun is shining and there's more energy than we need? The ability to store that as thermal energy (either positively or negatively with heating/cooling) offsets the need for it later. It's just a different kind of battery.
Dispatchable *consumers* are just as useful as dispatchable producers on the power grid.
@TechConnectify You are far too trusting of large organizations. This is what they want to be able to do on a whim:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/amazon-shuts-down-customer-s-smart-home-for-a-week-after-driver-claimed-he-heard-racist-slur/ar-AA1cuYUW
@Triply @TechConnectify If you're worried about big brother then just 
buy a normal thermo stat. My apartment still has a mercury thermostat from the 80's, it was probably installed when the building was constructed, nobody's forcing you to buy a thermostat from the utility company or fuh-freaking Amazon!