However, the ecobee3 won’t have the market entirely to itself, as a wide range of other manufacturers look to grab a slice of the smart home market.
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After being available to preorder for some time the new ecobee3, HomeKit thermostat is now available to purchase for $249 and has now started shipping.
The Ecobee3 smart thermostat, the first connected thermostat to work with HomeKit goes on sale today through Apple Stores across North America.
If you’re unfamiliar with what a smart thermostat does or how does it operate, a smart thermostat basically detects the home temperature along with acknowledging if there’s a human presence in the room and once done, it sets the temperature accordingly leading up to saving the house owner some money. Think of it as an alternative to the popular Nest thermostat since both connected objects more or less serve the same goal. The device comes with one integrated sensor while additional sensors can be bought if users want to make full use of the device. And now, with the HomeKit integration, Ecobee3 users can rely on Siri for simple changes without having to use the built-in controls at all. The difference in the two versions is the added HomeKit support which has the benefit of Siri.
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The use of the HomeKit platform will make it easy to discover, group, and control the thermostat and any other HomeKit-enabled accessories. This is certainly not a convincing reason to remove the existing thermostat device, but with the addition of more products to HomeKit support, the idea will become more compelling.
