Nest Eco vs ecobee Away vs Honeywell Away
All three save energy while you are out, but work differently. Google Nest Eco is a pair of limits: 40 to 70°F for heating and 76 to 90°F for cooling. ecobee Away is a comfort setting in the schedule that Smart Away can also trigger. Honeywell Home Away is a schedule period or a geofencing setting.
What is the basic difference?
The names sound alike, but each brand built something different. Google Nest Eco is a set of temperature limits that the thermostat can switch to at any time. ecobee Away is one of the comfort settings your schedule moves through, plus a feature that triggers it from motion sensing. Honeywell Home Away is a period in the schedule, or the away half of geofencing in the Resideo app.
| Google Nest Eco | ecobee Away | Honeywell Home Away | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A "Heat to" floor and a "Cool to" ceiling | A comfort setting with its own setpoints | A schedule period, or the Away settings used by geofencing |
| Allowed values | 40 to 70°F heating, 76 to 90°F cooling, or Off | Not stated | Not stated |
| Starts automatically when | Presence sensing finds nobody home, or the home is set to Away | The schedule reaches Away, or Smart Away sees no occupancy for 2 hours in a Home period | The schedule reaches Away, or the last phone leaves the geofence |
| Ends automatically when | Someone comes home (automatic Eco only) | The next scheduled period, or occupancy is detected again | The next period, or the first phone crosses back into the geofence |
| Started by hand | Choose Eco in the mode menu or use Hold > Eco, depending on the model | Not covered in the pages we checked | Not described as a separate mode in the pages we checked |
How does Nest Eco work?
Eco is not a target temperature. While the thermostat shows "Eco", it lets the house drift and only heats if the room falls below "Heat to" or cools if it rises above "Cool to". Google's allowed ranges are 40 to 70°F for heating and 76 to 90°F for cooling, and either limit can be set to Off, in which case the system runs only to hold the Safety Temperature.
Eco starts in three ways: Eco when away (presence sensing decides nobody is home), the home is set to Away in the app, or someone chooses Eco. How it ends depends on the model. A manual Eco on the Nest Learning Thermostat (3rd gen or earlier) and Thermostat E stays until you switch back to heating or cooling. On the Nest Thermostat (2020) it ends at the next scheduled change. Details are on Nest Eco temperatures.
How does ecobee Away work?
Away is one of the comfort settings in an ecobee schedule. ecobee's Smart Home & Away article refers to the Home and Away comfort settings and to a Custom Away option; see ecobee comfort settings. Away has setpoints of its own and runs when the schedule reaches it.
Two ecobee features change that. Smart Away switches a scheduled Home period to Away when the occupancy sensors see nobody for two consecutive hours. Smart Home does the opposite during a scheduled Away period, provided Away has been active for at least an hour. ecobee notes that Smart Away does not use your Away setpoints: it chooses a temperature from which Home comfort can be reached within 30 minutes.
There is one more difference you might feel. During Away activities, ecobee adds an extra 1°F of temperature differential before calling for heating or cooling, so the house drifts a little further than at Home. Unexpected switches are covered in ecobee Smart Away turns on by itself.
How does Honeywell Home Away work?
On Honeywell Home thermostats, Away is a time period. The T5, T5+ and T6 Pro Wi-Fi schedule has four periods per day, and after a schedule reset Honeywell lists these defaults:
| Period | Starts | Cool setpoint(°F) | Heat setpoint(°F) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wake | 6:00 a.m. | 78 | 70 |
| Away | 8:00 a.m. | 85 | 62 |
| Home | 6:00 p.m. | 78 | 70 |
| Sleep | 10:00 p.m. | 82 | 62 |
With geofencing in the Resideo app, Away stops being a clock time. The thermostat uses your Away settings when the last phone leaves the geofence and your Home settings when the first phone returns. On the T9, the home screen says "Using Home settings", "Using Away Settings" or "Using Sleep settings" under the room temperature, and a manual change lasts until you cross the geofence. On the T5, T5+ and T6 Pro Wi-Fi, permanent hold is unavailable while geofencing is on. More in thermostat geofencing.
Which should you rely on?
If your days are predictable, a schedule with an Away period does the job on all three brands, and you always know what the thermostat will do. If your days vary, the automatic versions (Nest Eco when away, ecobee Smart Away, Honeywell geofencing) catch the times a schedule misses, at the cost of occasional wrong guesses. Schedule vs geofencing weighs the two approaches, and vacation hold covers longer trips.
Whichever brand you have, check the actual setpoints before you rely on them. None of the three manufacturers publishes a factory value that applies to every model, apart from the Honeywell Home schedule defaults above. Each brand hub lists the other pages for its thermostats: Google Nest, ecobee and Honeywell Home.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Nest Eco the same as Away?
- Not quite. Eco is the set of temperatures the thermostat uses. Away is a state of your whole home in the Google Home or Nest app. Google says setting the home to Away switches every thermostat to Eco, but choosing Eco by hand does not set the home to Away.
- Does ecobee Smart Away use my Away temperatures?
- No. ecobee says Smart Away does not use the setpoint of your Away comfort setting. It picks a temperature from which the Home comfort setting can be reached within 30 minutes.
- What are the default Away temperatures on a Honeywell Home T5?
- After a schedule reset on the T5, T5+ and T6 Pro Wi-Fi, Honeywell lists an Away period starting at 8:00 a.m. with cooling at 85°F and heating at 62°F. You can change them in the schedule.
- Which one saves the most energy?
- None of the manufacturers compares them, and the savings depend on the temperatures you choose and how long the house is empty. A wider gap from your normal setpoint saves more but takes longer to recover from.