Emerson Sensi Review

Today is a little bit different, we’re reviewing something that I bought and has been in my house for a couple of months. It is a Wi-Fi thermostat from Emerson called the Sensi. Now I know, a lot of people are familiar with Wi-Fi thermostats from Nest, the little round guy that has LED screen, it’s great, it goes on your wall and it tries to adjust the temperature for you when you’re not there to save you money, it’s lovely. I used one for a little while to review and send it back, it’s just a little bit too expensive for me. Since then I’ve been looking for another Wi-Fi thermostat that was more in my price range and that maybe didn’t have all those bells and whistles. I want to be able to control the thermostat from my phone or from the wall obviously. I also want to set a schedule if I want, turn it up and down at will.

What’s in the Box?

The box contents are very basic, it includes the thermostat, two screws,two wall anchors, warranty paperwork, two batteries, security code and backplate. The backplate has a tiny level on, I think it’s a nice touch.

What makes Sensi Unique?

Sensi is an affordable alternative in a world where everything is blindly automated. If you look at it on the wall it’s a plain-looking thermostat but it packs a punch. It talks to your Wi-Fi so you have total control over it from your phone. It takes about 10 minutes to install just like any other thermostat. It’s got a baseplate and posts for the wires, it’s got the front part that snaps on that have the screen. Below are some screen shots of Sensi app that I took during installation and Scheduling.

When you download the Sensi app once you buy the thermostat and the app actually walks you through how to install it. Which I found amazing because there was actually a step where the app asked me take a picture of old wiring and switched the camera on. You can see this step in the middle screen shot above. This little touch made me fall in love with it. There are also videos in the app explaining you other steps of the installation. Since it runs on two AA batteries it doesn’t have to have a C wire or a power wire coming from your air conditioner according to Emerson.

Pros

What can you do with it once you get it installed and setup? You can set up multiple schedules, right now I’ve got three different schedules in my house because the way we work, my wife is a teacher and she comes home at different times of the week, I have a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, a Tuesday-Thursday schedule and then during the weekends when we’re both home we just have it set to be the same temperature all the time. With Sensi, it was really easy to set that up and had no problem.

Any time if I want to turn the temperature down or up it’s a simple button push on my phone or at the wall and it just happens. I couldn’t be happier with the Sensi. It’s exactly what I was looking for because it’s a basic Wi-Fi thermostat that lets me control it and nothing else. It doesn’t try and guess when I’m home and when I’m not home and raise or lower things, it just lets me have the control which is exactly what I want.

Do not forget what you name your thermostat on Sensi app because if you have Amazon Echo and try to give voice commands to change the temperature, it will require you to say the same word. I set it “man cave”, and forget about it afterward, it took me a half an hour to figure out why voice commands are not working.

Cons

Its design is mediocre at best, but it’s normal for a programmable thermostat. Compare to other more expensive models, it looks outdated. There is also the problem of long periods of not connecting to the server with Emerson Sensi. Hopefully, they will fix their server issues soon because not being able to connect to it with your phone is unacceptable.

Sensi does not work with Google Home or IFTT directly. But there is a workaround. How to get Sensi work with Google Home and IFTT? We had to download Wink App and use Wink App shortcuts to use IFTT and Google Home. You don’t have to buy the Wink Hub to make it work. It still works but you have to go an extra step to get there.

Overall thumbs-up for Sensi. Usually, companies send me things to review and I check them out then I send them back. Now this one I went out and spent my money. I really think that if you’re in the market for a Wi-Fi thermostat this is the one you should really take a hard look at.