Best Smart Vents for Ecobee Thermostats

If you have an Ecobee thermostat and you’re looking for the best smart vent, it may be hard to decide which direction to go. I’m here to tell you that there are only a couple of viable options.

Here we’ll review two of the best smart vent products that can integrate with Ecobee from their key features, what you’d get from the integration with Ecobee, and their pros/cons.

Without further ado, let us begin.

Flair Smart Vents

Check out Flair prices on Amazon by clicking here.

Key Features:

• Dedicated room-by-room control.
• Individual controls for each room with auto-balancing mode.
• Flair Puck-Flair Smart Vent integration to create a truly wireless smart HVAC system
• Double the battery capacity than most other smart vent products
• You can install the smart vent wired so you wouldn’t need to replace the battery forever
• Third-party integrations with various smart home systems and appliances, in this case, including Ecobee. 

How Flair Smart Vents Work With Ecobee

Here is an overview on the features offered via the integration between Flair Smart Vents (and Flair Puck) with Ecobee thermostats.

The basic integration between Flair and Ecobee thermostats is that Flair leverages Ecobee’s already superior smart technology to take Flair’s capabilities much further. You can also control the Ecobee SmartThermostat directly from the Flair App via the Room Tile feature.

Flair Smart Vents and Pucks can integrate seamlessly with Ecobee and Ecobee Room Sensors.

• Ecobee Room Sensors

Besides the Ecobee thermostats, Flair can integrate with Ecobee Room Sensors that will let us know when any room runs hot or cold. Flair Smart Vents and Pucks can then use this data to redirect airflow and personalize the perfect temperature in each room.

• Automatically Save Energy

Since one of the key qualities of Flair Smart Vent system is automation, Flair claims that you can save up to 30% of your HVAC utility bill by using both Flair and Ecobee thermostats.

• Personalize Temperature for Each Room

With Ecobee integration, you can use Flair to personalize the temperatures of different rooms. For example, you can set the baby’s room to 68 degrees and keep your main bedroom to 72 degrees.

• Mini Split and Window AC Integration

Flair App can also connect the window AC and/or mini-split with your Ecobee units. This can be a very useful feature so you can create an all-around smart HVAC system.

Pros and Cons of Flair Smart Vent 

Pros:

• Very affordable with great overall value. Great set of features and versatile configuration. For instance, you can install one Puck for each room or just one Puck altogether.
• Seamless integration with Ecobee, easy to install with excellent functionalities.
• Reliable with great smart automation and room-by-room temperature control. It can effectively save money in the long run.
• Great battery life, and can also install it wired
• Can integrate easily with existing HVAC systems (window AC, mini splits, heater, etc.) with Puck’s IR blaster
• Great Flair app with an intuitive interface especially zoning interface

Cons: 

• You need to purchase at least one Puck to integrate with Ecobee
• Battery compartments are made of plastic and not very durable

Our Verdict

The key highlight of the Flair Smart Vent is its affordability. Yet it’s not, by all means, a cheap product, with a rich set of features and decent build quality. It offers a long battery life which, based on our test, is 2 times longer than most smart vents available in the market. 

Our focus in this review is obviously the integration with Ecobee. However, Flair also offers great integration with various other smart home products and systems like Samsung SmartThings and Google Nest (including the popular Nest Thermostat). Flair also offers an open API architecture, so it can integrate with any devices if you have the know-how.

Flair smart vent is offered in four different sizes: 

• 4” x 10”
• 4” x 12”
• 6” x 10”
• 6” x 12”

These sized cover the majority of household vents.

Keep in mind – Flair has its own thermostat/smart sensor device, dubbed the Flair Puck. So, even if you already have your Ecobee thermostat and/or room sensor, you’d still have to purchase at least one Puck to connect with the Ecobee devices.

The integration with Ecobee works flawlessly, and you get the full functionality to automate the Flair Smart Vent for better room-by-room control. 

Overall, it’s a great, affordable smart vent system with a great set of initial features, versatile, and seamless integration with Ecobee thermostats and Room Sensors. 

Check out our complete review on Flair Smart Vents here.

Keen Smart Vents

Check out current pricing on Keen Smart Vents by clicking here.

Key Features

• Room-by-room control capabilities with auto-balancing mode
• Decent battery life (2+ years)
• Zigbee (IEEE 802.15.4) protocol
• Seamless integration with Ecobee devices, but also third-party integrations with Google Nest, Lowes Iris, SmartThings, and so on.
• Magnetic front panel design, for easier and more secure installations

How Keen Smart Vents Work With Ecobee

Here is an overview on the features offered via the integration between KeenSmart Vents with Ecobee thermostats. In general, integrating your Ecobee thermostat with the Keen Smart Vent activates three features:

• Multiple thermostats

You can easily integrate multiple Ecobee thermostats and smart sensors.

• Temperature limit

Keen smart vents can use data from Ecobee thermostats and Room Sensors to achieve the target temperature of each room, including controlling the HVAC mode and state. 

You’ll gain a new feature on the Keen Home App called Temperature Limit, which as the name suggests, you can use to set a target temperature for each room and your Smart Vents will automatically close when this limit is reached. 

This is a very useful feature to perfectly adjust the temperature of each room, and prevent rooms from being too hot or too cold. 

• Hold temperature

You can configure the Ecobee’s “hold” temperature from the Keen Home App. This is useful for various applications like cooling down the bedroom before you arrive at your home or heating your home while you are away. 

• Assign zones

Group rooms by assigning zones with each zone to distinct Ecobee thermostats.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Impressive integration with Ecobee with great extra features
• Magnetic front panel design allowing easier installation and a more secure fit
• Great third party integration with various smart hubs and smart home appliances
• Easy installation and can easily replace your existing vents
• User-friendly and intuitive Keen Home App
• Room-by-room zoning

Cons:

• Scheduling option doesn’t allow exact time setting, so it’s sometimes imprecise
• Need a Keen Smart Bridge to operate a system
• Clunky WiFi connectivity and sometimes produce connection issues
• Somewhat inconsistent in functionality

Our Verdict

Keen is one of the most well-known smart vent brands available on the market, and one of the key highlights is its room-by-room capabilities. 

In fact, Keen allows us to precisely micromanage individual rooms around the house. This is useful if, for example, you have a baby room and need it to be slightly warmer than your main bedroom.

Keen offers a really good integration (in theory) with Ecobee thermostats and Room Sensors, but it’s important to note that you’d need to also purchase a Keen Smart Bridge to allow the integration. The integration can be fairly seamless, but it seems that some units are better built than others.

Similar to Flair, Keen smart vents are available in four different sizes:

• 4” x 10”
• 4” x 12”
• 6” x 10”
• 6” x 12”

Keen offers trim kits, which is a feature Flair doesn’t have. These kits can make existing vents work with other openings:

• 4″ x 14″
• 8″ x 10″
• 8″ x 12″
• 6″ x 14″
• 8″ x 14″
• 10″ x 10″
• 12″ x 12″

Keen Smart Vents are slightly more expensive than Flair, but you’d only need one Smart Bridge and the Smart Bridge itself is slightly cheaper than the Flair Puck. If you are planning to use Ecobee thermostats and Room Sensors, however, Flair is still a more cost-effective option (since you’d only purchase one Puck).

Keen has worse battery life than Flair, although it’s still pretty decent and can last for around 2 years.  There have bee reports of faulty models draining batteries very quickly though.

Each vent offers a built-in multi-color LED that can produce various colors to signal different things, which can be pretty useful. Also, it offers an Intuitive installation that is easy to use with its magnetic plate design. 

Overall, an impressive product and a pioneer in the industry.

Conclusion

Adding smart vents to your HVAC system can improve your home comfort while saving electricity. Which brand to go with for your Ecobee SmartThermostat is the question.

Flair Smart Vents are slightly cheaper than Keen’s but Flair Puck (its mandatory thermostat+sensor) is more expensive than Keen Smart Bridge. If you want to integrate the smart vents with Ecobee, you’d need only one Flair Puck, so Flair is still the more cost-efficient option especially if you have a lot of rooms.

More importantly, Flair vents have better functionality and are just more dependable. I’d steer away from Keen for now, at least until they improve their product line.

You can also check out our complete guide on smart vents here.