Nice to have articles like this to break down the features of each thermostat. I wasn't interested in Nest's learning feature, I was put off by the poor reviews of the Lyric's geofencing performance, and wanted a do-it-yourself installation. I ended up making the same choice you did with the ecobee3. I've been totally satisfied with my purchase and would go this route again. I love the remote sensors (though you may not want to confuse people with the word "zone," which implies independent HVAC response for each section) and the data collection ecobee offers!