Rheem EcoNet vs Shade Compass
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Rheem EcoNet
Manage your home's heating, cooling, and hot water systems remotely. Optimize energy usage, set custom schedules, and receive important alerts for maintenance and system performance. This app helps homeowners save on utility bills and maintain ideal comfort levels.
- Smart HVAC control
- Water heater monitoring
- Energy consumption tracking
- Customizable schedules
- Maintenance alerts
- Remote system access
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EcoNet®: Smart Control for Your Home’s Comfort Take complete control of your home’s comfort and energy efficiency. EcoNet provides seamless smart control over your HVAC and water heaters from the Rheem family of brands (Rheem, Ruud, Friedrich, Richmond, Sure Comfort, Russell by Rheem, Durastar). Experience the convenience of managing your home’s climate and hot water needs right from your smartphone. Features: - Smart Control: Easily adjust your heating and cooling settings to maintain the perfect indoor climate. - Smart Monitoring: Monitor and control your water heater’s performance for optimal efficiency and comfort. - Smart Savings: Track your energy consumption and receive tips to improve efficiency and save on utility bills. - Utility Programs: Enroll in utility programs in your area to maximize your savings. - Custom Schedules: Set personalized schedules for your HVAC and water heater to match your lifestyle and maximize energy savings. - Alerts & Notifications: Get real-time alerts and notifications for maintenance reminders, system updates, and potential issues. Quickly share these alerts with your contractor when contact info added at account creation. - Remote Access: Control your home’s systems from anywhere, ensuring comfort and peace of mind whether you’re at home or away. Download EcoNet today and transform the way you manage your home’s comfort and efficiency!
Shade Compass
Visualize the sun's path and your shadow's position throughout the day. Plan outdoor activities, photography, or gardening with augmented reality features and detailed celestial data.
- Live sun and shadow visualization
- Augmented reality sun path
- Object shadow casting
- 24-hour time scrubber
- Golden hour and twilight alerts
- Moon and planet tracking
- Seasonal sun path analysis
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See where the sun will be, where your shadow will fall, and exactly where the shade lands — at any hour, at any spot on earth. Then keep going: garden planning, fishing and hunting windows, UV, air quality, tides, golden hour, and the night sky. Point your phone and the live compass orients to the world around you. Sun direction and altitude sit right on the dial, your shadow is drawn opposite it at true length, and sunrise and sunset are marked at the exact bearings they cross the horizon — with times corrected for the ridge in front of you, not just the flat math horizon. Drag the time scrubber and watch the whole day play out — perfect for a campsite, a patio, a photo shoot, a garden bed, or the shady side of a trail. SEE THE SHADE IN AUGMENTED REALITY • Point the camera and watch the sun's real path trace across your actual yard • Drop a tree, canopy, umbrella, vehicle, pergola, or solar panel and see its true cast shadow • Play a sunrise-to-sunset time-lapse and watch the shade sweep the scene • Tap any spot to read its hours of direct sun — today, or averaged across the year • Scan the whole yard for a full sun-and-shade map (iPhone Pro models with LiDAR) FOR THE GARDEN • "What grows here" — plants scored against your hardiness zone, soil, and measured sun • Frost-anchored planting windows: start indoors, direct sow, transplant, harvest • Projected harvest date and frost margin before you commit to a seed • Lock in a grow plan and push its reminders to your calendar in one tap • Watering guidance from rainfall, evapotranspiration, and a running soil-water balance • A household planner that sizes a garden to actually feed your family FOR ANGLERS, HUNTERS, AND SURFERS • Best Times windows for trout, bass, big game, birds, small game, and surf • Built from sun and moon position, season, and light at your exact coordinates • Fly hatch charts by region, lures with how to fish them, and a reading-water guide • Knot library with step-by-step instructions and a 200-term field glossary • Tides from NOAA harmonic data, plus buoy wave height, period, and direction • River flow and water temperature wherever there's a gauge nearby FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS AND STARGAZERS • Golden hour, blue hour, civil, nautical, and astronomical twilight, and true dark • Sunset quality scored from the cloud layers overhead before you drive out • Starting exposure for the light you're in, plus light direction and polarizer guidance • Moon phase, rise, set, and bearing; visible planets and an AR planet finder • Milky Way, meteor, and aurora windows, with live Kp and solar activity A WEATHER APP BUILT FOR BEING OUTSIDE • Current, hourly, and 10-day, plus a 7-day strip you build from 23 metrics • UV burn timer tuned to your skin type, with safer windows • Air quality with a likely cause — wildfire smoke, ozone, a winter inversion • Weather alerts, frost warnings, and a Lock Screen rain nowcast where available • Thirty years of local storm history and the months that carry the most risk • A plain-language read on whether today is actually worth going outside for ON YOUR WRIST, LOCK SCREEN, AND HOME SCREEN • Apple Watch app — dial, today, live conditions, and best times — plus complications • Widgets for sun, shadow, moon, UV, and the day ahead • Live Activities for golden hour, rain, UV burn, and your next prime window • Ask Siri for a shade report anywhere ANYWHERE, EVEN OFFLINE • Sun, moon, shadow, planting, and every field guide compute on the device itself • 32,000 cities offline, exact coordinates, dropped pins, saved places carried by iCloud • Any date, past or future — plan an October trip, or compare June to December • Month-by-month daylight hours, sun path, and bearings across the whole year One purchase covers iPhone and Apple Watch. No ads. No accounts. No subscriptions. No tracking. No data collection. Just the sun, your shadow, and a straight answer about the day ahead. Frequent and Responsive updates for feature requests and bug fixes!!
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Shade Compass at 100% against Rheem EcoNet's 15%. Shade Compass also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.4) and update cadence (every 10 days vs every 5 weeks). Rheem EcoNet's advantage is price (Free vs $0.99) and ratings volume (16K vs 2). On ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Rheem EcoNet is free to download; Shade Compass costs $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Shade Compass holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Rheem EcoNet has 16K ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 15% of Rheem EcoNet's written reviews are positive against 100% of Shade Compass's.
Rheem EcoNet ships an update every 5 weeks, Shade Compass every 10 days. The most recent releases landed on October 30, 2026 and October 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Rheem EcoNet | Shade Compass |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $0.99 |
| Rating | 4.4 (16K ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 14.7% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 16K — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 5 weeks | Every 10 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, Apple Watch — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 60 MB | 1.2 GB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Rheem Manufacturing Company | Ira Seferovich |
Customer experience
Rheem EcoNet
Shade Compass
Bugs and requests
Rheem EcoNet
Reported bugs
4 issues- Schedule resets or stops working randomly
- App disconnects from water heater frequently
- Vacation/away mode settings not saving properly
- Inability to log in or create account
Requested features
4 requests- Add ability to view current water tank temperature
- Improve scheduling functionality and reliability
- Provide more detailed usage data and analytics
- Allow custom temperature settings for away/vacation mode
Shade Compass
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Rheem EcoNet
No in-app purchases
Shade Compass
No in-app purchases









