Control furnace stages w/thermostat or let furnace control them?

I'm going to install a WiFi thermostat so I can control the temperature in our main residence remotely (we are gone for months at a time at our vacation home). Three years ago I had a two-stage Bryant furnace installed. Just recently I took a look at the thermostat wiring and noticed there were only four wires in the cable. I'm going to pull a new six conductor cable for the new thermostat, and I'm wondering if I should let the thermostat control the heat stages instead of the furnace. Since there is only one wire controlling heat now, I'm assuming the switches on the control board are set to allow the furnace to select when the heat runs on high.

Since the thermostat is basically on the other side of a wall from the furnace, it would have been simple to have run a new thermostat cable with more conductors at the time of installation. Was this just laziness, or is there little advantage to letting the thermostat control the heat stages?

 

What I've found by Google search:

Thermostat has the advantage of knowing: 1) current temp 2) set point 3) rate of temperature rise

Furnace only knows current run-time, and run-time history. So the thermostat has better information on which to make the decision to kick into high or not.

 

A bunch of installers out there don't want to deal with a two stage 'stat. It is cheaper/easier to let the furnace do the work as most of the time the customer doesn't know the difference. Using a good thermostat that only calls for 2nd stage when needed will give you less noise and more stable temperatures.

 

I have to agree.

If you decide to switch over to a two stage stat.... make sure you understand the programming parameters and steps first.