New product: Nest thermostat from Lowes. Anyone use it yet?

Question

I just checked out the new Nest thermostat from lowes. Incredible product, but is it worth the investment at $200? I do higher end renovations and I think this would be an great selling feature. Any thoughts?

www.nest.com

JT Spangler · Answer

Do your research carefully. Nest is developed by former Apple engineers, so as you'd expect, it's beautiful and chock full of innovative features. It's also pushed out for release FAR before it's ready. There are horror stories all over amazon from people who has their Nest brick due to forced firmware updates (yep, once you install it there's no way to not have it automatically update, so think about how often your iOS updates leave things working strangely for a few months), which can leave you with your heat/AC running full blast until someone physically goes to the property to shut off the breaker. It also doesn't work with all HVAC units, and plays funny with multizone systems.

I LOVE technology, and reaaaallllly wanted one of these a year ago. But when I did the reseach, I just couldn't feel good about being an early adopter.

John White · Answer

From what I can tell with the Nest thermostat, it only keeps the temperature within 3 degrees of what you set it at.  That is WAY too big of a variation for me.  I picked up the latest Honeywell, wifi thermostat (I believe I bought it at Home Depot for $249.00), and I love it.  In fact, I purchased two of them for my own home and the app for IOS is outstanding.  It also keeps the temperature exactly where you want it to be.  I also find the user interface a bit more interesting than "The Nest".

John

Darish D. · Answer

It's very "Apple-like" in terms of functionality which makes sense because the founder of Nest was a former Senior President at Apple and played a role in iPod and iPhone development. Having said that, like everything else from Apple, you pay a premium for getting awesome hardware/software integration. I have the new version and it's very cool but not necessary.

Dennis Gavilanes · Answer

Hi All,

I bought the NEST thermostat and installed just to take it away few days later, the main problem I Had with is that the Wi-Fi keeps dropping and had to reset it every time, I called support and the person on the other side was reading the answers from a scrip and the router was the blame. In addition the room temperature reading on the NEST is not the same as the regular thermostat. I contacted a friend of mine that has it for about a year now and he told me that he experiences the same issues but he can live with it. You decide...

John Milliken · Answer

new modern thermostats should always be added. it gives a sense that the unit in the house is newer when it isn't. the nest diffidently will give the illusion of modernest. the nest is easy to use also.

Andrew Ferguson · Answer

I used it in my personal condo and while it works well, it isn't great. I work from home and it really seems to rely on a persons schedule that perhaps works from an office and they leave their house everyday at 8am and return at 5pm. For instance I felt I had to change the temperature a lot and because of that it wasn't able to "learn" my patterns as they change a lot working from home. I went back to a regular thermostat after a few months.

Kyle J. · Answer

That is definitely a cool feature.

Jon Klaus · Answer

Smart phone controlled thermostats should become very popular and competitors will rush to market. Prices will fall quickly before long.  I want one, but I'll wait a little while.

Rob K. · Answer

Kyle J. I think I have the same thermostat as you. I have it programmed to go down at night and kick back up at 5am. The problem is that we don't have a "normal" schedule where we leave at a certain time in the morning and return at the same time in the evening. If we did, I could just program it for those times.

The Nest thermostat can be changed from your phone. If you leave the house and realize that you didn't turn down the heat, you can change it from your phone. It also picks up your habits and starts adjusting for you.

This would've come in handy for me the last time I went to Florida in the wintertime. I turned down the heat to 50. While driving home, I called my neighbor to have him go to my house and crank it up to 70. He answered his phone, but he was out of town for the night and couldn't help me out. Came home to a cold house. With the Nest, I could've turned the heat back up from anywhere.