Living with the Nest 2.0 Thermostat

The Nest is a profound re-imagination of an otherwise stale and uninteresting technology - your home's thermostat. You might not be able to picture yourself getting excited about a thermostat, and for a perfectly good reason, but that's about to change. What you're about to see is a brilliant, intuitive, beautifully designed piece of hardware that makes your controlling your home's temperature fun, smart, and interesting - oh and there's an app! Here's their promo video:

Starting to see why this might be fun? Here's what I mean when I say it is beautifully designed.

Source: Nest.com

The learning thermostat.

I have had the Nest 2.0 for 2 weeks now, so I'm only getting started. This has without question been one of my favorite new toys. Nest 2.0 is pictured above and is 20% slimmer than 1.0. They both run the same 3.0 software and have similar feature sets, though the 2.0 is compatible with more systems. Nest has 4 sensors and connects to your home WiFi network to always be accessible via any computer or smartphone. The first week or so you'll want to program your Nest when you expect to see a change. You can set up a schedule and even still you may make manual changes here and there. You'll notice it starts to get smarter as you use it. 

Nest understands that your life isn't clockwork, your Monday schedule last week might not be your Monday schedule this week. Yet when an unexpected snow storm hits next Monday and you forgot to set the schedule to warm up right before you get home, you won't even need to use the app to do it because it is aware of the weather and will do it for you.

Talking with people who have had the first generation Nest for a year, they say they haven't touched or programmed their thermostat in months even as they transition between seasons, they are just always comfortable. One of those houses was even a more dynamic house with a few people living there and roommates moving in and out periodically, Nest figured it all out.

Nest is smart, eerily smart.

Nest knows the weather outside, it knows when you're home or away, and it knows what temperature keeps your family comfortable and when. It knows the difference between you being home yet asleep and you being away, though I haven't done extensive testing to "trick" it. It did figure out when we left for the weekend after only 1 week of ownership. A big perk for us is that it doesn't misunderstand your dog's motion as thinking you've gotten home. 

Like other smarter thermostats it will inform you when your filter needs to be changed too. Yet unlike many thermostats there is attention to detail and efficiency everywhere you look. As a great example, when you run your AC and your house reaches the desired temperature, it shuts off. What about all the cold air still in the system though? The Nest understands when your home is nearing the desired temperature and shuts off the AC but continues to pump the cool air. This can save you as much as 20%* of your AC run time, that is extraordinary!

*Source: Nest.com

Green.

Nest is designed to keep you comfortable, but also to keep you informed and help you make greener choices. This translates to money in your pocket and feeling good that you've done something good for the planet.

When you're setting your system (or it sets itself) to a temperature that requires less heating or cooling to achieve, you see a small green leaf on the display. It sounds tiny, but it is really powerful feedback. If you were leaving for the afternoon and lowered your heat to say 65 but noticed a leaf when you accidentally went past it to 63, wouldn't you leave it at 63? I have found that just a couple of degrees has made me "greener" nearly every single day.

From the app or web app you can monitor your usage to see when your system is running, what the resulting temperature is, and how that related to the weather outside that day. We just bought our house so we don't have previous years of data to compare bills to, but I know with our previous stagnant single temperature setup we are saving a significant amount of money with our new Nest without question.

The critics.

There are critics of the Nest that claim the Nest is no (or hardly) better than a standard programmable thermostat. Is Nest a programmable thermostat? Well yes, in the same way that a Bentley is a car. (Insert a joke about the cost here!) The Nest is much smarter than any other thermostat, it is much more accessible than most other thermostats (and even thermostats that have apps to control them pale in comparison with app quality and functionality), and frankly it is designed by folks who care. A thermostat doesn't have to be a hideous white brick on your wall.

Cost.

Naturally the biggest drawback here is cost. The Nest 2.0 costs $249 and can be purchased at Amazon.com**, Nest.com, or others. High end programmable thermostats are $150 to $200, and even a decent lower end one is going to cost you $80. The efficiency savings, the convenience of control on-the-go, the beautiful design, and the extremely powerful data it gives you about your system usage, all more than make up for that price.

**At the time of writing Amazon appears to be out of stock and claiming it is $289 and only available through 3rd party retailers, I know this isn't true since that's where I got mine.


I cannot recommend this product more highly. I love my Nest and it was worth every penny. Please feel free to ask questions in the comments. Since I've only had it a short time, I might have forgotten to elaborate on a particular subject, please feel free to let me know and I'll add to my review!