Slide 2 Slide 3 Slide 4 Previous Next CNET Editors' Rating 5.0 stars Spectacular CNET Editors' Rating 5.0 stars Spectacular - Overall rating: 9.6
- Design: 10.0
- Features: 9.0
- Performance: 10.0
The good: Easy to install and easy on the eyes, the Nest Learning Thermostat learns your heating and cooling preferences over time, so you don't have to program it. Wi-Fi networking and tasteful apps let you control and monitor your Nest from afar.
The bad: At $250, the Nest is so very expensive, and large homes may need more than one.
The bottom line: The second generation of the Nest Learning Thermostat puts this device even further ahead of the (nearly nonexistent) competition.
Within a week of installing the first-generation Nest Learning Thermostat in my house last spring, I decided to buy my review unit rather than return it to the company. When a tech journalist pays $249 for a thermostat, you know it's a special kind of thermostat. Fast-forward seven months, and I'm still a devotee, so I was excited to get my hands on the second generation of the Nest Learning Thermostat (still $249).
The newer Nest works off the same premise: because so few homeowners actually set up programmable thermostats, the Nest saves money and time by learning your household patterns and programming itself. The physical design of the second-gen device remains sleek and elegant, but with Nest Labs took customer feedback to heart, making some physical refinements and working out compatibility with a wider range of home heating and cooling systems. The changes are simple, but pleasing. I'll update this review to cover those changes, but much of my experience -- and review -- remains the same.
To cut straight to the chase: Nest works. In the first few days, the thermostat I tested figured out that despite our many comings and goings, my family typically likes the house to be 68 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, and an energy-saving 64 degrees when we usually go to bed around 11 p.m. Over time during my first run, the Nest cleverly differentiated between our weekday and weekend patterns and automatically heated up later on weekend mornings and ran throughout the day when we are more often home. As with the first-generation device, the second-gen Nest Learning Thermostat is strikingly easy to install without professional help, and it looks lovely on the wall.
The slim, second-gen Nest reflects surrounding color off its stainless steel bezel.
(Credit: Lindsey Turrentine/CNET)But the startling joy of the Nest thermostat comes from the side benefits of a networked thermostat and from the attention to detail the Nest team has paid to design. The first-generation Nest Learning Thermostat was the most beautiful, intuitive home automation device I'd seen, and the new version tops the old. Each Nest's internal software as well as the iOS and Android apps continue to receive updates years after you purchase the device, so these informative apps improve continuously.
The newest 3.0 software -- available automatically on older Nest devices and apps today as well -- serves up an energy-use dashboard that should make a conservationist out of anyone. Plus, I can pick up my smartphone and use it to turn my Nest thermostat up from bed when I wake up in the morning. Other thermostats from Honeywell and Ecobee allow for basic, app-based remote control, too, but none with the simplicity and self-teaching of the Nest.
Nest's design: More iPod than thermostat Nest took the rectangular, button-littered digital thermostat and chucked it. The Nest thermostat takes a page from the original iPod playbook (no surprise, since Nest was famously founded by former Apple engineers) and built the hockey-puck-size thermostat around a round screen. The entire housing, made of glass, plastic, and brushed aluminum, is a button and a scroll wheel combined. The second-generation device improves on the original by thinning the profile by 15 percent and making the entire housing one piece of aluminum, so that it better reflects the colors of the wall behind it. All driving happens by rotating the entire thermostat and pushing to select. It's intuitive and satisfying to confirm choices with a subtle, muted clicking sound.
The second-generation Nest (left) is 15 percent slimmer than the first. More importantly, the bezel is a single, elegant piece of metal.
(Credit: Lindsey Turrentine/CNET)The round screen is bright, cheerful, and easy to understand, with heating and cooling designated by both color and by number. A green leaf shows up when you're making a temperature choice that Nest considers energy saving. My kids can't stop touching the thermostat to explore the menus, and they instantly understand how Nest works. (Which is a bit of a liability, since the Nest is theoretically learning from all their enthusiastic fiddling.) My only complaint here, and it's a small one, is that the round interface doesn't leave quite enough room for some words in the setup menus, which leaves them awkwardly cut off or hanging beyond the borders of the screen.
All the Nest setup happens on the device itself, which is gratifying if you're the kind of gadget hound who wants nothing more than to get your hands on the gear and get it working. I would like to be able to change some settings remotely via the app -- typing in a long Wi-Fi key by dialing the bezel can take a while -- but really, once you've installed the Nest, you won't need to touch it often. I now primarily control the Nest from the Nest apps installed on both my phone and my iPad. (More on those charming apps later.)
Nest's iPad app (and all the mobile apps) displays the weather via charming illustration. This is what the Nest iOS app looked like during a rainstorm outside my house. Nest thermostat features lurk within There's a lot going on inside the Nest Learning Thermostat, but you can't tell at first. Once you plug in the device and set the target temperatures, there's not much else to look at.
The Nest screen flickers on automatically whenever you walk by and learns from you every time you raise or lower the heat. After a couple of days, the Learning menu begins to show what the thermostat has picked up. It will set some initial schedule points (say, it will turn down automatically around bedtime) and will figure out how long it takes your heater or your air conditioning unit to reach a given target temperature based on past performance.
This target temperature calculation wasn't particularly meaningful in the first generation of the Nest. Read some Amazon reviews and you'll find -- especially for families living in extreme climates -- a lot of head scratching about why Nest didn't use this feature to get a jump start on heating or cooling. Generation 2, however, makes the most of it.
Not only does the newer version work with a wider range of home heating and cooling systems (95 percent of the low-voltage market, according to Nest's rep, now including two-stage AC units and three-stage heating systems), it now connects to emergency heating units and whole-home humidifiers. Nest then uses the time-to-temp calculations to bring specific types of systems online when it's appropriate for that technology. Called "System Match," the settings tell your Nest to make choices based on the type of heating and cooling units in your house. So, for instance, a radiant heat system that may take 30 minutes to raise the temperature 5 degrees in your home will come on well before your desired temperature change to make sure the house is comfortable exactly when you want it that way.
The second-gen Nest uses different algorithms based on the type of system your home uses.
(Credit: Lindsey Turrentine/CNET)One of my favorite Nest features, besides being able to control my thermostat from anywhere, including my office and my bed, is the Auto Away feature. Because the thermostat senses motion around it, it automatically shuts down your heating or cooling when you're away. The first-generation device took about 2 hours to declare you "away," but the new Nest learns your family's patterns more precisely, according to Nest, in theory saving more energy. I have only had a couple of days to test this, so I haven't seen the change yet, but I'll update this review once I'm confident that the shorter Auto Away is working.
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