I originally purchased the 1st generation of this thermostat. The only thing I didn't like about the 1st gen thermostat was how far it protruded from the wall. On my final day for the return policy of the 1st gen, the 2nd gen was advertised to be released soon. So, I didn't hesitate to uninstall the old thermostat to send it back, pre-order and wait on the 2nd gen. The 2nd gen thermostat's profile in my opinion is perfect for the look and style I desire in my home; It makes my home appear a little more modern, but not too much. The install was easy and it looks great just as with the 1st gen. I noticed a $35 drop in my $120 per month power bill w/the first gen. I have a 2200 sq/ft home w/3bdrm and 2bth that's occupied by only myself and my wife. My AC system is a basic singles stage AC and a two stage heater; I hooked up six wires: O,R,B(C),W2,G & Y. I live in FL and the AC runs at 82 during the day and 78 at night. I'm hoping for about the same performance if not better with this thermostat. I'll admit I did try to go with a programmable Honeywell thermostat which ended up not being compatible with my system while waiting on this order. So my options were keep to my pre-order with the 2nd gen nest or keep the old thermostat from over ten years ago with no features. I'm glad to have decided to go with the 2nd gen Nest.
There are Nest only exclusive cost-saving features on this device. So please no ranting on how this is just another overpriced thermostat for those who are reading reviews and are against this product. Move on to another product where people care instead of being a Debbie downer. My two favorite features of this unit are the auto-away and air-wave technologies (for the A/C) which are probably the two most cost saving features for me. Air-wave shuts down the compressor before the push box. Since the coils are still cold from the compressor running, the thermostat knows how long it takes for your home to get from one temp to another. Depending on this time, the thermostat knows when to shut down the compressor to save power while still getting the home to the desired temp. Auto-away is a feature that shuts off the AC within a programmable range if it detects no one is home. My unit is in a hallway that doesn't see much traffic (I spend most my time in a back office) and this unit still managed to not go into auto-away mode while I'm home. A side note on auto-away though is that it must be trained within the first two weeks before it has an idea of your home activity. Once the unit trains itself, the power saving features will all be automated unless you manually disable them.
As everyone else has claimed, the setup was quick and easy for both the thermostat and wifi to access a personal profile/account. The tools to install the thermostat are generously included with the premium price. Packaging was premium and very Apple-like; a nice presentation.
Yes, like mostly everyone else, I realize $250 is a lot to spend on a thermostat. I don't mind spending that kind of money on something that is going into my home that will be used 24/7. If you don't mind the price hurdle, I'm pretty confident you'll be happy with the performance, company(Nest) and style of this thermostat.
I'm very happy with this thermostat if its anything like the 1st gen in performance. If it doesn't perform, expect a followup to this review. As of now, I'm very pleased assuming the only real differences I'll be expecting from the 1st to 2nd gen is aesthetic appeal.
If you have any questions, I'll do my best to respond. Also, before giving a review a thumbs down, provide a suggestion for making it better. Thanks.
----------update (12-12-12)--------------
I just wanted to mention then 2nd gen is on par with the 1st gen thermostat in cost savings and performance.
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I received and installed my second-gen Nest thermostat about three weeks ago and was initially very happy with it. Simple to install, beautiful, easy to use, it is certainly all that. Unfortunately, it lacks one characteristic that a thermostat MUST have. It is not robust. It fails under circumstances that a $50 hardware store thermostat would have no problems with, and when it fails it DOES NOT FAIL SAFE which is a pretty major problem when you're talking about a device that is controlling expensive heat and cooling (and, in a cold climate, keeping your pipes from freezing!)
I was pretty surprised to come home today to a sweltering-hot apartment when the outside temperature was in the mid-to-high sixties. It's a brand-new apartment, very well insulated, and initially I simply thought that all the sun streaming through the skylights and windows was responsible for the high temperature. The Nest indicated that it was 86 degrees inside and of course, with a set point of 50 degrees, it was obviously not heating. (Right?) I set the temperature to 75 and switched it to cooling mode. Cool air started streaming from the AC vents great. Should cool down in a little while. (Right?) After thirty minutes with the AC on, I was if anything more uncomfortable, so I went over to the Nest again imagine my surprise when I saw that the inside temperature had gone up to 89 degrees! At this point I knew something was very wrong. It took only a few seconds to determine that the Nest had my heating on full bore even while the AC was cooling. No wonder the place was sweltering! I called Nest and after a very short debugging session (the customer service agent had obviously seen this many, many times before) he determined that the Nest had failed in such a way that the heating was stuck on, full-time.
The rep informed me that this was a known issue that Nest's engineers were trying to solve. Apparently the Nest, unlike a cheap hardware store thermostat, is extremely sensitive to voltage "spikes" on the wires that connect it to your HVAC. Such spikes are pretty much par for the course in an HVAC environment those wires are connected to electromechanical relays, transformers, and other old-school electrical gear and regular thermostats are designed to deal with it, which is why you don't have problems with your cheap Honeywell. (The one I replaced with the Nest had been doing its job happily for the better part of a decade.) But this electrical "noise" can make the Nest fail and fail spectacularly, typically by leaving the heat (or cooling) on full time, or else keeping them from coming on. Any of those failure modes could get pretty expensive if you happened to be away when they happen you could burn through a lot of fuel and/or use a lot of electricity, and in the worst case scenario your pipes could freeze and flood your house. Nest knows this, so they are no longer replacing thermostats that fail this way (since their hardware is flawed, any replacement is just going to fail again, and the next time it could be a lot worse). Of course, they won't tell you this in so many words: the company line is that your system (because it exhibits voltage spikes) is "incompatible" with the Nest. Never mind that it is a bog-standard HVAC setup, passed their compatibility test with no issues, and has worked fine for a couple of weeks). Never mind that it works fine with a garden-variety hardware-store thermostat. Naturally Nest doesn't want to admit that their fancy hardware is seriously flawed in its inability to handle the kind of electrical noise that is found on ordinary HVAC control lines, but make no mistake about it: the fault isn't in your system. It's in their thermostat, which isn't designed to handle real-world conditions.
This isn't just a matter of semantics. The problem is that, if you purchased your thermostat from Amazon, Nest wants you to return it to Amazon (not to them). They are explicitly disclaiming any responsibility under their warranty since it's your HVAC system that's "incompatible," not their thermostat that is broken. Presumably if the thermostat fails outside of Amazon's 30-day return window you're out of luck. At least the Nest would make a nice paperweight. This is the part that really shocked me and made me feel that the company must be getting a bit desperate. Reading the online forums, I can see that this is a pretty common problem, and I suspect that Nest financially can't handle the number of returns it would have to handle if it treated this as a warranty issue. Fortunately, my Nest is only 3 weeks old, so I can return it to Amazon, but I really hate to have to do that it seems like an abuse of Amazon's generous return policy, when it's really Nest that should be facing up to their problem. I feel very sorry for those whose devices fail, excuse me, prove to be "incompatible" outside of the return window. At least I kept my old thermostat rather than recycling it as Nest suggests I do!
Nest has a serious engineering problem on their hands and I believe they are scrambling to do something about it before it all comes crashing down. (The rep offered to put me on a mailing list to be informed when their engineers fix the issue, presumably so that, I can court disaster again by buying the next version.) They've had a lot of really great press (not undeserved, because their device *is* really nice, when it works) but that can only carry them so far if the news gets out that their $250 thermostat could leave you overheated or flood your house, they're going to lose that momentum. So it's not surprising that they're trying to frame this as "merely" a compatibility issue. But if I had a Nest at this point, even if it seemed to be working OK, I would still be really, really nervous about it, for two reasons: (1) the device is not robust to typical levels of electrical noise; a voltage spike could happen on any system at any time, possibly breaking the Nest and subjecting to you God-knows-what financial loss, and (2) it's not clear that the company would stand behind their product if that did happen.
Advice: stay far, far away from this product.
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As a certified licensed HVAC contractor for 32 years and Certified Nest Reseller in Scottsdale Arizona I have personally re-installed and troubleshot over 50 of the Nest thermostats. We like the Nest and it's concept though we have been experiencing multiple problems with regards to error messages, units operating erratic, systems switching from ac to heat, compressors cycling into internal overload, burnt up control boards and relays to name a few. I do admit it's great for business, though once we show up for service, we now own the call and are responsible for making the system work. The newest problem was this last week on a commercial building with 4 new AC units on the roof and 4 new Nests. We have logged in 6 additional non chargeable hours to troubleshoot and replacements in a 1hr job to change out all 4.
To keep it short, these are the facts;
*Installed 4 nests, all AC units are same brand, 2 Nests are functioning
*Nest #1, installed, ran for 1 day went into heat, troubleshot replaced control cable and determined bad base, replaced with new from supplier. Installed new Nest, ran 3 cycles, began chattering compressor contactor relay (shorted from 26v to 16v) and compressor went off on overload. Replace Nest with conventional thermostat, unit is now operational for last 2 days.
*Nest #2, customer wanted nest in his office, shut off system power, removed Nest head, relocated line in office, reinstalled base and applied power to system, Nest displayed error message on G terminal as no power and system had no fan, removed head metered lines and jumped fan circuit and fan came on. Replaced Nest with conventional thermostat, unit is operational.
*I called the Nest Tech support and was informed that there is a problem with the "FET" (field effect transistor) inside of the base that they are having problems with. Talked with commercial support for 45 minutes, there was nothing they could help with that we have already done. We are not sure at this point where we stand with the Nest folks and are waiting for their response from them concerning these issues.
UPDATE 9-22-2013
9-22-2013
We are a licensed HVAC contractor in Arizona. We have discussed with product support and consulted for an hours with Nest service techs of multiple problems associated with 2nd generation thermostat subases. We have yet to hear back from the support team in regards to sudden failures of the Nest thermostats.
Problems found installing new Nest thermostats that will result in complete Nest replacement and possible component replacement include;
*wiring errors in the G terminal after running for a week
*failure to operate fan with relocation of Nest from one office wall to another office wall
*uncontrollable
*compressor relay chatter and compressor overload shutdown
*system going into heat while in cooling mode
*ac units tripping breakers
*costly control boards on ac units shorting out and needing to be replace
*system settings changing from O to B and going into heat mode
*ac units running without the Nest head installed
*wifi not responding to commands with regards to setting changes
We are still waiting on the Nest team response to us, during this time we are definitely not recommending this product to our customers or anyone else.
Honest reviews on Nest Learning Thermostat - 2nd Generation T200577
Picked mine up from the store today.
***DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REMOVE THE FILM FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE UNIT*** I am one of those remove plastic wrap from everything kind of guys. Guess what, that isn't plastic wrap on the entire bottom of the Nest ring itself. It's the sensors. Don't scuff up your Nest!
It took longer to unbox it then it did for me to install it. It helps that I only had 2 wires, red & white to connect. Connected to my Wifi easily. It then downloaded a software/hardware update 3.01. After that it was pretty painless.
Looks great on the wall. If you think the stainless ring reflects the color of your wall like they say it does, then you are willing it to happen.
I never had the Nest 1 to compare it to but this one is very sharp looking. Everything in the box was well packaged.
Mainly got this unit for the fuel savings and the fact that it does not need a "C" wire to work like every other fancy thermostat.
Android app works perfectly over 4G or Wifi. Running ICS on a Droid Razr.
Unit does have an Anti-Freeze temp setting since someone asked.
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Day one with the Nest, and I'm on the fence at the moment...
I finally accepted that the days of "I'm at work from 8:00 to 5:00, so stop using the heat / ac" programming with my trusty Honeywell VisionPRO were coming to an end with my wife and daughter in and out of the house at different times throughout the day. So, I was really taken with the auto-learn auto-away functionality.
Setting up my thermostat should have been pretty straightforward, having only four wires. But what would normally be a few minutes worth of work turned in to a night of frustration. Near midnight, I finally gave in and checked to see if their support people were still around. Turns out, they were. In under a minute, I was talking to a US-based support person. We went through some information gathering, and just as actual work was going to begin, the Nest thermostat magically started working. "Weird. We'll have to keep an eye on that." Yeah, I'd have to concur.
The menus were easy to navigate, and a couple of minutes later, my Nest account was setup and my thermostat was reporting in. The settings on the site are much easier to use than the walk-up menus, so don't get sucked in to playing with the menus if time is important. (Personally, I dig the menus.) After a short while, I noticed that the thermostat seems to stop reporting in after ten minutes. And... it doesn't seem to come back, until you walk up to it and tap it. I'd wonder if it was a problem with network connectivity if I wasn't on the same wireless network in the same room as the thermostat and wireless router. "Always Connected"? Not so much. How am I supposed to control it when I'm away, if I can't even control it from my couch?
Speaking of walking up to it, for a thermostat packed full of sensors, it can't seem to figure out when someone's standing in front of it. Although it has a setting to turn the display on when it senses motion, it doesn't pick up anything from me until I'm an inch or two from touching the thermostat.
Maybe there are software updates coming. Maybe the energy savings will make the cosmetic problems less important. Maybe I just got a crap unit. In any case, this product seems to be for early adopters who are willing to deal with some bumps in the road. If you expect flawless performance, you probably want to wait for the third generation, or at least a few updates.
UPDATE: This will be the first update of several.
While I did call Nest Support last night, I didn't mention anything about the sensor not "seeing" me, or the network connection dropping. Yet, at noon (Eastern) someone called about the issues I reported in this review. I haven't been able to return the call just yet, but before anyone takes my review too negatively, I wanted to make sure that everyone knew that if nothing else, Nest's support is incredible.
2ND UPDATE: The support person at Nest has been great with follow-up calls, and some progress has been made. The sensors seem to be learning, which is a big plus. And, it's starting to look like my furnace is quirky about giving full power to the wiring. After some troubleshooting, I'm able to consistently reproduce the same wiring "problem" that the Nest sees.
*So, a potential warning to owners of newer Goodman equipment*: it's looking like the system board doesn't push full power until the system has been powered on for about ten minutes. If you're fascist about safety and turn off your furnace power to work on 24V wiring (guilty), it seems that the Nest will complain about Y1 or RC arbitrarily until the system has been powered on for a while.
3RD UPDATE:
Now that I've had Nest for just over a week, things have started going downhill again. Gone are the days when the display would notice me walking by. Now we're back to waving a hand in front of the display to get it to light up.
Well... except for this evening. It decided at 6:52 that we were away. We had left at 4:50, but for the first "Hey, you're not here" I guess it was better than nothing. When we got back, the heat came on, and everything seemed normal for a little while.
Then it started getting warm. After a brief time, I went up to the Nest and found that it decided to turn itself up to 80. I caught it at 74, and turned it down to 72 where I left it.
In summary: For as polished as it seems, Nest is looking more schizophrenic as time progresses.
4TH UPDATE (10/30/2012):
And I'm docking a star.
After a couple of nights of "Why is it so hot in here? Oh, the dumb thermostat made it 80 again," I realized that for some mysterious reason, my Nest had created a new auto-schedule to make it 80 every day at midnight.
Why 80 and not 78, or 81? Who knows? I've never set it higher than 73, so I couldn't guess where that number came from. However, I did lose my green leaf for the day. Was it because 80 is an unreasonable setting? Was it because I manually intervened? Who knows. Nest certainly won't tell me.
What it will tell me, is that yesterday, the house was empty at 10:30 in the morning. It was actually empty at 8:25, but it's not like I bought a relatively expensive device to know better. I can't say I'm entirely shocked, because it seems to have stopped paying attention to nearby motion again. Great.
The thing is, getting the daily reports online really does tell a tale. I absolutely see the value in the product -if it worked properly. I've decided to exchange mine today, to see if a replacement is any better.
5TH UPDATE:
Well, my replacement hasn't arrived yet. I cleared out the schedule, and once again "Gee... it seems kind of warm."
This time, instead of the thermostat being set beyond 72, it's set right... it just happens to be orange (showing that the heat cycle is active) and the actual thermometer shows that I'm at 74... no... 75... I set it to "Off" on the web interface and set the fan to "Always On". The display is black, shows it's set to 72, with the fan on, and "Heating"... 76... 77... Well, there was no "click" and the furnace is still going... 78... It's been five minutes, so there's a reasonable cool-down window... 79... 80... Breaker time.
Yeah, the stupid Nest thermostat wouldn't turn my furnace off this time. My months-old furnace. I did a hard reset, let it reboot, set the fan back to "Always On", and now it's sitting there happily doing nothing.
We'll see how the new one goes, but for everyone's sake, I hope mine's defective.
6TH UPDATE (11/16/2012):
If anyone's following my saga, I've been running on the new Nest thermostat for about a week now, and so far, it hasn't jacked my furnace to 80, so that's a positive thing. It did decide that it should schedule 72 for 4 p.m. out of the blue, but that's better than 80.
That's probably the only positive thing though. The new one seems to have a much wider temperature variance before it will heat or cool, so setting it to 72 means you could be touching 70 before the furnace comes on.
Motion sensing is also as dismal as can be. Sometimes it notices me. Most of the time, I have to wave my hand at it.
Since it now has to "learn" everything again on its own, expect a 7th update for Auto-Away and automatic scheduling.
7TH UPDATE (11/26/2012) Cyber Monday Edition!:
I believe it was Flavor Flav who first said "Don't believe the hype." It was as true then, as it is now, though I guess now I'm talking about a thermostat and Flav was talking about... okay, bad analogy, I guess.
In any case, here's my final verdict:
*If you think it's cool to be able to control your heating and cooling system remotely, this is a fairly elegant and device-agnostic solution.
*If you think friends and family will come marvel at your expensive thermostat, this fits the bill nicely.
*If you want your home's temperature to be a specific number, forget you ever saw this item. Even when you set it to an explicit temperature, it often allows a 1 2 degree variance on either side.
*If Auto-Away was a selling feature and you expect it to notice nobody's home in under two hours' time, forget it. Two hours is the shortest time its taken for this thermostat to figure out the house is empty.
*If you're thinking that huge energy savings are going to offset the price, think again. Now that I've had this for an entire electric / gas billing cycle, my changes are (drumroll please): 8% more electricity than last year, 0% more gas. The temperature here has been roughly the same as last year, but I did install a new high-efficiency furnace and AC to replace the 15 year-old one that was in last year, so... uh... you do the math there.
I may have another update or two in me, but after two units, I'm not at all impressed.
FINAL UPDATE: 12/13/2012
After weeks of crazy thermostat settings, a higher energy bill, and lots of frustration, the Nest Learning Thermostat is officially gone. I've replaced it with the ecobee EB-STAT-02 Smart Thermostat 4 Heat-2 Cool with Full Color Touch Screen, and I'm not looking back.
