Nest Thermostat Review: 2 out of 10
I bought a Nest thermostat, partly to learn about it from a professional standpoint, and partly because I was excited to try it out. People are raving about them.Bottom line: after several days of trying it out and setting it up, I got so angry at it that I took it off the wall, put back the ancient one that it was replacing, boxed it up, and I'm returning it. I *never* return *anything*, so this is notable.
Nest Sucks at Being a Thermostat
The thing that's wrong with Nest is that it isn't very good at its basic function: being a thermostat. There are two things that it should do:
- Determine the temperature in the room, and the desired temperature, and try to make the room be the desired temperature.
- Turn the furnace on and off.
On the first point, yes, it kind of does that, but it doesn't show you the current temperature in the room -- only the desired temperature. It knows the current temperature in the room, right? And every other thermostat on the market shows you both temperatures, right? So why is it that there is literally no way to see the current temperature in the room? The only answer I can think of is: "design". We didn't want to mess up the beautiful display by showing you two numbers, because that would look bad. Right. Good decision.
On the second point, turning the furnace on/off, the brand-new 3rd Generation Nest with a fresh software update ... fails miserably. The furnace runs for a while, then I think when the room temperature is just about the desired temperature, it starts to cycle the furnace on/off every 3- 4seconds, for quite a number of minutes. As a programmer, I'm pretty sure this is because the temperature sensor is not quite accurate enough, so when it's on the line between 68 and 69, let's say, it flips back and forth (maybe the temperature is 68.5643 and it rounds off to 68 then to 69 then back to 68 as the temperature fluctuates 0.001 degrees.
This is so basic to the functionality of a thermostat that they probably have internal brown-bag lunches on this topic at Honeywell, when you join the thermostat engineering group. Hysteresis, they call it. Except they don't seem to have thermostat engineers at Nest, just "user experience designers."
Fail.
Nest is Not That Helpful
Okay, it sucks at being a thermostat, but isn't it awesome as an Internet of Things poster child? Sort of. The app is nice, and it does show remote status pretty well, and remote control (except for that part about "what temperature is the room, anyway?). But it's focused on saving energy, which is great, but it is not very focused on making me warm on a cold day, which is the other reason for having a thermostat.
Auto-Away
Nest has a feature they call Auto-Away, which uses the built-in motion sensor to decide whether or not you're home (a pretty good idea) and turns the furnace down when you're not around. This would be great, except for WHEN YOU ARE HOME, and just NOT IN FRONT OF THE THERMOSTAT.
Motion detector delays are pretty standard, right? Like your motion detector light fixture on your front porch. There's a switch on there to decide how long a delay you want.
Nest's Auto-Away feature has exactly one control: ON or OFF. That's it. You can't set the delay for how often you walk by the thermostat. It seems to have a really short one, like 10 minutes, after which it decides you aren't home and TURNS DOWN THE HEAT. That is so completely not helpful, on a cold day.
When you find yourself getting out of your chair many times during a day and walking into the room with the thermostat in it and waving your arms, to try to make the heat go back on, you start to realize that the product is badly designed and implemented.
Remote Control
Which brings me to the last feature, the ability to control the furnace from someplace else. This is totally great, and works well. AND YOU NEED IT, becuase you have to turn Auto-Away off, because it sucks and that's your only choice (ON or OFF). But if Auto-Away is off, then you have to turn it off remotely if you are Away, and forgot to turn the heat down.
Fail. Epic fail, all in all, because it has all the ingredients of being awesome, but absolutely sucks at doing its basic job.
Shame on Google, for buying them and placing such high success value on a product which just really isn't awesome at all.
30 comments:
Hey Glenn, I couldn't agree more. Earlier this year I tried several smart thermostats by Nest and Ecobee. After many months of pulling my hair out, I finally gave up. I decided that smart thermostats are simply trying to be too smart, and they fail at performing their most basic task.
I eventually found the perfect thermostat for my needs: The Honeywell Prestige 2. It's a "dumb" thermostat that was released about 5 years ago, but it's modern enough to support Internet control.
It has several nice features:
• It's not smart. You simply set the temperature, and it tries to maintain it.
• It has a color LCD display, with a reasonable UI.
• It has a remote sensor/remote control that you can carry around your house.
• It has an outdoor sensor, so you can see the outdoor temperature.
• If you buy the Honeywell RedLink Gateway you can control the temperature from your smartphone or computer
• There is an optional portable button that lets you change between Home/Away/Vacation at the push of a button. (Put that near your entry door.)
Anyway, good luck with your thermostat quest. I know exactly how you feel. I'll take an old thermostat over Nest or Ecobee any day.
Thanks, Glenn! Super helpful. Please post reviews on any other products you are using, too. I mean it! Your descriptions are way better than any marketing goop or instructions. Your big picture mixed with the details makes complete sense.
Nest must have really botched it with the v3, because I have a V2, and I have none of the problems you're talking about. When the temp is more than a degree or two off the set temp, it shows me the current temp as a call out on the scale. Here's a picture:
http://i.imgur.com/PGUjNMb.jpg
It's currently 69degF, the nest is set to 73 and it even tells me how long it's going to take to get there. As for the hysteresis, there must be some problem with you setup, because if anything, I feel like the shut off could happen sooner with mine, but I only occasionally notice that in the summer with the AC.
For me, the real problem with Nest is that they were bought by Google, and I don't trust them not to use the Nest to collect data about me... when I go on vacation, when I'm home sick from work, etc. It's just kind of creepy.
I have a hydrionic (New England for baseboard radiant) system with three zones. The Nests each call a circulator pump. Works fine. I can see the current temperature and the set point, as well as time to set point.
The schedule isn't the most intelligent thing I've dealt with. For example, it will store sequential set points of the same value. I don't know enough about automatic controls to know whether there's a good excuse for this, but if there is, why not hide the second one?
I like the nest. Our consumption is down, and the house is generally comfortable. I have all 2nd gen.
"it doesn't show you the current temperature in the room"
See the 65 in the image you added to this post? That is the current temperature of the room.
So I didn't bother readin the rest.
A couple comment say that it does show the current temperature. Sorry, it doesn't. I spent several hours experimenting and testing this. Tt shows some previous temperature from some indeterminate point in the past, but over a period of hours, as the furnace changes the temperature in the room, the Nest updates nothing, and the "previous" temperature is further in the past, and further fictional, as to becoming meaningless. In their photo, the "65" would seem to be current room temperature, it's just that ... it's not. ( *think* it is the temperature at the time you adjust it. It also doesn't update the time until you achieve the set temperature. It said "2+ hours" for 2+ hours, then suddenly it would be the target temperature. It never adjusted either the 63 or the time estimate.
Given that this is all a thermostat really has to do correctly, it is pretty useless.
My Nest was very pretty to look at and it came lit up every time I walked past! These were its best features. I bought it at Best Buy had it installed by a professional AC company. A couple of days ago I had to call for service because my compressor was not coming on. The service guy said the base of my Nest had gone bad. He told me he sees this a lot. This is a local company that I have been doing business with for years so I trust them. $250 later I had them install a Sensi internet thermostat that seems to be working fine. I took the nest back to Best Buy but they told me my Premier Pro status 45 day return policy expired 3 days ago and advised me to contact nest. I asked them if they could just throw it in the trash and cut up my Best Buy credit card for me and they did and let me walk out of the store. They said they do not have an arrangement with nest to offer a defective refund or store credit. I thought I pay more thorough my brick and mortar store because there are here to support me. Nest lost a customer right along with Best Buy. All in all it cost me $400 to plus the $250 for the new thermostat. Wanted to share my story so maybe you won't have the same experience.
The Nest thermostat is just like those stupid water faucets in public restrooms. They are ultra water conserving but utterly useless.
For my household, on a cold winter day when I come in from blowing the snow off my driveway, I open the wood stove door and stuff the sucker full of logs. House warms up for a few hours then cools down. How is the Nest thermostat going to load my wood stove when I need it?
Nest is also way over priced. I can get a 7 day programmable thermostat on ebay for $20. That will do 99% of what the Nest does. The last 1% energy savings is not worth the extra $200.
I just received my new Nest from Amazon. It is very easy to install and is easy to follow the basic set up. However, it runs the furnace for 40 seconds then shuts it off. The fan stays on and blows cold air. But the furnace burner will not stay lit.
I reinstalled my old thermostat and everything works as it should.
Is this a malfunctioning unit?
Frustrating!
The Nest thermostat is an expense paper weight after several months. It cannot handle the electrical noise from power up and shutdown of the HVAC system. I have had approx. a dozen base plates burn up. When searching blogs about this, I found that I was far from alone. A heating base plate means a fire waiting to happen. Absolutely hands down a great smart thermostat for the first month or so if you're patient and let it learn. Put it to the test over time, and you'll find that the base plate cannot handle electrical noise/surges. It's written off as "you're home system" that needs repair. Why then does my Honeywell digital thermostat work fine and not burn up..? I use my old Honeywell digital thermostat as a backup when waiting for my Nest replacement each time. Something to be said about that... I am sooooo...frustrated I put up with it for so long. I should have bowed out in my warranty/refund period instead of trying to be patient with them...
My most recent challenge is that the A/C and heater both run at the same time. The only way to shut it off is to unplug all the wires from the base plate. I plug my Honeywell (non-smart thermostat) in, and viola it works fine. A $250 paperweight is not what I intended when I purchased it. I could have walked out in the front yard and brought in a rock that would do the same thing.
The room temperature is only displayed if it differs from the set temperature. And, the hysteresis is learned. The Nest works my HVAC system just as well as the programable Honeywell it replaced. Zero issues with it for the last year. Cheers!
I just got home tonight (9:00 pm) after being away for approximately 10 hours. My house was so cold I thought my two year old furnace had broken down. When I checked the (nasty) NEST thermostat, it was registering at 16 degrees C. (61F)
How can this be considered an "energy saving" device? Seems to me it probably takes a lot more energy to warm up EVERYTHING in the house that got so cold while I was away rather than keeping everything at a steady temperature! Thanks for all the posts so I know it's not just me unable to program and definitely going back to the tried and true thermostat.
I also installed the nest thinking its the best thing since...
Turns out is is the biggest hunk of junk. Never mind te issue of showing the temperature of the room in addition to the set temperature. It does allow remote setting which is a good feature.
BUT what good is all that if the battery dies and the nest goes silent after every 3 days, requiring to charge.
worst part is - I cant give it back.
I'm sending it back to Sundar Pichai, the CEO of google. let him choke on it.
My Nest 2nd Gen is two years old. The outer ring quit working today. I called Nest support and they said "Yes.. it is a physical problem with the thermostat" . to which I replied it is barely over two years old. No matter. Now. I can't use it to keepy house warm. Unbelievable scam operation. CEO sits on his ass and does zero.
I moved into a house with a Nest Pro that had been professionally installed. It went nutty while learning, so I turned off all those features and used it as a basic thermostat. I live in the desert so we get 90 by day and 40 by night. The Nest would cycle back and forth between heat and AC, and it would lock my air handler up and keep the fan on in a runaway situation requiring the breakers to be popped. I called Nest and they said this is normal and it can be fixed by installing something else. I wasn't about to spend a bunch of money for a tech to come rig up some kind of relay/shunt/control on my air handler that wasn't that old. So, I turned some other setting off. It failed to work even as a basic thermostat. The past few days it has been running the heat, but not actually heating. It is set to 68, and the heat turns on at 68 and says it will take anywhere from 1 to 3 hours to obtain 68. Someday it runs 3 hours and the house stays at 68, other days it runs 10 hours and the house is between 68 and 71. It has cost me more money in electricity running the fan for hours than it is worth. I installed the original Braeburn 5200 that the previous owner didn't like because it wasn't techie enough, and the system works better. I'll look into the Honeywell mentioned in the posts above. Honestly I wish I could just have an old school mercury capsule type thermostat. I have no idea why the Nest is rated so high. It has a mind of its own and is finicky. An example of man messing with something that was already good trying to make it better but instead making it worse. Glad I didn't buy it. Hopefully I can make a little bit of money selling it.
Joe Biron, [Nov 23, 2018 at 9:29:39 AM]:
...Put Nest E thermostats in office and upstairs this summer (separate AC and furnaces). worked OK, nothing to write home about. I had similar reaction to the basic function that OP does. The interface is pretty but not intuitive, IMHO. Anyway, since the cold weather turn, my office furnace has been short cycling. Heat comes on but turns off after a few minutes and before hitting target temp. Random, 2-6 minutes. Nest thermo itself told me about the “problem” via an app alert. I feared my furnace had an issue.
on a hunch I put the old thermostat back this morning. all’s fine.
the other Nest isn’t exhibiting this behavior… yet.
After some light research, my theory is since I have no common wire, the AC charged the nest appropriately but blower fan does not. So I guess the Nest did not warn me it had low voltage. I wish it just used batteries like other digital thermostats do. Overall not impressed with it. Scheduling sucks. The simple interface on my old digital thermo was straightforward and intuitive. Auto-schedule feature was ridiculous, not even coming close to "intelligent". My simple $30 Honeywell doing just fine, and now is back in charge.
I want to love my Nest, I really do, but the user-interface is SO bad. How could a product have so many features and sophisticated technology and yet fail miserably with the user-interface? A smart interface is a simple interface. Seriously that should be the definition- full hard stop.its wonderful that Nest is doing so much smart learning and has allowed users to remotely control the HVAC, etc. But, I don’t want to know any more about my HVAC than absolutely necessary, the same way I don’t want to know the sophisticated engineering under the hood of my car. I just want a simple and easy interface so I can get from point A to point B. This is were Nest fails. If it was good at learning, it would ask me questions during set-up, you know...like people do when we claim to want to know more about another person. How about some simple questions via a mobile or laptop interface on set-up, like: “How many people are typically in your house on an average day?” “Do you work from home?” “What time do you typically go to bed?” “Do you prefer to sleep in a cooler or warmer temperature?” Etc... but it doesn’t, and if not, then Nest should be really good at the BASICS of thermostat activities. Unfortunately it sucks at both. The best technology doesn’t require the user to learn the technology, rather the technology learns the user and can communicate with the user by requiring nothing more than basic set of questions and understanding by the user.
I have a Generation 2 Nest thermostat. I really wanted to love it. I love the idea of it, but not only does it not work as a thermostat, the "support" provided by the company is typical of Google, which explains the acquisition. They obviously saw eye-to-eye about hating the customer.
I couldn't agree more!! If I had known early on that it wasn't user error on the settings -- after calling tech support MANY MANY times asking them what I am doing wrong that I am sitting at home and my thermostat just decides on its own to jump up to 78 degrees (A/C). After walking me through turning the LEAF setting off (telling me that is what it must be) and many other changes, nothing ever worked. Too late to return it now! When I am home I constantly have to walk downstairs and turn up the A/C or the heat -- depending on time of the year. And sleeping at night? Forget about it. I get one good blow of the night and that's it. The darn thing shuts down for the rest of the night. What's totally nuts is there have been times when I haven't been home all weekend where the NEST should sense no movement, right?? I forget to turn it down before I walk out and when I look at it on the app two days later.....it's blowing like crazy! You figure at least you can count on the no motion feature when you aren't home. It clearly can't even do that right. So PO'd as this thing wasn't cheap!!!! I think NEST owes a big time credit back
I want my money back, I had two working thermostats and then Google came along. I have had nothing but trouble. My upstairs thermostat died during the google update. they replaced it and it worked fine. Now I'm back in cold weather and it doesn't work again. I blame Google
My Nest Thermostat is garbage. The temperature sensor is off by 8 degrees and says 0% humidity. I thought i could solve it with their remote sensors but those are off by 4 degreess also. This is the number job of a thermostat. Sense an accurate temperature. The thermostat and sensors both fail at these. To top it off there is not adjustment for them to set a a 4 degree offset. Nest sucks. Save your money. Seems like a class action lawsuit is needed.
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 It’s 4 am and I’m awake because I am controlling the temperature at home all night! Nest SUCKS BALLS so bad. I’m glad I’m not alone.
After living for 30 days in the low 60's, regardless of how many times I prompted the Nest by running the temperature down and quickly bringing it back up to 69-70 degrees, the darn thing is incompetent. I went to something smarter today.....my index finger on an $18.88 Walmart Honeywell thermostat. Now I'm comfortable for the 1st time in a month. The only remaining challenge is convincing my spousal unit to let go of the fancy orange glowing hockey puck by boxing it up and burying it deep and high in the garage. Good riddance.
It's bad enough that the thermostat's location is such that it doesn't usually see us moving around, but even setting it manually I'm rarely comfortable and my electric bill has gone up, not down.
Put up with Nest for 2 years. Burned up my furnace and I replaced it . Worst thermostat ever. Save your money and get a Honeywell.
The Nest is a worthless piece of shit. I am looking forward to ripping it off the wall in a few minutes and driving my car over it repeatedly. I need some release from the frustration of this device. It looks great but fails in its primary function as a simple thermostat. I am wearing a heavy coat sitting with a box of tissues in my own living room because my thermostat says it will heat to 68 in 2 hrs whilst the temp of the room is plummeting. All auto/scheduling/Eco modes are off. I have the ground wire, my furnace and ac unit is new - my installer says there is nothing wrong with the installation. It seems that the Nest's overall energy saving logic is keep everything off until it, not you or your required level comfort, sees fit to grace us with its presence as a simple fucking thermostat.
Thank you!!! EXACTLY!! After 2 YEARS of being subjected to this piece of JUNK, I finally got a $20 unit that is actually a thermostat and works the way it should.
I don't work on a set schedule, so I disabled many of the so called "features" in order to control the heat in the house. One time when I was particularly late coming home I arrived to find the house at 48 degrees because it decided it was going to save energy. Well, I work in the cold so you can imagine how happy I was to come home and wait for hours for the house to warm back up when it's below 0f outside. If I'd had a replacement for it I would have smashed it on the spot. Areas of the basement were near feezing my pipes.
I'd like to know under what circumstances 48f is ok in a house. It'll crack wall joints on drywall and crack plaster in an older home. This thing should have emailed me or notified me the heat was off. Of course the moment I walked in front of it it lit up, changed back to the schedule and said preheating, as if to say, Oh! Yea, the house is near freezing, I'm on it! Like it had something better to do...
P.O.S.
I cannot agree more! I cannot stand this piece of shit thermostat!
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