A thermostat that learns about your habits
Nest reimagined a cost-effective and intelligent way to heat your home
Nest Thermostat
€219, nest.com/ie
★★★★★
Heating our homes isn’t complicated. If we need it, we flick a switch, maybe we set a timer and the heat and hot water are there – the problem is, we might not. Traditional programmable timers can be irksome. I can’t count the number of times my home has rumbled into life before dawn on Saturday and Sunday mornings as I’ve forgotten that I work five days a week rather than seven. This old-fashioned but crucial technology needed updating and Nest Labs, the Californian start-up co-founded by two former Apple employees, have tried to reimagine how we heat our homes.
The Nest should be installed by a professional and they have a network of Nest Pros around the country who will come and do the installation for you and give you a runthrough of the features. The Nest hardware comes in two parts, the Heat Link and the Thermostat. The Heat Link is the engine of the set-up and connects to the boiler. In my case, this involved replacing the old central heating clock with the sleek Nest hardware. You can mount the thermostat on a wall, but I went for the optional Nest stand so I could move it to different rooms.
Pressing the face of the Thermostat brings it to life and after connecting it to your Wi-Fi network you can set the display and your own preferences. The bright, clear LED display will show the current target temperature and humidity in the room measured by its 10 in-built sensors. Nest uses a feature called Farsight, which lights the device up and displays the temperature as you move towards it.
Once you start using Nest it starts to learn about you. After a few days of turning the heat on at 7:00am, Nest started doing it for me. It has also started to understand my bed time and is now turning itself down in a knowing way at night. There is a timer, or scheduler, which you can set on the thermostat or use on the app and looking at it reveals how Nest thinks you’re going to behave over the next few days. It looks about right for now. Nest also have a built-in auto-away feature. If its sensors get the impression you’ve dashed out of the house early, Nest will turn itself down. And if the children get an unexpected half-day and you’re stuck at work, you can use the app to get the house cosy before they get in. If you have a hot-water system that’s compatible, you can also set the hot water independent of the heating.
As Nest learns about you it helps you save money. The thermostat will display a leaf when you’re operating at an efficient temperature. It also spells out the energy use details plainly with a daily Energy History on the app.
Boilers, thermostats and heating systems aren’t the usual stomping ground for sharp Silicon Valley start-ups. Nest’s imagination and innovative technology allowed them to swoop in and change an entire way of life for families and they’ve done it with start-up style and exceptional elegance.