Introducing the Nest 3.0: Could it be the smartest thermostat yet?

For many Smarthome enthusiasts (myself included,) Nest is the proverbial king of the castle when it comes to smart thermostats. In fact, I’d go so far to say that Nest may be the king of the smarthome castle period. In a few short years, Nest has gone from being just a smart thermostat to a full blown powerhouse thanks in large part to the smart collaborative partnerships they’ve formed in order to build the colossal “Works with Nest” network. However, in growing their product and partnership network this big, it has been a few years now since that core product (the learning thermostat) has had proper attention. Not anymore! On September 1st, Nest revealed the new generation of their learning thermostat family. Nest 3.0. While it still retains many of the features you’ve come to know and enjoy about Nest, it also comes with a few new improvements, including:

A larger screen size

The biggest visual difference between Nest 1.0 and 2.0 was the shape and size change. If you’ve seen a Nest 2.0, you know it’s already pretty small. With no need to improve on that (though it is technically ½ cm thinner,) Nest has instead made the screen 40% larger. Here’s a side by side comparison between the two.

Better people awareness

It’s a small feature, but you no longer need to stand up close to Nest 3.0 for it to tell you the current and target temperature in the house. With its new Farsight technology, it will begin to display once it senses movement in the room. Interestingly, the display changes the closer you move to it and will display more information to you as it senses you getting closer to it.

Your own personal repairman…almost

The new Furnace Heads-Up looks to find oddities and blips in your heating system. Is it shutting off too early? Why is it shutting off too early? The thermostat collects data and pushes you its findings to help you identify these stopgaps before they become a problem. For those of you with Nest 1.0 and Nest 2.0 Learning thermostats, this feature will become available to you too through a firmware update later this year.

Every smart thermostat claims to help save you money on your power bills, but Nest has tended to provide more concrete evidence by collecting and providing you, the owner, with a lot of helpful data. Nest 3.0 won’t be any different. In fact, Nest now says that they have studies from a third party showing that their devices save you between 10-12% on heating and 15% on cooling month over month. Their website now also claims that these cost savings translate into your Nest paying for itself over the course of a two year period.

It will continue to track your daily length of power usage along with providing its recommendations for your optimal home temperature. As with previous editions of the Nest Learning Thermostat, the new version will also interact and interface with Nest Protect (all versions and generations) and Nest Cam. You will also be able to coordinate and interface with all previous Works with Nest partners.

Sleeker. Smarter. More helpful. These are a few words to describe Nest 3.0. Look for the new and improved Nest coming to Best Buy soon.