NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

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First, of course, you have to install the thing. N est goes to extraordinary lengths to help you out. The elegant package includes a screwdriver and th e Nest itself has a built-in bubble level. YouTube how-to videos and tech support are available. But in the end, replacing a thermostat is not a jo b for a novice. It involves cutting power to your existing thermostats (after figuring out which cir cuit breaker is responsible); removing your old th ermostat (revealing an ugly, gaping maw in your wa ll); hooking up about four colored wires (nasty-lo oking and very short); covering up the gaping maw with the included rectangular base plate (necessar y only if the maw is larger than the Nest, which i s likely); and snapping the Nest into place. Nest’s installer performed the surgery on my downs tairs thermostat as I watched; I did the deed myse lf on the upstairs one. It took about half an hour to install each thermostat. If you don’t feel up to the task, Best Buy will send somebody to do it for you at $120 (plus $25 more for each additional Nest). Second, my test Nests were cuckoo for the first co uple of weeks. They’d decide for themselves to bla st the heat to 73 degrees — at 4 a.m. That was a little alarming. You know those sci-fi movies where our machines turn on their human over lords? Yeah, like that. The company chalked my problems up to first-releas e bugs, and had me reset my thermostats. (The soft ware is very iPod-like. You turn the barrel to cho ose from the colorful on-screen menus, and you cli ck inward to make a selection.) After two such res ets, the Nests are now working perfectly and savin g me money. The software has room to improve. For some reason,
the Nest’s own screen shows you a lot more about what’s going on with your thermostat than the Web site or the phone apps. For example, the Web and t he app don’t show you when Auto Away kicked in or when you manually adjusted your thermostats. (The company says it will remedy that situation soon.) The Web site is beautiful, but programming your Ne sts using its Schedule tab is clumsy and tedious. It takes too many unnecessary clicks to introduce a change in the schedule. I found some bugs, too. For example, if you have m ultiple Nests, just coming back home doesn’t disen gage the Auto Away mode automatically; you have to click each thermostat’s screen within two minutes . (Bizarre.) Fortunately, software is fixable. Goodness knows there are cheaper thermostats. And there are other learning thermostats with color sc reens and Internet connections. But they don’t hav e the sensors that let them self-adjust. They don’ t look like pieces of art. They’re sold and packag ed for contractors, not humans. And they actually cost more: for example, similar models of the Honeywell Prestige and Ecobee Smart <strong>Thermostat</strong> go for more than $300 on Amazon.com. (C an you imagine what the arrival of the Nest and it s team of former Apple superstars must be doing to morale at those companies? The Friday beer blasts must be a bummer these days.) The Nest is gorgeous, elegant and very, very smart . It will keep your house at the right temperature , save you money and do some good for the planet. Put another way, it can make you comfortable in mo re ways than one. E-mail:pogue@nytimes.com
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