Nest Learning Thermostat: A Comprehensive Guide to Features and Benefits

The Nest Learning Thermostat has revolutionized the smart home industry, transforming the traditional thermostat into an intelligent, helpful, and aesthetically pleasing device. The Nest Learning Thermostat (4th gen) is a smart, stylish thermostat that optimizes home comfort and energy savings. It stands out with its ability to learn user preferences, adapt to changing weather conditions, and integrate seamlessly into modern smart home ecosystems. It helps customers save billions of kilowatt hours of energy across millions of households, giving them a way to save money and help the environment, directly from home.

Design and Aesthetics

The Nest Learning Thermostat (4th gen) boasts a thoughtfully crafted design. The new domed crystal LCD display is 60% bigger than the previous generation, and housed behind multiple layers of mirror and colored films, completely eliminating the appearance of bezels for a long-lasting aesthetic. The thermostat is available in three metal finishes: Polished Silver, Polished Obsidian, and Polished Gold, designed to complement any home interior. It’s not often that a piece of smart home tech can be a showpiece in a home or an object that can improve the design of a space, yet that’s exactly what I think this Nest Thermostat (4th Gen) does. This upgraded design with its massive domed crystal display (60% bigger than previous model) and small bezels really does look like a piece of fine jewelry on your wall, especially without the trim plate behind it. It’s this bulb of floating reflective glass that has this mysterious cloudiness or magical depth to it that will grab your attention as you pass it by. This device does have a rotating piece to it that allows you to jump through settings and change the temperature. You can push the device too, like if it were a giant button, to select items.

Smart Learning and AI Capabilities

The Nest Learning Thermostat (4th gen) is our smartest, most advanced thermostat yet. It uses AI to automatically make micro-adjustments based on your patterns to keep you comfortable while saving both energy and money. With Smart Schedule, the thermostat learns which temperatures you choose most often or changes in behavior based on motion detected in your home - like coming home earlier - and automatically adjusts your temperature schedule to match. The thermostat also analyzes how the weather outdoors will affect the temperature inside. For example, if it’s a sunny winter day and your home gets warmer on its own, it will pause heating.

The previous Nest models all had this prominent edge or bezel that you interacted with, while this one almost has a hidden bezel that the domed glass blends into to give it this rounded look. If you have a device with the word “Learning” in the name, you hope it’s smarter than just any old smart thermostat. This is where reviewing a device like this becomes difficult in a short amount of time, because even after 2 months, I have no idea if this device is doing everything it supposedly can. I’m talking about features like the Natural Heating and Cooling mode, where the Nest Thermostat (4th Gen) will use outside temperature info to potentially turn off your HVAC unit when that outside temp could naturally heat or cool your home.

Temperature Sensors

Each thermostat comes with a new Nest Temperature Sensor to help you manage hot and cold spots in your home, like prioritizing the temperature in a baby’s room during their naptime. You can add up to six temperature sensors for maximum control and flexibility, and you can now select multiple sensors and average the temperatures across them. You can even choose which sensors are active at different times of day by linking them to your schedules. The Nest Temperature Sensor comes in a discreet, pebble-like form that fits in any home environment.

Read also: The Learning Nest Approach

The fact that Google is including their new Nest Temperature Sensor (2nd Gen) in the box is without a doubt one of my favorite things about the new model. With my previous Nest Thermostat units, I had connected them to the old Nest Temperature Sensor because I have a 2-story home and you can have the thermostat adjust temperatures based off the temperature at the sensor instead of the actual thermostat. Since I don’t have multi-level heating and cooling in my house, the temperature sensor allows me to at least sort of act like I do and have the thermostat take into account my upstairs temperatures to then cool or heat at a certain time of day depending on the year. And it does more too. If you have hot or cool spots in your home, you could essentially bring the temperature sensor with you throughout a day and the thermostat should adjust temperatures accordingly to get that room where you want it, which is pretty cool. These new second-generation sensors can be placed in any room in your home. The thermostat will then intelligently adjust to make sure that room is properly heated or cooled. They can be used to create schedules around these sensors, like to adjust the temperature to the office during the day, the living room in the evening, and then the bedroom at night.

System Health Monitoring and Smart Ventilation

Homeowners know heating and cooling systems can be expensive to replace if they break. The System Health Monitor feature tracks your HVAC performance over time, sensing subtle issues and sending you urgent alerts for problems that may require immediate attention. For example, if you turned on the AC, but your home failed to cool, you may not notice immediately. But your thermostat can send you an alert, and over time your thermostat will get even smarter about detecting potential problems based on how your system behaves. And if you have a ventilation system, we're introducing a new feature called Smart Ventilation. It brings in fresh air when outdoor air quality is healthy and it’s most efficient, like when temperatures are mildest.

Nest Renew and Energy Savings

We know many people are eager to live more sustainably and help address one of our generation's most profound challenges: climate change. Nest thermostats empower people to do so right from home with Nest Renew. Once you enroll in Nest Renew, your thermostat can automatically make small adjustments that shift energy use to cleaner and less expensive times. These adjustments are small but add up - contributing to a more reliable and efficient energy grid while lowering household energy bills at the same time. Buying or have a smart thermostat? When you enroll, your smart thermostat will shift some of your energy use out of the hours when demand is highest. This helps us keep energy efficient and affordable for everyone.

Installation and Compatibility

Nest Learning Thermostat is easy to install and, with its new 12-terminal backplate, expands compatibility to work with most HVAC systems. You can set it up yourself and control it through the Google Home app, so all of your compatible smart home devices are in one place, working together. The most popular thermostat controls in the app, like adjusting the temperature or your schedule, have also been redesigned to be easier and more intuitive. Setup is easy enough. Like other Nest Thermostat devices, this one should be a self-install thing for most people. While messing with your heating and cooling system can be stressful if you aren’t an HVAC professional, Google and Nest include both written and video instructions (with the Google Home app helping too) to help you get setup. The previous Nest Thermostat (2020 model) and Nest Thermostat E only support 1-stage heating systems, but this new Nest Thermostat (4th Gen) supports up to 3 stages.

C-Wire and Power Considerations

A C-wire (common wire) is a low voltage power wire that many modern thermostats require for their features to work. Many older homes don’t have a C-wire because mercury and battery-powered thermostats didn’t require one. The Nest Learning Thermostat (4th gen) is designed to work whether or not your home has a common (“C”) wire. In limited cases (<1%), a C wire or Nest Power Connector may be necessary to ensure that your HVAC system can provide sufficient power to the thermostat in all conditions.

Google Home App Integration

For this Nest Thermostat (4th Gen), you only get to use the Google Home app and I quite like it for the most part. The setup was easy enough, but once you are setup and letting it do its smart learning thing, getting into its settings and adjusting anything is quite simple. Tapping on almost anything gets you more info or options. Looking at your schedules to see if the thermostat has created ones that work for you is as clean as can be. If you ever used the old Nest app schedule page, you’ll know immediately how big of an improvement this is.

Farsight Display

And then you have this new thing that Nest is calling Farsight. It’s a bit like a phone’s always on display that you can customize on some level. Now, when you walk up to your thermostat, you get more information on a small screen that can inform you about the day. The new Farsight display looks more akin to a pixel watch face than a thermostat. Google has learned a lot here and if we went just by looks, we'd install the Nest. The 4th Gen Nest Learning Thermostat allows you to customize the information that shows up on the face of the thermostat, but it also uses a technology Google calls Dynamic Farsight to make it even more useful. The thermostat can sense how far away you are and change its display accordingly. If you're farther away, it shows very little information, maybe just the current temperature inside your home. The closer you get, the more it'll show. That could be the current temperature, the temperature outside, what the thermostat is set to and more. It's also customizable, allowing you to decide what information is most important.

Matter and Apple HomeKit Support

The biggest update ever to the Nest Learning Thermostat finally supports Apple Home via Matter. The 2020 Nest Thermostat -- not the "learning" version -- gained Matter support earlier this year but this is the first flagship version to adopt it. To add to Apple Home, you put the thermostat into pairing mode by heading to Settings > Matter. It will give you a QR code that you can scan with the Home app after which it will pair like any other HomeKit accessory. After adding to the Home app you can change your target temperature, switch modes, or turn it off completely. It can be added to any scenes or automations that you create. One of the biggest benefits is you can ask Siri to make the adjustments too. "Siri, Set the temperature to 71."

Nest vs. Ecobee

Ecobee has historically been our smart thermostat of choice. With the addition of the new Nest, it's a bit more of a complicated decision as they each of their benefits and flaws. Visually, both of them look good but we have to give the win to Nest. It looks so sharp and the interface is so well polished. It's also easier to control. Rotating the bezel is so seamless while the touchscreen on the Ecobee can be finicky at times to change as you walk by. Nest also has a leg up with its AI learning capabilities. Ecobee does have smart algorithms designed to save you money with its "feels like" temperature but its not quite as capable.

Potential Drawbacks

Our biggest gripe is that the room sensors don't support Matter or Apple Home. They show on the thermostat and in the Google Home app, but are inexplicably not exposed to Matter. If you did want environmental sensors in a room that you could use with Apple Home automations, you'll need to buy additional ones. That adds up.

tags: #nest #learning #thermostat #features