Introduction
The Nest Thermostat Pro uses its advanced artificial intelligence, Gemini, to enable predictive home climate management with promise to learn your house faster, take into account energy prices on the grid, and coordinate multiple smart home devices. Let me give you some insights gained during two months of using Nest Thermostat Pro in a three-bedroom house with clearly defined winters and summers.
Learning about smart thermostats
For years, homeowners used smart thermostats in their homes, and there was an example of the Nest Learning Thermostat, which showed the possibility of energy savings and increased convenience over programmable thermostats. However, the first smart thermostats worked reactively. They needed you to establish routines first before they started learning your habits. Now, Nest Thermostat Pro uses Gemini AI to predict your routine, including knowing your Google Calendar, your location, and weather forecast.
Predictive scheduling with Google Calendar
While the original Nest Learning Thermostat worked by learning only based on the temperature adjustment, the Nest Thermostat Pro relies on Google Calendar to build predictive scheduling and not a reactive one. During my two months of using this smart thermostat, it required much less corrections compared to any thermostat I’ve ever tried – from preheating the house when a work-from-home day is coming, no heating while traveling away, and adjusting evening schedules considering the events in the calendar.
Integrating with Google Calendar involves giving permission explicitly and uses Google Home app to manage privacy settings – there’s just a toggle to stop using calendars without stopping any other functions. You can make voice commands using Google Assistant to change your schedule naturally.
Energy Savings and Grid-Aware Scheduling
After two months of usage in Chicago winter, our gas bill decreased by 18% compared to the same period in the previous year. Nest Thermostat Pro has another feature called ‘Grid-Aware Scheduling’, which automatically optimizes the temperature depending on higher renewable percentage or lower rates on the electricity grid. It may be particularly helpful for homes using heat pumps with TOU electric plans in California, Illinois, and New York states.
The most efficient is Grid-Aware Scheduling for the houses with heat pumps because optimizing the temperature using gas furnace is limited as preheating the house for the future energy savings requires considerable thermal mass and good weather forecasting.
Multi-Room Control and Integration Options
The Nest Pro connects to Nest Temperature Sensors ($39 each) to prioritize the temperature setting depending on where you are in your house via single zone HVAC system. Thanks to the integration with Matter, you will not find problems controlling your device in Google Home, Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, and Samsung SmartThings – it’s a huge improvement for the Nest products compared to earlier models, which weren’t compatible with Apple HomeKit except for some tricks.
Also, you can use the integrated function that allows controlling blinds (such as IKEA Fyrtur and Lutron Serena) for maximizing solar gains in winter and blocking the solar gains in summer. The Nest Thermostat Pro has a small display measuring 2.08 inches, which shows current temperature, setpoint, and schedule visual representation. The installation process takes less than half an hour even without prior wire labeling experience. Additionally, the Nest Pro Thermostat includes Power Connector to address the C-wire problem in most cases.
Conclusion
Now you know that the Nest Thermostat Pro is one of the best smart thermostats to get. Although it requires a connection to Google Home Ecosystem, the predictive schedule and the energy savings are worth trying Nest Thermostat Pro. Considering the price of $279, the payback period is measured in months.
