If you’re reading Android Police, you probably have at least a handful of smart home gadgets scattered around your house. A couple of connected smart plugs seem like a given, perhaps paired with web-enabled light bulbs. Maybe you’ve upgraded your front door to a smart lock — for my money, still my personal favorite upgrade I’ve made on my house. But the one jump I, and presumably plenty of others, have yet to make is into the space of smart thermostats.
This month might change all of that, as Google preps to announce a brand-new Nest Thermostat right alongside all of those Pixel devices coming next Tuesday. The upcoming 4th-gen Nest Learning Thermostat has received the usual round of pre-launch leaks that tend to sprout right before a Google event, bringing back rotating bezel controls and building in a much larger display than previous units. Take it from AP’s Google editor Taylor Kerns — it’s looking impressive enough to even sway current owners into possibly upgrading.
But then you have people like myself, who have yet to join the smart thermostat revolution. Part of my reasoning stems from technical limitations, while the rest of it just comes down from wondering whether it’ll actually improve the operation of my HVAC system. The former point is simple enough — I know my 70-year-old home isn’t currently wired to support anything requiring a direct power line, and that’s a project that just isn’t particularly high on my to-do list.
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The latter is a little more complex. I work from home, which means the smart scheduling features that Nest and Ecobee pride themselves on just won’t do much to bring down my utilities bill. My current HVAC system also doesn’t support zones, but even if it did, I’m not sure I’d get much use out of it considering the second floor of my house is always a little colder than the first floor anyway (gotta love Cape Cods). Plus, factor in the winter weather that Buffalo is pretty well known for, and I struggle to see the return on investment for dropping a few hundred bucks on a shiny new thermostat.
That’s just me though, and I’m aware I’m definitely an outlier. If we ever add central air to my house, I could absolutely see upgrading to something like Nest’s upcoming gadget, purely for the sake of controlling my home’s temperature while on vacation. But for now, I’m holding onto my trusty, very dumb, battery-powered thermostat, no matter how flashy the new Learning Thermostat looks in those leaked renders.
But what about AP’s readership? Are you rocking something from Nest, Ecobee, or another thermostat alternative? Or are you using whatever basic Honeywell module was already mounted on the wall when you moved in? Feel free to answer the poll with whatever you have now, but if you’re looking to upgrade, jump into the comments to let us know what you’re planning on buying.
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