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I'm wondering if in "Away" mode, is Nest smart enough to learn about when you come home, and kick on approximately 30-40 minutes BEFORE then? Or does it only kick on when it senses you've come home?

Also, can you control how much it lowers the temperature in Away mode?

Further, if you adjust the temperature manually over the internet (say, just before you leave work), does that count towards teaching it when it should turn on?

I'm basically wondering just how smart its auto functions are, because if they're not smart, then I would rather just spend $30 on a programmable unit rather than $250 for Nest.

AgmLauncher
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The Nest saves people money simply because most people can't/won't program their thermostats. Where the Nest will mostly auto program itself based on your away/home and manual thermostat changes.

You can set the temp ranges for away as well as another emergency min/max for when the unit is turned 'off' (this can prevent frozen pipes). The unit can also be set to start before the program schedule time to warm/cool.

But if you go out for a night, the unit then goes into a non-scheduled auto away it will wait until it detects movement before it will kick the heat/ac back on.

diceless
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The Nest thermostat saves you money because of its "intelligence" It learns how long it needs to get from its present temperature to the required temperature, it monitors this continually. The need for WiFi is so it can get weather data for your postcode/zip code which helps with it's decision making.

Due to this knowledge it will be able to either come on early or later due to weather conditions.

As it knows how long to change temperature it can also switch off early because it knows that there is enough heat already in the system to raise the temperature up to the desired setting.

A normal room stat set at 22°C or 70°F will switch off at 22/70 but temperature can rise another 1, 2 or 3 degrees c/8f, that's a fair amount of energy saved.

You can set a minimum temperature for away mode and you can set another minimum temperature for when it's off i.e. 18c in away and 9c when off (frost protection etc)

Nest will learn your routine to some extent by the changes you make to the settings.

I installed one early November and we can see the difference now in comfort and costs. We have turned it down from 24c to 22c at peak times and it settles at 20.5 for most of the evening when my wife is watching TV

Just one other thing, you don't need wifi to use it, wifi is there for remote control and weather data and the wireless connection is just to control the system by the thermostat. You can override if you want by pressing the front of the heat link if you're having problems.

FreeMan
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w1ggan
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You can set up schedules on the Nest. After that, enable a feature called 'Early-On.' This will make sure the temperature is what you want it to be at the given time. For example, if you set 70 degrees at 6pm, it will be 70s at 6pm when Early-On is enabled. On traditional digital thermostats, 70 degrees at 6pm would mean the thermostat turns to 70 degrees at 6pm but may not reach the temperature for an hour or so. Another great reason to get a Nest.

https://nest.com/support/article/What-is-Early-On

masedesign
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No.

It's not as smart as I'd hoped. When I walk in the front door after being gone all summer day, my house is hot. I used Google maps to drive home.e, so why didn't Nest realize I'd be home in about 40 minutes and start cooking it down? I stead, it waited u til I was in the front door and then proudly announced it would be two hours until my house cooled off.

This is dumb.

Daniel Velez
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