Especially in recent years, Google’s efforts in the smart home have received continued criticism, but looking at the current state of the Google Home app and Nest hardware, is that still deserved?
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That’s basically where I stand at this point. Google Nest is full of shortcomings, absolutely, but it’s also one of the only simple smart home camera offerings out there that isn’t bogged down by awful software, higher fees, or complicated setup/maintenence. I’ve been vocal about my issues with Nest over the past few years, but I’m overall reasonably satisfied, and I don’t hesitate to tell folks who ask about home cameras to give Nest their consideration.
Should Nest still work to improve? Absolutely.
There’s so much room to improve, as the very vocal community of users made clear during this week’s AMA. I, for one, hope Google’s team read each and every one of those comments and took them to heart. But, like many of those users, I’ve also been burned by Google on the smart home. I still hate that feature parity isn’t a thing in the Home app (without some ridiculously complex workarounds). I’m still frustrated at poorly thought through choices on newer Nest Cams. I’m still trying to find a good security system to replace my Nest Secure that’s dying for no good reason.
But every time I look elsewhere, I have the same thought: is it really so bad?
Everyone seems to hate the Google Home app and Nest, should they?
Betteridge’s Law of Headlines suggests the answer is “no” and yet…
I’ve noticed recently it seems like journos have started deliberately subverting Betteridge’s Law.
I suppose it’s subtle clickbait - you come in expecting a hut piece and it’s more nuanced than that.
It’s not like it’s a law of nature – it’s just a quip that is often true, but is also often used to blithely dismiss an article without reading it because hur de dur Betteridge
I used to have a nest thermostat before they got bought up. Soon after that, the model I had would no longer be supported and I would have to upgrade. So I did, to a Honeywell that did zwave and integrated with home assistant without requiring going only through Google’s ecosystem. Nest soured me on anything that required cloud to function.
I’m so pissed that Google bought nest. That ruined Dropcam and Nest. It’s so fucked up that they have old cameras that are now incompatible.
And the only changes I noticed with Google running Nest were four annoyances:
- There’s a noticeable delay when setting the temperature
- It mow thinks it’s “offline” rather often
- The iOS app added clicks when selecting the temp that are totally unnecessary, and ignore the system keyboard clicks setting (this sucks when you want to quietly change the temperature in the middle of the night without waking anyone)
- Why the fuck does it keep asking about two-step logins? It’s a thermostat. I have the hardware. I can do a hardware reset if my account it compromised.
So they made the product worse, and offered no additional value
I’m in the planning stages of my setup and anything that doesn’t support zwave is right off the list (zigby and enocean can be considered though). If it’s not processed locally, it’s a no go.
Granted, it takes a fair bit more planning. And I expect that some stuff possibly won’t work without a bit of tweaking (or possibly at all, there’s going to be an awful lot of new things at once).
Nest should never have sold itself to Google/Alphabet.
I had a nest thermostat and I bought a room sensor for it and the scheduling settings for it were horribly rigid (morning, afternoon, evening and night were the only time options available for room targeting and were not adjustable)
I couldn’t have been the only person that didn’t fit into that scheduling and started researching it and came across a support ticket for it that was over 2 years old. It was clear a bare minimum feature for that product was never going to be implemented and I replaced it with an EcoBee thermostat
