Re-designed Nest Thermostat revealed. Moves into your Google Home for an affordable $129

A few days ago, I mentioned that a new Nest Thermostat had been rumored to be releasing very, very soon. As it turns out, it’s now up for pre-order and will be available in a few weeks! The new thermostat features a friendly, Googley design and is made of 49% recyclable, colored plastic. The available colors will be snow, charcoal, fog and sand. Interestingly enough, the bezel around the display will not spin this time. You’ll simply swipe your finger around it to change the temperature up and down. The design is meant to be easier for those unfamiliar with smart home technology to get them on board easily. In wake of this new product announcement, the original Nest Thermostat E has been removed from the Google Store.

Users will also be able to rely on simplified controls built directly into the Google Home app – the place they’re already familiar with controlling their Nest mini and Chromecast, for example. The old Nest Thermostat client will no longer be supported and all functionality will be ported over to the Google Home app immediately. In addition to featuring the same circular slider interface a user would interact with to turn the volume up and down on their Chromecast or other Google Home hardware, the new Nest thermostat has a bar of ‘Quick Actions’ directly underneath it which will be easy to reference.

As rumored by a source that contacted Bloomberg, Google’s Project Soli radio chip makes an appearance here after being removed from Pixel phones. The chip will be placed under the reflective display and be used to determine if someone is nearby in order to know when to light up the display and show the temperature. I’m not really sure why they opted for a reflective display, but it looks pretty cool. Because the sensor is under the glass, there’s no need to have a smaller display surrounded by a black cutout as with previous renditions, so the new display fills the entire available space and looks fantastic. Installation is as easy as its predecessor’s. Just plug in a few wires based on their installation handy guide and connect it to your WiFi through the Google Home app. You will, of course, want to make sure your HVAC system is compatible before you buy one though.

While we’re on the topic of HVAC systems, you’ll now get HVAC monitoring. This is used to detect and warn about unusual heating, cooling and ventilating patterns using historical data, the weather and more so that you don’t have an outrageous bill like I did last year. Yeah, I don’t want to talk about it, it’s an embarrassing story. Luckily for me as much as it is for you, your new thermostat will no longer need to learn over the course of a week or so before it can start offering you suggestions for saving energy. A feature called Quick Schedule will allow you to set preferences for heating and cooling while you’re at home, away and asleep. It’s also Energy Star Rated and Google says users can save “10-12 percent on heating bills and 15% on cooling”, though of course individual use cases apply and there are no guarantees. You can pre-order the new Nest Thermostat by Google for $129 USD or $179.99 CAD. There is a weird looking wall cover you can buy for an additional $14.99 that looks like Google wanted to place your thermostat on a dinner plate and nail it to the wall. If it’s supposed to be aesthetic, I’m just not appreciating it, I guess. The wall plate will match the color of the device you choose. Let us know what you think about this updated model and whether or not you’ll be picking one up.

Pre-order the new Nest Thermostat by Google