Nest T3016US - Programmable Thermostat

I have a lot of observations to make about this product. I'll start with what I was faced with first. I live in a 2 story house, purchased last July. I live in South Carolina, where it's very humid and we rarely use our heating systems. The heater with air handler is located in the attic. The house was built in 2003. No one has ever replaced the contractor-installed Bryant brand heater. I've had these heaters before, and they are annoying. Whenever I replaced them in the past with a Trane furnace, my bill was cut in half and none of the ridiculous traits of the Bryant happened anymore. Those being the following: Cold spots in different places all over the house. A long ignite time, which means it's blowing cold air on you from the vents before it finally ignites. Too long to ignite. Uneven heating everywhere. Too hot upstairs, too cold downstairs. When the temps got below 35, it was unbearable downstairs unless I cranked it up to 70, which is a high temp for me on the thermostat in the winter. My AC condenser was replaced recently, so in the summer the air conditioner handled everything very well. It is a 4 ton unit and unrelated brand to the Bryant. (not a very good plan, but at least the AC works well). The AC has none of the issues that the furnace has. It works great. There's a problem, though. Because past owners pieced together a different AC system, the two systems are not as efficient as they could be. They also just can't put in a furnace and make it all work. Not the kind of efficiency furnace I've bought before. I just needed a furnace, but not an AC unit. So, I set out to talk to all these Trane installers. I love the two stage AC units from Trane because they only go into the higher mode when they really have to. The answer I got? "You can't change out only one unit. It has to be both." (something I knew from previous houses, anyway). Installer: "That's going to cost you $13,000.00" Me: "Gulp. I know that they really need to both be married up, in order for them to work well." Installer: "No other way, with this pieced together system you have right now." The problem with this? I didn't have the cash. Lowes would only loan me $6,000 at no interest. I always went for no interest loans in the past. Wells Fargo would only give me 5,700.00 but I could not combine both of these financing options. No one would loan me (or anyone else) that much money. I could've gone with a personal line of credit at my bank, but it was 10 - 12 %. Banks are a lot tighter with home improvement loans these days, since GE sold its finance division to a company called MySynchrony. GE gave me 15,000.00 no interest for the first year once. Not anymore. So, I set out to get 4 more quotes. Same answer from all of them. So, I was stuck with running downstairs to turn the heat down at night because I felt like I was going to suffocate upstairs, then running downstairs in the morning to turn it up to get it warmer down there. Then I remembered the Nest. It's expensive, yes. But .....it is better to at least try to spend $248.00 instead of 13 grand. (All the quotes I got were pretty much the same.) At the very least, I could incorporate it into a new system in the future. Install: Easiest install of any thermostat I've ever performed. I've always done my own installs because I liked Honeywell for many years, but there are no screws or difficult, cramped holes to put the wires into. You don't have to read a book to figure out which wires to use and guess what kind of system you have. It already knew, once I installed it. It's connected to the Internet through your WIFI. If I'm upstairs with the heat on and it gets too hot up there, I just pick up my iPhone, go to the app and adjust it. If I want to go downstairs in the morning and know I have it set to 65 down there, I just heat it up a bit on my iPhone before I get out of bed. It learns. I'm not quite sure what it will learn from me, because I'm retired and usually keep things about the same. But, the programming was extremely easy, both on the unit and on the iPhone app. Change it anytime I want. I was at the doctor yesterday. Realized that just my dogs were at home and I had started the AC this past weekend. (You can switch between heat and air any time you want on the iPhone or iPad app...awesome. ) So, I just turned up the AC to a warmer temp because my dogs aren't too crazy about it being really cold. Before I got home, I set it back to 70 for AC, where I like it. I was bed-ridden after some spinal injections this past weekend. I was praising this thing for making my life comfortable while I recuperated upstairs. Before, it would've been absolute agony to go downstairs all the time because South Carolina is in Spring already. You never know what the day will be like. I just changed it when I needed to on my iPhone. The WIFI was easy to connect, once I realized that you turn the unit itself with a rotating dial either left or right, then press on the choice you want. No annoying methods to type in your password like it is on a Bluray player to login to an app like Netflix. Those are a pain. The screen is motion-sensing on the unit, so you just have to walk by or wave your hand to see its settings. It seems to also get my systems to the correct temperature WAY faster than my Honeywell thermostat did. Seconds vs minutes. Now: I've saved $13 Grand. For now. It's made my furnace manageable in a two story house. I can save up the cash for a new system. It has a mode called Airwave that is supposed to save you on AC costs. I'll know in July and August if that works well. I believe it's going to save me a lot of money and allow me the time to save up for the new system that I really want. I will have my installers just leave the Nest there. It's an incredible product. I've not found one bug with it yet. It's only been about 5 days, but it is already telling me it is learning. Love this product. So glad I bought it. It's the best piece of technology I've bought so far, besides the iPad Pro. Thank you Nest. You saved me a lot of money for now. A few months later: This product is already saving me a lot of money. It's already saved me $40.00 this month on electric. One thing I wanted to mention was someone was complaining about the way it displays the temperature. I think that it is just a matter of getting used to it because there is a rare occasion that the large number in the middle and the smaller number are not the same. What I've noticed is it gets my system up to the correct temperature way faster, and so I'm really not so concerned with the smaller number anymore. I also saw that someone was complaining about the Away function if you don't walk in front of it often and waking up to a cold house. I'm retired, so I don't really need a regular Away function. I go out at really different times, so I went into the settings on the App and turned that off. Problem solved. I love that my air conditioner doesn't run as much as it used to, and I noticed I don't have as much cold air coming out of the vents when the heater is working. I also get an email of my usage each month from Nest. (see image) The leafs mean you've set your temp to an energy-saving setting and will also show up on the dial. And It's still saved me 13 grand. Win win for me.

PURCHASE DATE: 27NOV15 PURCHASE PRICE: $211.44 COMED UTILITY COMPANY REBATE: $100.00 After purchasing a new home and watching our utility bills rise for a while I vowed to change all of that in 2015. I began to purchase LED light bulbs as a start, new energy efficient appliances, and then September 2015 the Nest 3rd Generation was released which caught my attention. I asked my father in-law who had the Nest 2nd Generation for information and he had nothing negative to say about it so I was sold. After comparing it to other competitors I was hooked on this one due to the ease of installation, good reviews, and $100 electric company rebate (ask your local energy company). Do not be intimidated to install this on your own it's not hard. The instructions it comes with and YouTube to be on the safe side did it for me. Before installing please make sure to shut your homes power panel breaker prior to uninstalling the old thermostat and installing the Nest (be safe). Take a picture of the way the wires were installed on your old thermostat prior to uninstalling. In doing so this will ensure that your connections are connected correctly. Test your wires one more time prior to uninstalling to make sure no power is running (avoid being shocked or damaging anything). I did not use/install the base-plate (pictures shown) because I wanted a modern, sleek, and clean look. The body and display (40% increase) of the 3rd generation is slightly larger then that of the 2nd generation. If you have children you can lock it so that a child touching it can not change or disrupt your temperature or any of your settings. The stainless steel dial is very smooth and allows you to navigate through the settings with ease. It takes the Nest a couple of days to remember what temperatures you like when you are home and at what times you are home. After a couple of days Nest will ask you if you want it to automatically go into Away Mode when it senses you are not home (you decide opt in or opt out - I opted in). I recommend opting in to Away Mode for better energy savings. You can control when you are home and when you are away during those few days or if you opt out of Away Mode then you control it all. Smartphone application is free and easy to use. The new Far-Sight feature is awesome and can catch me at approximately 10 feet away even in the dark. When Nest detects any motion it will illuminate with what the current temperature is. This is how it can tell if you are home or not and can automatically place itself in Away Mode for energy savings. Being able to control everything from the application on my smartphone itself is so awesome (fan, cooling/heating mode, humidity level, away/home mode, set a schedule, history, etc.). Nest will remind you when you should change your air filters on your furnace because it can base it upon how many times it turns on and off. Significant drop in energy consumption can be seen on my gas bill after month 1. Due to this my father purchased the item as well and has no complaints thus far. UPDATE: 15FEB17 Still own the item with no problems. If you are doing research and thinking of purchasing it - just do it! It is paying for itself in savings thus far. Highly recommended! (PICTURES ATTACHED) THANK YOU!

So the gentleman who posted the top review that says "Will not display the current temperature -- by design!" is incorrect at worst and misleading at best. I just installed one of these and it will display the current temperature, it's just not in huge numbers. When you walk up to the unit it will know you're there, and display what you have the heat/cooling set to and then will switch to the mode that lets you see what the temperature is. The temperature will be noted with a hash mark/notch and a number. I've included a picture here to show what I'm talking about and the stock amazon photo shows the same thing. If you look at my picture you will see where my unit is set to heat at 66 degrees and cool at 74. In between those numbers is 72, which is the current temperature. I also included a picture where I turned the dial to go to cool to 71 degrees and the display still shows the current temp at 72. In Amazon's stock picture the unit is set to heat up to 68 degrees and the current temperature is 65 degrees, as indicated on the upper left hand side of the picture. If you tap the unit it will pull up the main display screen which has the temp as well. Maybe the gentleman didn't understand the differences here or he had an older firmware than what it uses now. Regardless, I don't feel it's fair to knock this unit for not displaying the temperature even though it does. It's not in giant numbers, but it's pretty easy to tell what the current temperature is if you take a moment and look. The current temp is on dispaly immediately if you're looking at the unit. Now to the actual review. This unit was very easy to install, the big pain was getting my old thermostat off of the wall. Nest has a interactive website for the installation of this unit (nest.com/works) that makes it easy to figure out if your current wiring will support one of these newer thermostats. You log onto the Nest site and chose the wires that you have coming out of your thermostat and from there the Nest site will tell you if you can use the Nest thermostat with your current setup. I would suggest looking that up before you purchase this unit. Or if you too like to live dangerously, do what I did and pull up the site on your iPad after you've bought the unit. With that out of the way, the unit comes with a back plate that you will connect your wires to. Before you do this, turn off the power to your HVAC system. I like to live dangerously, but not THAT dangerously. Connect the wires to the back plate, attach the unit to the wall and flip your breaker. The unit will light up and guide you through a pretty easy set up. NOTE: You do have to have wifi to get this unit to work properly. If you do not have wifi do not bother purchasing this thermostat. The thing I like the most about this thermostat is I can set a threshold for heating and cooling. Every house I've lived in has always had thermostats that seemed like they were from the 1970s so I don't know if this feature is normal on new thermostats, however this is a game changer for me. Where I live the temperatures can vary by 40 degrees each day and having a thermostat that will let me run the ac in the evening and then turn on the heat at 2 am when the temp drops is worth every penny. I literally have set the thermostat and left it alone since installing it. Some other cool features of this thermostat are that it keeps track of how much heating and cooling you do each day if you're into metrics, and it has a feature called "Sunblock". When you install the thermostat it asks you where you're installing it (such as a bedroom, hallway, kitchen, etc) and if the unit is in direct sunlight. If it is the unit will use Sunblock, which uses the light sensors in the thermostat to determine when it's under direct sunlight. This is used to learn the sun’s patterns in relation to your house the temperature sensors to detect the heat spikes that occur in direct sunlight. It then links to your wifi and knows when the sun rises and sets in your area. Sunblock will use that information to set the correct temperature whenever it’s in direct sunlight and not waste energy. Again, this is a game changer. My previous house had a thermostat that was near direct sunlight and close to a computer so it would run the AC when it wasn't needed, and jack up our electrical bills. There's an app as well that lets you control the temperature if you're lazy and don't want to get up, and to set the temp in the house while you're away. Overall I think this is a really cool product, and if the features I've mentioned are something you'd be interested in then I think it's worth the money. It's especially worth it if your power company has a rebate for purchasing one of these units. That can bring the cost down $50-$100 dollars.

A NEST PRO (authorized installer) said NEST removes unfavorable online reviews, so I hope this one goes through and you can search others. Bottom line: Do due diligence..... do online searches like “NEST complaints”, “c wire”, “common wire”, “NEST” And “compatibility”, “incompatibility.” What NEST doesn’t tell you, according to a NEST PRO, is that lots of systems are incompatible with many of their products (thermostats, doorbells, alarm systems). You might have major installation headaches and unexpected wiring costs. Simple one floor, one unit, one thermostat ac/furnaces might work ok (I have relatives who love their NEST for such houses). Sony dual thermostat control systems are incompatible. It will cost a minimum of $300 or more plus labor (per a HVAC expert) to change some dual systems to be compatible w the NEST thermostat. Also, NEST thermostats draw energy from your ac. In some cases, like mine, when the NEST gets power it will trigger a surge to your AC and it will cause some ac units to randomly and repeatedly turn on, even though it’s freezing cold inside and outside your house, you have the NEST turned to heat only, and all your temp settings should not cause the ac to turn on.... but it does. The only way I could stop this was to turn off my house breaker to the ac. As a temporary fix, NEST tech support had me disconnect the ac wire at the NEST and so the NEST would go to the heat (next wired connection) for to recharge the NEST but that could then cause problems with the heating system. See additional details, below. Sorry this is a fragmented review.... I’ve been writing down notes from my experience w NEST as it has gone on (a very long time). —— Generally installation seems simple, and their tech support in my experience was good at walking you through things, BUT I highly recommend doing one of the following: 1) before installing yourself, call NEST tech support and have them help you determine if your system is compatible, OR 2) Look in the NEST PRO box the product comes in, and follow their directions for finding one of their NEST PRO contractors near you to install your NEST thermostat (that’s what I did). Using their NEST PRO installer for the thermostat gives you a 5 year warranty on the product and more support. Even though I am very handy at electrical and home projects, I used a NEST PRO because I was very busy and just wanted it all “done”, fast and right. However, I got a total nut as a “PRO”. Aside from him endlessly talking (while I was trying to do other things), asking very inappropriate questions about my income, marital status, if I lived alone, him talking about his prison time, his adultery, etc, etc, and his seeming very unstable mood, and questionable know-how, the “simple” installation, took him over 6 hours and the NEST thermostats still didn’t work. He tried to pressure me to give him a 5 star rating review before he would come back to fix the problem. He said he did this with his other customers. Additional problems w this PRO with other customers resulted in him bailing on being a NEST PRO and bailing on my job (likely a good thing for me). My system was still not right & I had problems w the Ac constantly running, the fan randomly running, and furnace not responding right.... problems I never had before with old fashioned Honeywell thermostats. My electricity/gas provider sends me weekly updates my bill/usage and my usage / bill doubled with the NEST even though I had settings turned where it was not suppose to be turning on AC or heat, and no one was at the house. I read up online about such problems and figured it was possibly a “C or ”common wire issue”. The NEST PRO flake had removed himself from working for NEST and so I called NEST directly. The woman in tech support was great, and the second, higher level tech guy was also helpful. They walked me through trouble shooting steps and agreed it was likely a common wire issue. They sent out a service contractor to evaluate. This service provider was also excellent and NEST paid for his visit and would have covered the cost of installing a common wire BUT ONLY BECAUSE I had originally used a NEST PRO to do the installation. (Hence, I recommend using a NEST PRO. Various bids to do follow wire outside of NEST were $500 to $1000, according to 2 people who served as NEST PROS). However, the good service provider found that my system is incompatible with NEST. It would cost $$$$$$ to change my system to be compatible with NEST and there was no guarantee. At this point I regretted changing from the working perfectly Honeywell thermostats. I wanted to love NEST. It was not meant to be. The problems continued as I tried to get compensation for my pain. The NEST higher level tech originally said he would work to get me reimbursed for the (authorized) NEST PRO original fee and the 2 NESTs I had bought. He then told and emailed me instructions to ASAP send my NESTs back to amazon for a refund. Amazon held back $80 of my reimbursement to restock the NESTS. Then the same NEST tech said since I had sent the NESTS back to Amazon, he could not help get me reimbursed for out of pocket expenses I had (refund of my bill for the official NEST PRO who didn’t know what he was doing; full price of NEST Thermostats minus whatever amazon deducted for restocking). I would NOT have followed his advice to send the NESTS back to Amazon if I had known it would jeopardize my situation. I originally had felt pretty good about the customer support I received from NEST, but now feel like they do not support you. I will never buy another NEST product. Incidentally, my old school Honeywell thermostats that worked perfectly before, were no longer found anywhere in my house after the NEST PRO left. Perhaps they were misplaced by the PRO but they are gone so we had to buy new ones. So, for 2 NESTs, I have spent over a thousand dollars and more than 14 hours in this nonsense. Plus double utility bill. Plus $250 to put in traditional thermostats.

Perfect for your home this product is very good and practical for your home excellent choice

When I bought my house last year it had one of these but it couldn't connect to my wifi and it was out of warranty. I didn't mind bc I could still change the temp on the apparatus so I just dealt with it. But a storm surge fried the comm board on my HVAC and I ended up buying a new one of these to deal with the damage. It's been wonderful to start fresh and connect to my wifi. It works well, it's comapatible to my phone and wifi and it's rather easy to use. I will say I sometimes get stuck between the eco and the regular temp settings which is why I docked it a star. It's a little complicated to get it started and programmed - but overall it is really terrific. I love that it is accurate for temps and humidity and that I can change the temp on my way home from my phone or while sitting in my bedroom!

The Nest T3016US Programmable Thermostat is a smart, reliable upgrade for anyone looking to improve home comfort and energy efficiency. Its sleek, modern design blends well with any home décor, while the intuitive interface makes temperature adjustments quick and easy. Installation is straightforward, and once set up, the thermostat learns your schedule and automatically adjusts heating and cooling to match your habits. The Nest app allows remote control from anywhere, making it easy to manage your home’s temperature and monitor energy usage on the go. Performance is excellent, maintaining consistent temperatures and helping reduce energy costs over time. Features like Auto-Schedule, Energy History, and Home/Away Assist add real value without feeling complicated. Pros: Modern, attractive design Easy to use with intuitive controls Smart learning and scheduling features Remote access via mobile app Helps improve energy efficiency Cons: Higher price compared to basic thermostats Some features require a stable Wi-Fi connection Overall, the Nest T3016US is a premium programmable thermostat that delivers comfort, convenience, and long-term savings, making it a worthwhile investment for smart home users.

I bought this item through Amazon, as always the item came well packaged and on time. If there is one thing I have ever learned, that is nothing is as easy as plug and play, but first I want to get to the good. Besides what others have said this does show the current temp in the house but it is on the outer ring and in small numbers. Others have complained that the current temp is to small and the temp setting being the focus is a problem for them, I am more concerned with what temp I set it to, not what the current temp is. Once the unit has programmed it's self based on your temp preferences the only reason to be concerned with the current temp is if the unit fails to turn on, or you really have to have that gee wiz info. I bought this to save money not to impress others with the screen and info. The screen is large, easy to read, I like that it turns on when you walk up to it, it is simple to use, the app is great and works flawlessly, and yes it is a bonus that it looks nice. Now for the bad, when I installed it I followed all the instructions, all the wires went exactly where they belong. It is nice that for those with large dual zone systems and humidifiers and all the bells and whistles they have stickers with the wire names provided, they say Y1, RH W1, G and so on. My system only used 4 wires R, Y, W, G and had no jumpers for the old system so my system was not exactly rocket science to wire correctly. I kept getting a fault saying it would not recognize the Y1 (cooling) wire, after trouble shooting on my own I confirmed the connections were good, no wires broken or twisted and everything was good on that end. In this 4 wire configuration there is no blue (or sometimes black) wire which is required, this is a power wire that some systems use to provide constant 24 volt power to the thermostat. If you do not have this wire some systems will still work with this unit with no problem, it simply takes a little power from the RH and Y1 to get its power, and remember it was not recognizing my Y1. I finally call customer support and was on the phone with them for about 2 hours, they were very polite and tried there hardest to help but that night it was getting to late at night and the house getting to cold to deal with it and the thermostat required a full charge to continue troubleshooting. As a side bar there is a mini USB plug on the back of the faceplate that works with android style plugs to provide a quick charge, this is in the event of extended black outs you can recharge fast. So for the night I reconnected the old thermostat and the HVAC worked fine. Next morning I'm back on the phone with tech support. After giving them the case number from the night before we started going through many of the steps again since my old thermostat seemed to work fine that proved there was no problem with the HVAC wiring it's self, so this wire detection problem was a bit of a mystery. After moving wires to different terminals and reading out voltages from the tech info screen for about a hour and a half, they determined that it was a faulty base plate, they were kind enough to order a replacement base plate and even overnight FEDEX it to me, so at this point I'm waiting for a part that might fix the problem. Knowing modern housing construction practices, I still had my suspicions that it was not a issue with the baseplate but was a wiring problem with the HVAC, besides I hate throwing parts at a problem to see what might fix the issue. I had a friend that does HVAC look at the system, first thing he said was I needed that C (blue) common wire connected to provide enough power. I had already tried that and seen that the issue was not fixed, that was because as I suspected the system was not wired up correctly. The common wire was there but not connected to anything, so after rewiring the entire system we got the Nest thermostat to work as advertised. There are two morals to this story, first is that Nest tech support is great and they try everything they can to get you up and running, but in the end you are talking to IT people not HVAC professionals. The second moral is if your are replacing a old "dumb" thermostat or even a newer programmable one but not a "smart" one, and they worked fine before does not mean that the system was wired up correctly to work with this unit. So if you plug it in and it gives you a E80 fault code and you do not have a blue wire or it's not connected to the terminal, chances are you need it, and after connecting it if you continue to have faults chances are your blue wire is not connected properly. If you really are insitant on upgrading your thermostat call a HVAC person to look at your system.