Nest Temperature Sensor Review

Nest Temperature Sensor: Earlier this year, Nest finally made it possible to balance the HVAC system for different areas of your home without using multiple thermostats. The Temperature Sensor, a small wireless puck you can place throughout your home, lets the Nest system set its programming to the temperature of a specific room instead of just where the thermostat is mounted. The Temperature Sensor works with the third-generation Nest Learning Thermostat and the Nest Thermostat E and can be purchased for $39 or in packs of three for $99.

This Nest Temperature Sensor will allow you to customize temperatures from room to room because not every room has the same temperature. It will let you know which room should be what temperature throughout the day. This sensor is compatible with Nest thermostats and goes discreetly on a wall of shelf.

  • Helps make sure a certain room is an exact temperature you want it to be
  • Put temperature sensors in different rooms and choose which room to prioritize when
  • Place it on a wall or shelf, then forget it’s even there
  • Communicates temperature to compatible Nest thermostats

In many ways, the Temperature Sensor catches Nest up to its competitor Ecobee, which has included remote sensors with its smart thermostats for years. It also makes balancing hot and cold areas in your home much easier than using just a single Nest thermostat on the wall. If you are constantly adjusting the temperature setting of your thermostat throughout the day to compensate for where you are in your home at a given time, the remote sensors eliminate the need for that. But as I’ve found out testing the Temperature Sensor in my home this summer, the whole experience could be improved significantly.

No, you don’t need a temperature sensor to use your thermostat. We designed the Nest thermostat to keep you comfortable and you don’t need a separate temperature sensor to take advantage of all the energy-saving features Nest thermostats have to offer.

The Temperature Sensor, a small wireless puck you can place throughout your home, lets the Nest system set its programming to the temperature of a specific room instead of just where the thermostat is mounted.

No, the nest thermostat temperature sensor does not detect humidity, it only detects temperature.

Nest Temperature Sensor 3 Pack

While Nest sells the Temperature Sensor in single or three packs, up to six sensors can be connected to a single thermostat. Once connected (via Bluetooth LE, meaning they keep working even if your Wi-Fi drops), sensors report local temperatures to your thermostat. Bear in mind that room sensors are no substitute for a multi-zone heating system, so they won’t help deliver different temperatures in different rooms.

If you have multiple sensors around the home, you can select one to control the thermostat or schedule the thermostat to respond to different sensors throughout the day. That allows you to ensure rooms are comfortable when they’re most likely in use. While it would have been great to see Nest add motion detection in the Temperature Sensor (like Nest Detect) sadly, that’s not the case in this first-generation accessory.

Powered by a CR2 battery, Nest says that you should expect up to two years of operation before you’ll need to swap it out. That said, we had no issues connecting a sensor two floors up from the thermostat, and you can check the connection at any time from the Nest app.

Nest Remote Temperature Sensor

Setting up the Temperature Sensor is as simple as pulling the battery tab on the back of the puck, and adding the device in the Nest app. The sensor uses Bluetooth to communicate with the main thermostat, and it has a replaceable lithium battery that lasts up to two years, according to Nest. There’s a peg hole on the back of the sensor so you can mount it to a wall, but you can also put it on a shelf and it will work just the same.

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Within the Nest app, you can name the sensor for whatever room you’re putting it in and then tell the system what times you want it to set itself to the sensor’s readings. Those blocks are inflexible, so if you wake up earlier than 7 AM or retire to your bedroom before 9 PM, you can’t adjust them.

I’d have loved to program the morning block to later in the AM, as my kitchen, which is on the main floor, is much cooler than the top floor of my house, where my family spends half the morning getting ready for the day.

As a result, I frequently have to go into the Nest app and override the programmed setting for which sensor it should read off of.

Further, the settings are locked to those time blocks — Nest did not include any sort of presence detection on the device. Unlike Ecobee’s remote sensors, Nest’s cannot tell when someone is present in the room and automatically adjust the system based on where you actually are in the house. The Nest Protect smoke alarms do have presence detection, which helps the thermostat set its home and away modes automatically, but they do not measure temperature nor can they be used to inform the remote Temperature Sensor’s programming.

Nest Temperature Sensor Amazon

It’s not the same temperature in every room of your house. A room without windows might be warmer or cooler than a room with them, rooms downstairs might be cooler in the summertime, and we all know how hot the kitchen can get when you’re cooking a big meal. This makes it hard for your thermostat to make your whole house the temperature you want.

This is why the Nest makes a remote Temperature Sensor. Most homes don’t have multiple systems to heat or cool them so using multiple thermostats isn’t going to work out very well, but a remote sensor that can tell your thermostat to ramp up the air conditioner for a little bit because it’s kind of warm in the den. The key is knowing what you need and how to use it.

Even if you have a multi-story house that has warm or cold spots, you might not want to use a Temperature Sensor. It all depends on where you spend your time and where the main thermostat is.

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If you spend most of your time in a spot that’s too warm or too cold you can put a Temperature Sensor in the room so your Nest knows it needs to adjust. If you’re comfortable where you spend most of the time but another spot in your house gets too warm or too cold, you won’t want one. You can’t easily move your thermostat, but if you wish you could, a Temperature Sensor is probably for you.

Remote Temperature Sensor For Nest

In the red (make that green) corner, Canada’s ecobee, now in its fourth generation, has quickly positioned itself as a capable challenger sporting advanced features such as far-field voice recognition plus integrations with Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant.

 Embroiled in corporate turmoil, it’s an obvious feature to which Nest Labs have been slow to respond. Until now.

Nest Thermostat Temperature Sensor

Temperature Sensors only work with these models:

  • Nest Learning Thermostat, 3rd generation
  • Nest Thermostat E
  • Nope! The Nest Temperature Sensor connects to your Nest using Bluetooth and has a range of up to 15 meters (about 50 feet). That measurement is in a straight line that can go through walls or floors so you’ll probably be good unless you have a very large house. Sometimes house wiring can monkey with Bluetooth and shorten its range, but those issues are relatively rare.
  • This information can be helpful; it lets you know if you should move the Temperature Sensor to a different spot.

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