Craig Lloyd
A smart thermostat is a fantastic way to control the temperature in your home from afar, as well as make it more convenient to control the climate in your house. If you’re looking for one that works well with your Google Home, you have a couple of options.
Nest Learning Thermostat ($249)
Since Nest is owned by Google, it makes sense that the Nest Thermostat works great for the Google Home, and it’s one of the best smart thermostats, period.
Just from looking at it, it has a fantastic design that looks great in any home—the circular frame and display make it stick out from the rest of the competition and gives it a really sharp look that combines the classic dial-thermostat design with smart home chops.
The Nest app is also really easy to use too, so if smarthome technology is new to you, Nest makes it surprisingly easy to dip to your toes in without much trouble. And its integration with Google Home devices makes it easy to control the thermostat using your voice—you can do things like adjust the temperature, go into away mode, or just ask what the current temperature is in the room.
The Nest Thermostat comes with all the key features you’d want from a smart thermostat, including setting schedules, adjusting the temperature from your phone, room sensors, auto-away mode, and more. But perhaps the most unique feature is its ability to learn how you adjust your thermostat throughout the day, so that eventually it will just adjust the temperature for you.
Furthermore, the Nest Thermostat is a better bet going forward, since Nest has all sorts of other smarthome products that its thermostat can integrate with. So if you’re just now building up your smarthome and want to stick to Google’s ecosystem, the Nest Thermostat is the best option.
Budget Option: Nest Thermostat E ($169)
If the flagship Nest Thermostat model is a bit over your budget, a cheaper alternative is the Nest Thermostat E, which gives you most of the same features that you’d want out of a cheaper smart thermostat.
The biggest difference you’ll notice between the flagship model and the Nest Thermostat E is the design—it’s made out of plastic instead of metal and comes with a radically simplified (and inferior) display.
The budget model also doesn’t come with Farsight, which is a Nest feature that wakes up the thermostat’s display when it detects that you’re nearby and shows you custom info on the screen.
The good news is that it still comes with the same motion-sensing technology so that it knows if someone is home or not, and you can use room sensors with it. Of course, whatever you can do with the flagship model on the Google Home, you can also do on the Nest Thermostat E.
What About the Ecobee4?
One of the Nest Thermostat’s top competitors is the Ecobee series of smart thermostats, especially the Ecobee4, which is a great smart thermostat. But why aren’t we recommending it?
The Ecobee4 is absolutely a fantastic option, and it also works pretty well with the Google Home, but if you’re going to be all in with the Google ecosystem, it really makes the most sense to stick with Nest products for your smarthome. Plus, the Nest Thermostat has much nicer hardware and software in our opinion.
Both the Nest Thermostat and the Ecobee4 are priced the same, but by all means, if you find a good deal on an Ecobee4, it will still work just as good with the Google Home for most stuff but won’t have the super tight integration the Nest does.
