Josh Hendrickson
If you own a Nexx Smart Garage Door Controller and depend on its Just Drive Feature to automatically open your garage door, you may be in for a surprise today. That’s because the company turned the feature off for all users. The good news is, you can turn it back on (with some new agreements). The bad news? It just doesn’t work well. But you probably knew that.
Update, 4/5/23: Review Geek no longer recommends Nexx smart home products. The company ignored several critical security vulnerabilities, even after being contacted by the DHS.
Nexx makes a great smart garage door controller that works with nearly any garage door opener. It’s easy to use, easy to install, and for most functions works perfectly. But as we noted in our review, one thing that didn’t work well is the company’s Just Drive feature.
In theory, with Just Drive turned on, when you arrive home, the Nexx garage door smart controller will detect your presence and automatically open the garage for you as you approach your driveway. The feature works using your phone’s geolocation to detect where you are. When you cross over a GPS threshold, the Nexx app (for iOS and Android) contacts your hardware and sends an open signal.
That was the theory, but in practice, it didn’t work well at all. On multiple occasions, the garage door opened when I was driving away from the house. Often, I’d arrive home, and nothing would happen. So I opened the door manually. In the long run, I turned the feature off.
In an email sent out to users, Nexx is acknowledging the problems with Just Drive. And to be clear, it’s not a problem with Nexx; it’s a problem with phone geolocation.
Between the varying strength of Wi-Fi signals and GPS signals, mitigating factors like trees, building materials, and dozens of other variables, using phone geolocation to automate your smart home generally doesn’t work well.
After working hard to address all the variables, Nexx is admitting the truth—it may never work well for everyone. So the company is turning the feature off for all users, and making it opt-in from here on out.
Now, if you want to get the Just Drive feature back, you’ll have to go into the Nexx app settings, find the Just Drive option, and turn it on. And then you’ll have to agree to new usage terms that include several acknowledgments.
As inconvenient as the change may be right now, it’s a good move for Nexx to make. It takes the company from a position of overpromising and underdelivering to a more upfront and honest stance on how well the feature works.
If you turn it on and Just Drive works well for you, great! But for everyone else, at least you knew going in the feature may not have worked well, and you’re prepared to turn it back off. Or just skip it altogether.
