Nest Introduces $129 'Protect' Connected Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detector

I love nest,I really do,however I'll have to pass on these. My home is 3288sft. 5 bed 4 baths,living room,dining room,family room....plus I have smoke detectors in my attic and garage. I'd need about 10 of these. That's just too costly for me. Love their products though. I bought two of their thermostats,one for upstairs one for downstairs. They say you can't put a price on safety,so who knows. I'll have to see just exactly how many I need. Great product,just wish they were cheaper.

Yeah same here. I have an 8000 sq ft home with 2 Ferraris. Plus I have a 1000 sq ft gazebo next to my 2 hole golf course. Gonna have to pass.

So it's still going to take batteries? What a stupid design.

Right near the end of the article - "available in both black and white versions, with each color being available in wired and battery-powered versions"

Seems cool but a little expensive considering you will most likely have to buy a few.

Pssh $129! I'll be a buyer at the correct price point of about $40. Until then, stick with the Kidde alarms.

There are some disadvantages to this

If you have a typical house with three bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room, then you need five smoke detectors. At $129 each, you would need to spend $600+. If you have a basement, then you may need more and may spend more. And you'll spend even more if you have them professionally installed.

If you have that many new devices that are on your wifi, how will your bandwidth fare? Will you need to pay for even more expensive wifi speed?

If you have cathedral cielings as I do, then you won't be able to wave your hands in front of it to shut it up as it will be more than the 2-8 feet from you.

This will be a cash cow for Nest as most homes only have one or two thermostats, but most have three to ten smoke detectors. Mine has seven - and I'm in a condo.

Compared to the nest it does look pretty stale though

Do you really want a device like this to be super visible day to day? Maybe some people do. I want it to be visible if there is a problem, and just blend in any other time.

Right near the end of the article - "available in both black and white versions, with each color being available in wired and battery-powered versions"

Seems cool but a little expensive considering you will most likely have to buy a few.

They should make the "expensive" one to act as the master, and some simpler slave units that are only slightly more expensive than a current high-end smoke/CO detector, but add a radio transmitter that just chirps its status to the master unit on a regular basis.

So it's still going to take batteries? What a stupid design.

Do you even know how a smoke detector operates and how it has to comply with safety code? In the case of a smoke detector, do you even know what safety code implies technically speaking? Before saying such non-sense, why don't you look it up and then post an informed comment?

It's becoming increasingly annoying to read people only on MR to point fingers for random reasons when the most they can achieve in a day, it seems, is to be sitting in front of a screen to do just that - pointing fingers for no reason.

I'll buy 6 (even if it's still taking batteries, duh) in the meantime.

How many detectors does the average house have? I'm pretty sure my house has about 7 and it's a rather average size. That's quite the chunk of change for something that produces little benefit. I think the most useful part is that it tells you which room the smoke is coming from, but unless you have one in each room this feature isn't very useful. The fact that it lights up as you're walking at night is cool, but the flashlight in iOS 7 is pretty easy to get to as well which mitigates that benefit for me. I suppose this is more useful for people who burn things all the time? I've never set off a smoke alarm. I think my wife set one off once in the years we've been married. If our children turn out to be pyros this could prove beneficial.

What would be nice is if these smoke detectors—which seem to have decent speakers in them—could be used over AirPlay as a house-wide speaker system for music. This would work especially well on the wired models where battery life isn't a concern. It would also be great if you could use it like an intercom by speaking into the app and making announcements over the system, such as telling the kids upstairs that dinner is ready (or having some preset buttons to make announcements using the built-in voice actor). Another great feature they could add: Ability to put the house in lockdown mode while away on a vacation or during the day when at work. If it detects any motion, it sends you an alert.

Does anyone know if this will work with the Nest thermostat? I love my thermostat, but sometimes it goes into auto-away when I'm in my office for a few hours working on client projects on the weekend. If the motion detectors worked in-tandem with the thermostat, then that would allow better detection for auto-away. Having temperature sensors in each smoke detector would also be handy for having the thermostat even out the temperature throughout the house. My thermostat is downstairs and sometimes Nest doesn't get the temperature correct upstairs.

Never been a fan of combo smoke+CO detectors.

Smoke Rises... Carbon Monixide falls. You can't place one detector in one position and get good readings. You need a smoke detector high and a carbon monixide detector low to get good early warning detection.

Batteries are used for backup

So it's still going to take batteries? What a stupid design.

The wired version has batteries to detect a fire when your power is out. Modern fire codes require this so you will still have protection during a power outage.