Nest Smart Home Products Coming to Four More European Countries

[MacRumors]

Smart home brand Nest has announced it is making its products available in four more countries across Europe, with Spain, Italy, Germany, and Austria being added to its official retail roster.

From February 15, customers in the above regions will now be able to buy the Nest 3.0 learning thermostat (249 euros), the Protect smoke alarm (119 euros), and the company's indoor and outdoor cameras (199 euros). Nest products can be pre-ordered now from Amazon, local retailers, and select energy suppliers.

Now that we're in four more countries, twice as many European homes have the chance to become Nest homes. We also plan to make our products available through even more energy, insurance and telco partners, as well as enlist the help of thousands of Nest Pro installers. So getting and installing Nest products, and connecting them to Works with Nest products, will be simple.

The latest market expansion will be a boost to Nest. The company's products are used in homes in over 190 countries, but were previously only officially sold and supported in seven. The last market rollout occurred in September 2014. Nest says it will continue to expand into more countries as demand continues to grow.

Article Link: Nest Smart Home Products Coming to Four More European Countries

 

[Applebot1]

I have a few Nest products. Really find them very good.

 

[Unggoy Murderer]

Nest products are great! Really wish HomeKit support will be available at some point though.

 

[jmh600cbr]

Entirely irrelevant without HomeKit support

 

[djcerla]

No HomeKit > No Buy

 

[riverfreak]

Entirely irrelevant without HomeKit support

Note also that the thermostats don't really work with in-floor radiant systems in the way Nest intends them to: turning on and off according to your presence, for example. They look cool on the wall though.

 

[RightMACatU]

Entirely irrelevant without HomeKit support

And for a lot of Euros

 

[69Mustang]

Nest makes some nice products. Some say no Homekit/No Buy. I couldn't care less about Homekit.

 

[gsmornot]

Nest makes some nice products. Some say no Homekit/No Buy. I couldn't care less about Homekit.

I hear ya. Who really wants to see all of their connected devices in one place and control them with voice commands. Its easier to use individual apps and tap everything. Why even have devices be smart at all.

I'm messing with ya. There are other methods and applications outside of HomeKit that honestly are better at the moment. The big advantage to Homekit is integration but its still limited to basic "stuff". The idea though is the more products that have Homekit the better industry will be able to push for improvements from Apple. One of the main reasons I went with Ecobee is Homekit (and of course remote sensors). Homekit is also part of my decision for lighting going forward.

Anyhow, just giving you a hard time but I hear what you're saying.

 

[supersteve]

I have a nest but find it very lacking. Where is the home kit support? Where are the external remote thermostats? Seems like there are newer option available from other companies. IMO google really dropped the ball with nest.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Nest products are great! Really wish HomeKit support will be available at some point though.

Don't count on it. As Google owns Nest, they (1) have their own competing connected home platform, and (2) aren't keen on supporting Apple's specialized APIs regardless of how popular they are.

 

[ryanmcv]

Can someone please explain why HomeKit is so important? Sure, it would provide some nice integration features, but my Nest thermostats and Protect alarms work perfectly as they are. The Nest app is great and the Amazon Alexa integration works nicely as well.

 

[RMo]

I hear ya. Who really wants to see all of their connected devices in one place and control them with voice commands. Its easier to use individual apps and tap everything. Why even have devices be smart at all.

I'm messing with ya. There are other methods and applications outside of HomeKit that honestly are better at the moment. The big advantage to Homekit is integration but its still limited to basic "stuff". The idea though is the more products that have Homekit the better industry will be able to push for improvements from Apple. One of the main reasons I went with Ecobee is Homekit (and of course remote sensors). Homekit is also part of my decision for lighting going forward.

Anyhow, just giving you a hard time but I hear what you're saying.

Not the original poster, and I see you're joking, but it is worth pointing out that HomeKit is not the only way to have everything you need in one place. Vera, SmartThings, and similar solutions do what HomeKit is trying to do but support far more devices at the moment--so you don't need to go into individual apps, and they support devices that don't even have their own apps because it wouldn't make sense (e.g., a ZigBee motion sensor). My thermostat (Zen) happens to be a purely ZigBee device with no WiFi or Bluetooth connection, which I think makes perfect sense. It will communicate with my smart home hub, and I can use my existing home automation system (including its iOS app) to control it. There's no reason my thermostat needs to be on WiFi, as far as I'm concerned--it is more power-hungry, its range is more limited, and setup is often more complicated than other wireless communication mechanisms.

HomeKit may get here some day, but I really like being able to use things I already have (e.g., my motion sensors more or less know when I've been home and most can also report temperature, so I wouldn't need remote sensors or a presence sensor, etc.) and write custom code to make my devices work exactly how I want if needed (nerdy, but something I doubt Apple will ever officially support).

Oh, and I've still managed to make it unofficially work with HomeKit via the magic of my server running HomeBridge. About the only advantage to that, however, is being able to use Siri to control things. I have an Echo and find Alexa is usually just as helpful (for home automation), if not more because I don't have to find my phone and activate Siri.

 

[aristobrat]

Oh, and I've still managed to make it unofficially work with HomeKit via the magic of my server running HomeBridge. About the only advantage to that, however, is being able to use Siri to control things. I have an Echo and find Alexa is usually just as helpful (for home automation), if not more because I don't have to find my phone and activate Siri.

Same here with HomeBridge. And to me, that's the main cool factor of HomeKit. HomeKit can interface with the various hubs (like Insteon, Vera, whatever) and leave the micromanaging of the actual devices to them. On that note, HomeBridge will make devices that will likely never have HomeKit support (like Nest) able to be controlled through HomeKit. Kinda awesome, IMO, and something not likely to be seen with other hubs/technologies.

For me, another advantage of HomeKit is being able to swipe up in iOS devices and controlling stuff via Control Center (without having to exit whatever app I'm using).

I love using Siri on my Apple Watch to open/close the garage door when my hands are full. Do you not use "Hey Siri" on your phone? Sounds like you're manually finding your phone and pushing the button?

 

[kwikdeth]

The reason I don't want home kit: Apple Music. If you've ever wanted a bigger reason why you shouldn't want "everything in one app" it's because of that. I have zero confidence in Apple to supply a coherent experience from 2016 onward. Enjoy having everything moved around a couple months. Or when apple decides you need to be greener and buries your thermostat controls behind five layers of interface. Or better yet, the day when homekit2 comes out, and every single accessory you've bought becomes obsolete overnight. Courage says it's not a matter of if, only a matter of when. That's the nice thing about not being imprisoned in an ecosystem - you get to upgrade and replace things when you want to, not when the Timmy and the shareholders dictate you need new stuff.

 

[aristobrat]

The reason I don't want home kit: Apple Music. If you've ever wanted a bigger reason why you shouldn't want "everything in one app" it's because of that. I have zero confidence in Apple to supply a coherent experience from 2016 onward. Enjoy having everything moved around a couple months. Or when apple decides you need to be greener and buries your thermostat controls behind five layers of interface.

I see your point, but to me, there's a huge difference. HomeKit is a framework that can be accessed via 3rd-party apps, whereas Apple Music is an Apple service that can only be accessed via an Apple app.

That means if Apple hides your thermostat behind five layers in their native "Home" app, you're free to use any of the other 3rd-party applications that have the same ability to access/control the HomeKit framework as Apple's app, like Elgato's Eve app (or the Connected Sense app). Actually, until iOS 10 came out last year, 3rd-party apps were the only way you could access/control HomeKit -- Apple didn't have an app that did HomeKit until then.

Apple's already had the "courage" to stop supporting new HomeKit features when using the 3rd-gen AppleTV as a hub. New features require the latest AppleTV. So what you're talking about has already happened. AFAIK, 3rd-gen AppleTV owners are fine and didn't lose any functionality -- they just can't use any new features until they get a new AppleTV.

 

[BrianKonarsMac]

No HomeKit > No Buy

What is the killer feature that makes HomeKit a requirement? In theory I understand the idea of a 'centralized UI' for all your smart home tech but I've not actually seen anything from Apple demonstrating this - does it exist? If so, is it any good? I've lost confidence in Apple to supply quality software - I hope they can but the track record thus far concerns me.