Review on 🏠 Programmable Smart Thermostat for Home - 3rd Generation Nest Thermostat - Works with Alexa - Stainless Steel - Google Nest Learning Thermostat by Steve Griffin

So I live in the Southeast where the summers are harsh and the winters are colder than you think. We experience wild temperature swings that keep energy consumption quite high during the peak months of the summer and winter seasons. I figured it might help save some expenses so decided to give it a try. While others have explained a lot about what this system does, let me tell you what it DOESN'T do. I work regularly, my husband too. We leave the house with a difference of 15 minutes and come home pretty soon. So if I leave at 7am and get home at 5pm, I want my house to be a comfortable temperature of 75-76 degrees. intermediate? I don't care and I was hoping the Nest would work for me. Ideally by the time I leave at 7 or so the air conditioning/heating starts dropping to a decent level say 80 so I can save money and then when he finds out I'm home around 5 he turns that on heat/cool the house to a level acceptable to me when I walk in the door. This thing needs to work in my house when I'm away to save money by not heating or cooling an empty house for a few hours while I'm gone, then kicking back for about 30/60 minutes before I do arrive, so I enter a cozy home. However, this is not entirely true, you see. I have to do all the hard work to save money with the app while I'm away. It has a motion sensor and a proximity sensor for the phone, and uses those two things to determine if you're home or not. If your phone goes out of a 1 mile radius or you don't pass the motion sensor for a certain amount of time, it starts an invisible countdown (from 15 minutes to 2 hours, although it doesn't tell you how long and it's not programmable!). After this time, the air conditioning/heating in the house starts to reduce to the temperature threshold you have set in order to save energy. It then waits until it detects motion or sees your phone again to start again. This is a big problem if you've been away for a long time, as your home might be quite warm or cold when you arrive, but Nest won't start up until it "sees" you, meaning you won't notice. When you enter the cozy house, you enter your threshold temperature and have to wait for the nest to catch up. The motion sensor is also a big problem if you have an old house like mine and the thermostat is hidden down the hall, not by the front door. This may not be a problem for some, but be aware if your thermostat is in a hard-to-reach area. THERE IS an "early start" function that allows you to set the temperature and time ("I want it to be 75 degrees at 4:30 p.m.") and your house a little earlier than that time depending on the time start heating or cooling the ambient temperature. This is a good feature. And does someone have to be in the house? It doesn't make any sense to me. Why should I enable early setup when I'm already at home? When I go to work, why does my wife have to endure an uncomfortable temperature when she stays at home just for it to start a few minutes before I arrive? This is a feature that Home/Away Assist lacks, which is absolutely necessary for this to be a TRUE learning thermostat. This feature DOESN'T WORK if your Home/Away Assist is on AND no one sees home so go back to the stove in the summer when he needs to understand I'm home at 5pm every Monday to Friday (give or take a few minutes) and strive to keep the temperature at my desired level WITHOUT programming at that time. Whatever the case, you must disable the main sales feature (Study Scheduling, Home/Away Assistance) for it to work properly. phone proximity etc. If it turns out I need to call someone who is sick I now have to go into the Nest software/app and erase any settings I have for the day and remember to reset them to use the next one Thursday (or whatever day I remove) I'm not blown away by extreme heat/cold. So you can program this thing to set the temperature throughout the house at a specific time. but that defeats the purpose of spending $200-$250 on this thing. It sure looks cool, but I can get a programmable thermostat for a fraction of the cost. Why isn't Nest REALLY learning like he says? This is sorely missed by those of us who live in areas that get quite warm and cold year round. If they could set it up so that Nest could actually know I like 75 degrees around the time I get home AND leave Home/Away Assist on, I would change my rating, but for now it would I am very disappointed.