Home Automation

I think so for peace of mind more so when you're not home. What's also nice about the nests is they interlink (communicate) wirelessly so any existing hardwired units can talk with additional battery units; if you wanted to add elsewhere. They're smoke/co and you have no choice otherwise so your existing setup with just smokes in the bedroom and smoke/co in common areas is even 'safer?'.

the Nest will only connect/trigger with other Nest detectors. if you existing hardwire smokes alarm goes off the nest can not silence them. if you just want a way to know remotely if there is a fire or CO issue then the Nest will work for that. if you want to make the house solely Nest then you need one in each bedroom, one outside in a common area of the bedrooms (hallway etc) one in living room/common area, garage, top of stair wells. contact your fire department to see what code would be if you would need additional units. but you are looking at >$500 easy.

another option is to get a Google home/alexa/homepod as they can be set to listen for your current smoke alarms and/or breaking glass and send you an alert to your phone.

Not really, first alert will probably have a black friday sale on their wave smoke/co sensors last year was like 25 a unit.

Smoke detectors have a finite lifespan of 10 years so nests are about a buck a month a pop.

I don't think the value is there if that's what you're looking for, but they are by far the best sensors, looks, and overall features that you'll find. Up to you on what that's worth.

Worth it especially if you’re hardwired. We have a bunch and even added a few battery models to key spots in the house (electrical panel, closet with computer equipment, etc.)

We had one false alarm from a LARGE burst of steam triggering one of them - wireless interconnect worked perfectly. It took a few minutes to register which one was triggered in the app but other than that they’re great.

I have them in my BnB and home, just for the benefit that if a customer burns down the BnB /or if my home catches fire while I’m not there I will find out immediately. Happy with them so far.

Since I converted to Nest six years ago, I have had zero false alarms. I had gotten tired of false trips on First Alert from humidity (among other causes).

I only test mine about twice a year, I like that they report their status to the app, so I can check battery level.

My house is old, I have battery only units, no hardwire. Having the units interconnected over radio was critical for me. I installed with Duracell Lithium batteries, and have not had to change them yet. I wonder if they'll go the full ten years on one set.

They are expensive, I will grant that. Also note that they use a photoelectric smoke sensor, which is great for smoky smouldering fires, but slower than ionization based detectors on fast burning fires.

I’ve no issues with my three. Plus app control and a warning on your phone is amazing vs just a blood curdling alarm out of no where (meaning for false alarms like cooking).

Are they THAT much better? Your call on value.

worth it. i had to deal with first alert / old school alarms and their false + interconnected alarms is hugely annoying (running around with a ladder while my kids are screaming). nest protect is just way more modern, control it via app, etc.

I believe so, Costco and Lowe’s run periodic sales on them. Be sure to check the dates and don’t get the old ones. I like them because there’s no guessing if you heard 5 or 6 beeps. We had a traditional interconnected smoke/fire/CO alarm go off in the middle of the night and for the life of me couldn’t remember what the beeps meant. In my daze I didn’t want to get on the floor if CO was present but also didn’t want to run around if there was a fire. In my sudden awakening I wasn’t aware those thoughts were flawed. I grabbed the kid and bolted out the second floor window. I did a Google search on the beeping and found out it was my CO alarm. Anyways, I never want to be in that state of confusion where I don’t know what the proper life saving steps are. And you can have the alarm test itself.

Worth it 1) never had a false alarm, not true with first alert 2) provides smoke and co 3) can be used as presence sensor ( i do via HA integration ) 4) provides a path light 5) most important, can tell you if there’s a fire while your not home ! … mine are hardwired

They piss me off but I still purchased them. Only the detection portion of the device has a finite lifespan. So, if Nest, and now Google, actually cared about keeping electronic waste out of landfills they could have made the detection component modular and let us refresh just that part when it ages out, at perhaps $50 instead of tossing the whole thing. And, it will force you to toss it when it hits ten years, none of that old school smoke detector well it still seems to work stuff.

Second gripe is that while you can customize the alerts, you can only pick from their designated list of room names. In the app you can set your own desired name, but that's only useful in a non-fire situation if you want to see on the app which alarm is actually going off. If it is a fire situation, and you happen to have a bedroom on different sides of the house, well, who knows which one is going off. There's no playroom, theater, any type of hall other than "Hallway", etc. I have a home with a great room in the middle and hallways + bedrooms on each side, so the "hallway" or "bedroom" going off could mean very different things.

Anyway, besides that, I greatly appreciate being able to monitor them remotely, being able to initiate a test of all of them at once from the app rather than climbing up a ladder over and over, the anti false alarm features, the night time path motion illumination, even the green ring when the lights go out to tell you they're all still communicating with each other. That also is what lets me know the one in the home theater tends to lose communication every few weeks; need to contact Google about it one of these days.