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Comment by luckydata | Hacker News Reader

The smoke detectors are fucking great. Even if they are expensive they are worth every cent.

Those are Nest's worst product.

Failure to detect smoke: "Consumer Product Safety Commission: Nest Labs Recalls to Repair Nest Protect Smoke + CO Alarms Due to Failure to Sound Alert" [1]

False alarms.[2]

[1] https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2014/nest-labs-recalls-to-repai...

[2] https://www.dailydot.com/debug/nest-protect-annoying/

Perhaps it would be more convincing if these reports weren't over 3 years old. I own multiple Nest Protects, with no issues whatsoever. A year ago, I got pinged on my phone while we were out and about about a CO leak. Turned out we'd forgotten to turn the stove off. Without that ping, we'd probably only have come home a couple of hours later. That alone is worth their cost to me.

What's worth the cost? Some saved gas from the stove?

Saving a possible inflammation probably?

> Failure to detect smoke

Incorrect. If you examine the announcement you linked, the issue was a failure to alarm when smoke was detected (below UL's must-alarm threshold, above which the Protect ALWAYS alarmed) due to false detection of a hand-wave as part of the "Wave to Hush" feature. This feature was remotely disabled on all Protects via a software update.

> False alarms.

Not for a long time. The second-gen Protect, which has been out for years, includes much-improved smoke sensors and algorithms. This is reflected in its unusually-high 4.6 star Amazon rating [0].

> Those are Nest's worst product.

How did you reach this conclusion? In addition to its outstanding score on Amazon, the second-gen Protect is frequently recommended by professional reviewers [1][2][3].

Anecdotally, I have 3 first-gen Protects in my home (in addition to 2 second-gens) and have never had any false alarms (except when I forget to run the fan while cooking bacon, and fill the entire house with smoke...).

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Nest-Protect-Carbon-Monoxide-Generati... [1] https://www.popsci.com/nest-protect-smoke-co-detector-review [2] https://www.cnet.com/products/nest-protect-second-generation... [3] https://www.engadget.com/2015/09/16/nest-protect-review-2015... [4] https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/nest-protect-smoke-alarm-...

I always thought they were fairly pointless, until a friend convinced me of how much he really loves them, knowing the kids and dogs are safe, etc etc. I still don't quite "get" it, the connected thermostat makes sense, but based on his recommendation (and how I hate having to fight false alarms on our detectors-mounted-out-of-reach every 3-6mo due to burning something in the kitchen), I'm actually going to buy a stack of protects to replace our existing detectors.

I felt the same way. I never quite got understood shelling out $100 for a smoke detector when i need to buy 7 of them. It's just a smoke detector right? If i'm lucky it wont do anything for 10 years until i replace it. Why not just get a cheap one from the store.

We'll i bought one for the kitchen to try out. At some point my wife burned dinner and the alarm went off and notified my phone. It was that notification that made me realize, ah ha, i get it. This $100 purchase is giving me piece of mind. This thing is smart, and its protecting me. Not only that, i bet google put way more engineering into this then some cheap one.

Now that i have kids, i have piece of mind that nest protect is protecting my kids while they sleep. Might sound silly to some, but thats how i feel.

Yeah, the most important feature to me it's that I know exactly what they are trying to warn me about, they don't start screaming at me immediately and I know if one is going bad because the app tells me. Overall I love the experience, they are damn pricy though. If they could figure out a way to get them around $60 they would sell them like hotcakes.

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