This week-end I took another look at the Nest web site. In case you don’t recall, I was looking at buying one of those cool thermostat created by Tony Fadell the father of the iPod and iPhone when they came out in the fall of 2011. At that time they would only ship the units to the U.S.

So I found out the it was now shipping to Canada… since the end of May actually. I placed an order, paid via Paypal and guess what showed up today? Yep, my new Nest thermostat.

It took me all but 45 minutes from unpacking, removing the old unit and installing the new Nest thermostat. The experience was really simple. Mark a few wires, unmount the old unit from the wall, mount the new base to the wall, connect back the wires and attach the main unit to the base.

Two minutes after I was configuring it for 1st time use. A few more minutes I was connected to the internet and setting the desired temperature.

My 1st impression? This is a beautiful product. The round screen really stand out from the usual square/rectangular flat LCD. The unit actually remind me of the old circulat thermostat we had in my parents house in the 80’s. Talk about style coming back from the past 😉 But you know what? It really is a great shape for a thermostat. Turn to move from option to options and push to select. Simple and intuitive!

At the moment the unit is learning. Usually I would keep the temperature in the house at a flat 73F. Why? Because changing the temperature with the old unit was too much of a pain. With Nest it is as simple as turning the dial left or right. So tonight I will try bringing the temperature to 75F and see how it feels. This should save a few $ here and there.

I will keep you posted on how I like the unit as it start to learn more and more of our home temperature habits. So far the unit has figured out how it can leverage the fact that my central AC stay cool for a bit even when the compressor goes off. Nest call this “AirWave”. It essentially keep running the central fan for a bit after the AC compressor is turned off. This extract all the potential cooling from the air exchange rad. Brilliant.