NEST Protect Review

When we installed the Loxone system in the house the Loxone Air range was pretty small, and we ended up with a normal hard-wired heat / smoke detector. Our old unit had a CO monitor in it, but we ended up replacing it with a shinier, cleaner new unit.

Of late i’ve had quite a few headache’s, and the wife started to get them too, so thought it would be a good idea, just in case, to get a new CO monitor. With the ceilings up and not wanting to chop into them again, the Loxone CO sensor wasnt going to be an option. Neither is the Air Smoke detector, which is just a smoke detector.

I’ve always been interested in trying out the Nest technology, but with the mini-server controlling the heating a Nest Thermostat wasn’t an option, so we decided to go for a their smoke / CO alarm. 24 hours after ordering from Amazon (a whole £1 cheaper than direct from Nest – How do they do it?), the new unit turned up, I have to say its smacks of being a high end product, almost worthy of gracing the shelves at an Apple store, but hey, thats not going to happen is it?

I’m not a great one for unboxing videos and the like, so here’s a shot of the box, and before activating it. The small blue tag is a battery isolator, so you dont have to take it apart to put in batteries. I have no idea how long the battery life is estimated to be.

Wall fittings are included, and I to admit to being impressed with how easy it was to get the unit level on the mount. Self tapping screws are included with the kit.

Next step was to register via the smartphone app, scanning in the QR code on the back of the device added it to the Nest Protect account.

Should everything be ok, you get the following status page, very clean and giving just the information you need.

A closer look lets you see the history of the device, the blue circles on the graphs are showing when the night light feature on the unit was activated.

Last of all, you run a test on the unit in place, where a very smooth clear voice tells you what is going on, its a nice setup routine and very simple to step through, with 2 different types of alarm, one for smoke and the other for CO.

If everything is safe in the house, which it appears to be at the moment, then I fully expect not to notice the unit in day to day operation, I guess the next time i’ll touch it is when the batteries need replacing.