by Josh Teder
Introduction to the Fourth-Gen Nest Learning Thermostat
The fourth gen Nest Learning Thermostat from Google is the follow-up to the insanely popular third gen Nest Learning Thermostat which came out almost a decade ago but a lot has changed since then. Is there still a need for a Smart Learning thermostat? Just exactly how smart is the new one and has it saved me any money?
Matter Support and Compatibility
The first highlight of this thermostat is its Matter support, and this is a big deal because not every thermostat supports it. With Matter you can add this thermostat to whatever smart home platform you want like Apple Home or Home Assistant. To add the thermostat to your smart home platform you scan the QR code in the thermostat settings, follow the rest of the instructions on your phone, and that’s it. It works really well.
Advanced Temperature Sensors
The temperature sensors are another standout feature. The thermostat comes with one but you can buy more in a three pack for $99. You can place multiple sensors around your home to see what your true whole home temperature actually is. In the settings you can choose to use all sensors for an average temperature, only specific sensors during certain times of the day, or disregard them completely.
Premium Design
Design is another major highlight of this thermostat. It’s absolutely beautiful, probably the best looking thermostat on the market. It hides the bezels much better compared to the previous design thanks to both the updated physical design and the improved software interface.
Dynamic Farsight and Display Features
The fourth gen thermostat has a new feature called Dynamic Farsight. It’ll show you basic information when you’re farther away and more details as you get closer. Google’s Soli radar chip is what powers this feature as well as presence detection. The display will also turn off when no one is nearby.
You can also customize the information that appears on its Farsight display. You can choose between temperature, weather, an analog clock, or a digital clock. The live weather animations are especially cool. Because the thermostat is usually near the front door of a home, or at least somewhere you’ll see it as you’re leaving home, I found I actually look at it and take in the information I see on it. I’ve definitely looked over at it more than once and been like, “Oh I forgot that that front was supposed to come through and it’s 40° now instead of 70 and oh it’s raining too. I better grab my raincoat.”
And I like that you can actually adjust the other data you see on the Farsight face when you walk up close to the display. So for example my weather face shows the current weather conditions, temperature plus my indoor temperature, what it’s set to, and the indoor humidity on the right side. But you can change those values to all sorts of other options.
The only thing that’s a bit weird and takes some getting used to is you have to press the screen in to make adjustments. It’s not a true touch screen.
Thoughtful Design Details
Google got a lot of the details right with this thermostat, like accounting for the sun. There’s a setting for the thermostat to compensate for direct sunlight hitting it, which can warm up its sensors.
I also really like how this thermostat explains what it’s doing. When you go into the Google Home app and click on the thermostat, it explains why the thermostat is currently on and what adjustment it’s actually making.
Installation and Setup
When it comes to setup, for something you have to rip out of a wall and readjust all the wires and everything, it actually didn’t take me that long. It took me about 40 minutes total, and that included setting up all my shots for this video, so it should take you less than that. You’ll want a cordless drill. That’s something they don’t say in the instructions, but I think it’s a good idea to use one in this case.
The Google Home app did a nice job guiding me through all of the features, and boy are there a lot of them.
Smart Learning Features
The smart schedule is the key feature that makes this thermostat unique. The Nest thermostat will learn what temps you like throughout the day based on the adjustments that you make to the thermostat. It takes into account a variety of data like external temperature, humidity, time of day, weather conditions, etc.
You can also set what temperatures are your comfort temps as well as your Eco temps for when you’re away from home to save energy. When setting these, Google not only tells you to be mindful of pets at home but also any plants you may have, which is a nice touch.
But even if you set those, you can still make adjustments that the thermostat will pick up on. For example, 2 months into owning the thermostat, it sent me a notification letting me know it automatically changed our comfort temp from 74° F to 72° for cooling during the day. This is because I enabled Adaptive Comfort and Eco features to make sure that it’ll dynamically adjust the comfort temps.
Customization Options
Now you do have some options when it comes to the adjustments the thermostat makes. You can always go into the app or over to the thermostat and set the smart schedule to suggestions, where it’ll suggest changes to you, but you’ll need to approve them. Or you can set this feature completely off for complete manual control of the thermostat.
And yes, say you invited guests over who completely completely messed up your smart schedule by making regular changes to the temperature throughout the day, you can reset it in settings as well. Though I wish there was a way to just delete a week’s worth of adjustments versus all of the data.
Energy Saving Features
The thermostat helps show you when you’re saving energy by displaying a green leaf on the thermostat itself. You’ll also see this Leaf appear when you enable certain settings for the thermostat in the Google Home app, like turning off Early On, which starts heating or cooling early to reach a specific temperature at a specified time.
You also earn leaves in the Energy Dashboard, a feature that shows you how much energy your thermostat is using, and the more leaves you earn, the more you’ll save. Nest will also send you monthly email roundups with this information as well.
Nest Renew Integration
Another way you can help lower your energy bill with The Nest Learning Thermostat is by using Nest Renew. Nest Renew is a free service that helps you know when the electricity coming into your home is cleaner, and you can set up off peak hours in Nest Renew as well. For my utility I could figure out when peak hours are and input those into Nest Renew, though it would be nice if Nest Renew would allow you to set up multiple peak hour time frames for different parts of the year, like we have here in North Carolina.
Nest Renew is also where you can see all of the leaves you’ve been earning over the past several months as well and a bit more data about cleaner and cheaper energy.
Advanced Efficiency Features
Airwave is another feature that will help you save energy. This is where the thermostat will automatically shut off the compressor at the right time and use the fan to spread the remaining cool air around your home.
The thermostat can also save you energy by intelligently disabling HVAC during those periods where the outside temperatures can naturally heat or cool your home.
The thermostat also also has a Humidity Helper feature that can help keep humidity levels in your home down to help reduce mold growth. You can even set up an advanced configuration where you can set how much lower the thermostat can push the temp below your desired temperature and the minimum threshold for this feature to kick on.
Another highlight is Google’s excellent plastic-free packaging. It’s much more environmentally friendly, still protects the product well, and looks nice.
Unused Features After Six Months
So what features haven’t I found myself using over the past 6 months? Remember how I said The Nest Learning Thermostat is a learning thermostat where you set the comfort temps and it’ll learn the temp you want based on your manual adjustments? Well that’s partially true. The thermostat does have a schedule as well where you can program Comfort, Sleep, Eco, and custom temperatures for specific days and times. You can also set up a schedule for the fan to run as well.
Here I set up my comfort and Eco temps when I first got the thermostat and haven’t touched them since. I’ve just made manual adjustments and over time the thermostat has learned my preferences based on a variety of factors.
Cost Savings Analysis
So did it save me any money? For me, based on a highly unscientific methodology of comparing my power bill with The Nest Learning Thermostat to when I had an Ecobee installed, maybe. From September to December I use less energy but keep in mind I was gone 2 weeks in September so Eco temps were on for that period.
January and February 2025 were notably much colder than in 2024 in my location, which makes a direct comparison difficult. So I can’t say one way or another whether I saved money compared to the Ecobee smart thermostat I had, but compared to a regular or a programmable thermostat? Yeah, the Nest definitely would have saved me some money.
Downsides and Minor Issues
Now let’s talk downsides. One issue I initially ran into was with the thermostat detecting when everyone was away from home. It took over an hour before the thermostat set itself in Away mode. More recently however it only takes about 15 minutes. This was after subsequent software updates and after I turned off present sensing on the thermostat itself. I read in the Google forums that some people had luck with Away mode turning on more quickly by doing this. Now my system only relies on phone data location for setting Away mode. You can also easily set the thermostat to Away mode manually by hitting the button at the top left corner of the Home app to set your home to away.
Another small downside is that while they did make the screen bigger and it is a thermostat, I do kind of wish the resolution was just a bit crisper. That would just make it feel slightly more premium, but that is a small nitpick. The screen overall has been fine.
Final Recommendation
So do I recommend the new Nest Learning Thermostat? Yes. Overall I think this is an excellent choice for a smart thermostat, and while I can’t say for certain how much money it saved me, the convenience of being able to have the thermostat learn my temperature preferences based on a variety of data plus set it to Away mode when no one is home—that alone has been worth it. Plus the ease of using Matter to be able to add it to whatever smart home platform I want and be able to control the temperature with my voice via voice assistants is great.
And now that Google added temperature sensors for it, you can actually get a true whole home aggregate temperature for your home, which can help lessen one room being too hot or too cold. This also takes away one of the advantages the Ecobee thermostat had over Nest.
Six-Month Verdict
6 months later I couldn’t be happier with The Nest Learning Thermostat. It’s a beautiful addition to any home, works with practically any smart home platform, and has lived up to its promise of actually learning my temperature preferences and making adjustments automatically in the background.
Do we still need a Smart Learning thermostat in 2025? Absolutely. The new Nest Learning Thermostat shows just how far ahead Google is compared to some of its competition, and you can check out our blog post for this video to see the current price and links to various retailers for easy price comparison shopping. Link to that in the description, and you can see all of the products we recommend at any time by visiting 6months l.net/shop, and if you want to see more of my smart home reviews, you can click here, or to check out more of my other Google product reviews, you can get to those by clicking here. If you like this video, don’t forget to hit that Thumbs Up Button And subscribe for more. For 6 Months Later, I’m Josh Teder. Thanks for watching.
