Does that mean you place no value on aesthetics or industrial design of a beautiful device? Don't get me wrong, I agree that it's overpriced, but I do at least place some value on a well-made device.
It actually has a backlight which is a step up from what I have today. It's just not important to me. Definitely not $250 important.
I could definitely use a smarter thermostat, but my vision of the future is a wireless dumb thermostat paired to a home PC that is connected to other sensors. While those dumb devices could be made to interoperate with a cloud service (this is probably where Google is playing), I'd rather keep that control in-house (haha).
Imagine you just, like me, bought your dream house. In the den you installed new hardware floors and custom builtin bookshelves, that you built yourself in a few hundred hours, using a gorgeous hardwood and a stain you picked after testing more than a dozen shades.
Which thermostat goes on the wall, about 15 inches from the bookselves. That POS or a Nest?
Honestly, I could be living in Bill Gates' house and I'd get the same thermostat. In fact, I'd be guaranteed to, since if I can afford that I can afford to squander some money on heating my home. I have one temperature that I'm comfortable at, and that's pretty much the end of the story. I think I've invested more time in this thread than I have interacting with my thermostat for the last year.
I don't care how it looks above some minimum bar, as long as it works, and works reliably.
(There's a caveat there - in a large home I assume you run into issues with uneven heating. But that's beyond the purview of a simple thermostat. Even a $250 one.)
Well, ok, now I disagree :) (because up to now, I was agreeing with everybody.)
It's not that ugly, but more important, it's white and not shiny. If I was looking for a thermostat for a completely decorated house, that's exactly the thing I'd look for (unless the walls were colored, in that case I'd get somebody to paint it). The one thing I wouldn't want people to look at in my house is the thermostat (and that's quite a thing for me to say, because my house has even decorative power outlets).
Somebody with a great sense of aestetics may be able to place a shinny thermostat in a way that it looks nice. That's not for 99% of us, and few people do hire the other 1% for helping them.
But, anyway, I'm here just for the fun, because I'm certainly not looking for a thermostat.
I don't like the aesthetics, no. From a engineering perspective, it is not much of an achievement of R&D, imo. They probably paid more for their Photoshoppers.
