The Nest Protect is now available following its two-month hiatus after it was pulled for safety concerns. The smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector is now only $99, down from its $129 launch price. The Nest Protect is available from the Google Play store starting tonight. However, one of its key features is still disabled.
Nest originally pulled the Protect from shelves on April 3rd following the discovery that Nest Wave, the feature that allowed owners to wave their hand under the sensor to silence the alarm, did not function properly. Nest issued an over-the-air update disabling the feature in existing units and allowed customers to return their Protect for a full refund.
The Nest Protect will also ship with this function disabled although a company spokesperson told me that the company is “still looking into a solution.”
Even without Nest Wave, the Protect still offers a unique feature set that’s unmatched in the space. The Protect sits in-between dumb smoke detectors and connected detectors monitored by a third-party service. The Protect can notify a smartphone when your house is on fire but not call the fire department. At its launch, Nest bragged about the so-called Nest Wave feature that allowed owners to silence notifications by simply waving their hand under the beeping alarm. That feature was novel, but currently a moot selling point as it’s still disabled.
Nest is also leveraging the data collected by Protects installed in customer’s homes. The company just released a white paper on carbon monoxide, which it calls the largest of its kind since it used real world data. The company also releases findings from data collected from Nest Learning Thermostats.