Nest Protect Wants To Make Your Smoke Detector Cool Again

Smoke detectors are like babies. They’re kind of ugly and they make loud annoying sounds when you don’t want them to. Then again, there is always that perfect baby we all want, a.k.a. the Nest Protect.

You might be familiar with Nest’s original and highly popular product, the Nest Thermostat. Well, this is Nest’s newest attempt at simplifying and beautifying your home, only this time its created a smoke detector/carbon monoxide sensor.

The Nest Protect comes with six sensors, for smoke, carbon monoxide, heat, light, WiFi, and a Zigbee connection which allows for multiple Protects to communicate in one house.

There are a couple smart ways the new Nest gets information to you. For one, the device has a large light-up ring sitting in the middle of it. The ring will be green if everything’s fine, yellow to show a heightened state or to indicate low battery levels, and red means its an emergency. While you thought getting a red ring on your Xbox was a bad sign, seeing a red ring on your Nest Protect would definitely be worse. What’s even cooler is that Nest can sense if you’re in the room at night with all the lights off, and it will automatically generate a warm glow of light to guide your path.

Another cool feature is that if you’re slightly too short to reach your smoke detector, Nest allows you to wave your hand in front of the device to remove it from a heightened state. (Sort of the same way you frantically wave in front of a traditional smoke detector, only this time with fancy technology)

Like the thermostat, the device also includes a detailed mobile app where you can view and manage your Nest even when you’re not at home. If you’re house starts burning down when you’re away on vacation, you’ll know!

The Nest Protect will obviously set you back a bit more than the usual smoke detector, $129 to be precise. You can pre-order a black or a white one now, and it will ship sometime around early November.

Toby is a writer of word and a lover of Apple, hip-hop, life, and technology.