Nest has brought back its smoke detector, the Nest Protect, after recalling it in early April. The company, which is now owned by Google, had stopped selling the Protect after its own testing revealed that a feature which allowed a user to wave their hands to deactivate the alarm, could also delay the alarm in case of an actual fire.
Now, the device, which originally retailed for $129 is back at the Google Play store for $99 without the incriminating feature. So now the question for consumers will be whether they think a $30 discount on device compensates for the loss of one of the most popular features the Protect offered.
At $99 it’s still much more expensive than a non-connected smoke detector, but perhaps with competition from a variety of other air quality monitors such as Birdi or Oort looming, Nest decided to keep pushing Protects into homes while it searches for a solution to its hand-waving issue.
Related research and analysis from Gigaom Research:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
