Failure to detect smoke: "Consumer Product Safety Commission: Nest Labs Recalls to Repair Nest Protect Smoke + CO Alarms Due to Failure to Sound Alert" [1]
Incorrect. If you examine the announcement you linked, the issue was a failure to alarm when smoke was detected (below UL's must-alarm threshold, above which the Protect ALWAYS alarmed) due to false detection of a hand-wave as part of the "Wave to Hush" feature. This feature was remotely disabled on all Protects via a software update.
> False alarms.
Not for a long time. The second-gen Protect, which has been out for years, includes much-improved smoke sensors and algorithms. This is reflected in its unusually-high 4.6 star Amazon rating [0].
> Those are Nest's worst product.
How did you reach this conclusion? In addition to its outstanding score on Amazon, the second-gen Protect is frequently recommended by professional reviewers [1][2][3].
Anecdotally, I have 3 first-gen Protects in my home (in addition to 2 second-gens) and have never had any false alarms (except when I forget to run the fan while cooking bacon, and fill the entire house with smoke...).
Perhaps it would be more convincing if these reports weren't over 3 years old. I own multiple Nest Protects, with no issues whatsoever. A year ago, I got pinged on my phone while we were out and about about a CO leak. Turned out we'd forgotten to turn the stove off. Without that ping, we'd probably only have come home a couple of hours later. That alone is worth their cost to me.
Failure to detect smoke: "Consumer Product Safety Commission: Nest Labs Recalls to Repair Nest Protect Smoke + CO Alarms Due to Failure to Sound Alert" [1]
False alarms.[2]
[1] https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2014/nest-labs-recalls-to-repai...
[2] https://www.dailydot.com/debug/nest-protect-annoying/