Honeywell takes on Nest with $279 Lyric smart thermostat, available in Lowe's stores by August
The heat is on: Honeywell is finally ready to challenge the Nest thermostat — The Lyric thermostat builds on Nest's iconic design — The idea of a connected home …
Context & Ripple Effects
Honeywell's answer to Nest has been two years in the making — and it started in litigation, not hardware: Honeywell's 2012 patent lawsuit against Nest drew the famous retort that 'Honeywell is worse than a troll.' With the Nest Learning Thermostat already selling at Amazon for $249 since June 2012 and proving enormously popular, Honeywell is now competing on product instead of patents.
The $279 Lyric, confirmed by Honeywell as a direct challenge to Nest in the connected home, undercuts nothing — it is priced above Nest — but its route to market differs sharply: big-box shelf space at Lowe's by August versus Nest's online-first channels. The pickup across eight outlets from The Next Web to MobileSyrup shows how much attention any credible Nest rival commands.
First-order effects
- Buyers get a genuine two-brand choice at the thermostat counter for the first time, with Honeywell's Lyric carrying a $30 premium over Nest's $249 list price and betting on Lowe's in-store visibility to close the gap.
- Nest faces its first incumbent-branded competitor with national retail distribution, ending the period when its only real competition was the dumb thermostat.
Second-order effects
- With Nest already running a side business selling connected-device data to utilities as of April 2014, Honeywell's entry pressures it to defend that utility-channel revenue against an incumbent with deeper utility relationships.
- Other retailers and HVAC-adjacent manufacturers now have proof that a big-box channel will stock premium smart thermostats, inviting more entrants to treat the category as shelf-ready rather than enthusiast-only.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, legacy appliance incumbents stop litigating startups out of the market and start out-distributing them, shifting the smart-home contest from courtrooms to retail partnerships.
- The connected thermostat stops being a single-company category and becomes a standard HVAC line item, which sets up the next battleground: ecosystem lock-in around sensors, services, and utility programs rather than the thermostat itself.
The trend: The smart thermostat is moving from a startup-defined niche to a contested mass-retail category, with legacy incumbents like Honeywell answering design-led challengers through distribution rather than litigation.