Sources: Google is preparing to launch a $129 Nest Thermostat with hand gesture controls, using a sensor similar to the Soli system included in Pixel 4
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg :
Context & Ripple Effects
Soli has been searching for a product home since Google's 2016 demo of radar-based hand-gesture detection on a watch and speaker; Pixel 4 was the first ship, and Bloomberg's Mark Gurman now reports the sensor family is headed into Nest hardware. The price point also follows a known thread: Nest was reported back in 2017 to be working on a cheaper sub-$200 thermostat with room-level control, and $129 would land well below that floor.
The timing matters because Google is mid-pivot on where Soli lives. Months after this report, the company shipped the second-generation Nest Hub with a Soli radar chip for sleep tracking at $100 — evidence that the thermostat was part of a broader push to move the sensor out of phones and across the smart-home line.
First-order effects
- A $129 thermostat would give Google an entry price point below the sub-$200 tier it was reportedly targeting in 2017, broadening Nest's reach beyond premium buyers.
- Hand gesture controls would let thermostat users adjust settings touch-free, reusing the Soli sensor already proven in Pixel 4 rather than developing new hardware.
Second-order effects
- Putting a Soli-class sensor in a mass-market thermostat spreads the component across multiple Nest product lines, improving its cost curve and giving Google a second shipped category beyond phones.
- Touchless control becomes a differentiator Google can extend to the rest of the Nest lineup — the path the Nest Hub's Soli-powered sleep tracking followed within months.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, radar sensing shifts from a one-phone experiment to a platform-level input layer across Google's hardware, with each Nest device doubling as a presence- and gesture-sensing node in the home.
The trend: Google is converting Soli radar from a phone feature into a cross-device sensing layer deployed across its Nest smart-home lineup at progressively lower price points.