Will Nest Protect still work without a Wi-Fi connection?

If Wi-Fi goes down and your SmartHome devices lose connection, it’s mostly just an inconvenience. However, what about devices that are potential life savers like the Nest Protect?

RELATED: How to Install and Install Nest Protect Smart Smoke Alarm

When the internet stops working in your home, many SmartHome device features disappear until the internet comes back on. For example, most Wi-Fi cameras pretty much turn into bricks when they lose connection. However, other devices still work just fine, albeit in a dumber way — like smart thermostats. The Nest Protect smart smoke alarm falls into the latter category.

So what happens when Wi-Fi goes out?

In short, the Nest Protect’s smoke detection capabilities still work great when it loses connectivity. You won’t be able to control it or control it remotely from your phone or use all the other cool features of the app, but the alarm itself will still act like any other regular smoke alarm — it will sound when smoke is detected.

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In fact, you can set up Nest Protect without even connecting it to Wi-Fi or linking it to your Nest account at all. Of course, it’s just a more expensive version of a regular smoke alarm at the time, but it shows that it’s designed to work without Wi-Fi.

If you have multiple nest defense units

If you have two or more interconnected Nest Protects at home, you still don’t need to worry about turning off Wi-Fi. Nest Protects uses its own wireless network to communicate with each other. So even if your home’s Wi-Fi goes down and one of your Nest Protects detects smoke (thus setting off an alarm), all other Nest Protects go off as well.

RELATED: What you need to know about smoke alarms

However, you need a Wi-Fi connection and the Nest app to set up more than one Nest Protect, as any additional devices get their settings from the pre-configured Nest Protect device.

However, once they’re all set up and ready to go, Wi-Fi isn’t required to keep them safe — you just won’t be able to manage them or get alerts on your phone.