I don't care how it looks above some minimum bar, as long as it works, and works reliably.
(There's a caveat there - in a large home I assume you run into issues with uneven heating. But that's beyond the purview of a simple thermostat. Even a $250 one.)
It's not that ugly, but more important, it's white and not shiny. If I was looking for a thermostat for a completely decorated house, that's exactly the thing I'd look for (unless the walls were colored, in that case I'd get somebody to paint it). The one thing I wouldn't want people to look at in my house is the thermostat (and that's quite a thing for me to say, because my house has even decorative power outlets).
Somebody with a great sense of aestetics may be able to place a shinny thermostat in a way that it looks nice. That's not for 99% of us, and few people do hire the other 1% for helping them.
But, anyway, I'm here just for the fun, because I'm certainly not looking for a thermostat.
Imagine you just, like me, bought your dream house. In the den you installed new hardware floors and custom builtin bookshelves, that you built yourself in a few hundred hours, using a gorgeous hardwood and a stain you picked after testing more than a dozen shades.
Which thermostat goes on the wall, about 15 inches from the bookselves. That POS or a Nest?