Google Nest Security Camera Outdoor - Night Vision, 1080p HD Video, 24/7 Live Video, Weatherproof CCTV Camera - Security Has Never Looked So Good

Product Information

Image quality is excellent. In daylight, the picture is sharp, and faces can clearly be seen. Some detail is blurred out in uniform areas, such as grass, but the important information is kept. Video footage is captured at a resolution of 1920 x 1080. The camera uses a 130-degree (diagonal) field of view, which is good enough for outside use: I could get most of my garden in with this; you can get cameras with wider fields of view if you want to capture more. You can manually turn the camera on and off using the Google Home app. If you want to automate it, then you need to enable the Home/Away routines in the app, which can use your phone (and those of other people in your household) to detect who’s at home to change mode automatically. Installation is now via the Google Home app, rather than the old Nest app. This is a clear sign that Google tends to remove the Nest app, as only older products, such as the still-available Nest Cam Outdoor, will use this.

We haven't seen any that run on the Matter platform yet, but that's surely going to happen at some point. With this, you can choose to have your camera turn on and off automatically, or you can choose to only get notifications when you’re away from home. It’s a good tool but not as comprehensive as the competition. With Ring, if you have the Ring Alarm, you can adjust cameras based on the mode of the alarm: different settings for whether the alarm is set to on, at home or turned off. Using the web app only, not the mobile version, you can set Activity Zones to monitor certain areas of the image. This is a handy way of further cutting down on notifications. With Zones set, you can choose which ones to be notified about and which ones you’re happy to ignore. Savings claim based on purchasing each of the items included with the bundle separately at their total current selling price.

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If you prefer, you can use a tripod mount, using the screw thread underneath, or you can buy the optional stand for indoor use. If you choose to permanently power your camera, then you can upgrade to the more expensive Nest Aware subscription, which adds constant video recording into the mix, so everything is captured. Monitoring the outside of your house makes a lot of sense – especially if there’s been a spate of break-ins in your area. The difficulty is that outdoor cameras have traditionally been a bit of a pain to set up and configure. The Nest Cam Outdoor hopes to change that, thanks to painless installation, smart monitoring and a design that makes the camera actually look good when it’s installed. Design and Build Nest Aware also turns on Familiar face detection, or facial recognition to me and you. This lets the camera spot and recognise people that you know. You can create profiles for each person, so you can be told who the camera has spotted. This information is shared between all cameras, including the doorbell and is still a unique feature that the competition doesn’t have.

Although the Nest Cam Outdoor can record at 1080p, it defaults to 720p. You can manually force the camera into 1080p mode, although you get a warning telling you that the camera may get warm and that it will use more bandwidth. For all installations, you get to use Nest’s excellent magnetic camera mount. This mount screws into a wall and, because it’s round, you don’t have to worry about getting it level. You then just tap the camera to the mount, and its magnet grabs hold. The magnet’s powerful enough to hold the camera in place, but still gives you some movement, so you can rotate and tilt the camera until you’re happy with the field of view. Nest Aware can distinguish between people and other movements, giving different notifications. There’s no way to set the camera only to notify when it detects people, which you can do with the Netatmo Presence. Look for an outdoor Wi-Fi camera that can connect to either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz radio band to alleviate network congestion. If you have trouble getting a good signal outside, try boosting it with a wireless range extender. Google Nest Cam (Outdoor or Indoor, Battery) (Credit: Google)

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Find the right Nest camera for your home. App Requires Google Home app Requires Google Home app Requires Google Home app Smart floodlight Weather-resistant Included alerts 1 Motion, people, vehicles, animals Motion, people, vehicles, animals Motion, people, vehicles, animals Three-hour event video history 1 Video clips Video clips Video clips 1080p HD video with HDR and Night Vision 24/7 live streaming Up to 60 days of event video history with Nest Aware 1,2 24/7 video history with Nest Aware Plus 1,2,3 When wired Power cable sold separately Talk and Listen Records during a Wi-Fi outage Up to one hour Up to one hour Up to one hour Power source Battery or wired Power cable sold separately Wired Wired Field of view Even better, the Nest Cam (outdoor or indoor, battery) lets you draw activity zones, to only monitor the part of the image that you’re interested in. For each zone, you can then choose which events you want to record and which you want to be notified for. For example, you could record people and animals in one zone, getting alerts for people only, and then record people only in another zone. Camera is weather-resistant. Some features, including mobile notifications, remote control, video streaming and video recording, require working Internet and Wi-Fi. More importantly, the Nest Cam Outdoor is super-easy to self-install for most people. Rather than having to be hard-wired into an electrical circuit, the Nest Cam Outdoor comes with a waterproof power supply composed of two parts. There’s a junction box hard-wired to a three-pin plug, and the camera has a captive weatherproofed USB cable that connects to the junction box.

Testing the Nest Cam (outdoor or indoor, battery) out, I found that its footage was pretty good but not class-leading. During the day, video has clear signs of compression, filtering out the detail on my t-shirt, for example, and the video is quite clearly sharpened. However, there’s enough detail left to spot individuals and the image is well exposed, even when facing direct sunlight. It’s tough, too, rated at IP65. That means it’s completely dustproof and can withstand low-pressure water jets. That’s more than enough even for a heavy spring downpour. Cleverly, if your Wi-Fi goes down or power is cut to your camera, the Nest Cam (outdoor or indoor, battery) can record up to three hours of video on battery power, uploading the results when the connection is restored. That makes this camera more reliable than the cloud-only competition. Nest includes everything you need to install its outdoor camera, from the screws and wall plugs that fix the magnetic base, to the cable clips that secure the heavy-duty USB cable. The camera itself is held securely in place by the magnet, but with nothing else to keep it there other than the cable, a desirable gadget like this could itself become a target for thieves. Install well out of reach is our advice.There’s a charging cable in the box that magnetically attaches to the bottom of the camera to top up the battery. If you’d rather have the camera permanently powered, you can buy the optional weatherproof adaptor (5m or 10m lengths available). The closest competition is the Netatmo Presence, which can tell the difference (mostly) between people, animals and cars. It’s more expensive than the Nest Cam Outdoor, but it has no monthly subscription cost, integrating for free with Dropbox or an FTP server. The downside is that Netatmo’s camera is harder to install, and the overall experience isn’t quite as neat. Verdict