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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.
At night, the camera turns on its IR sensor. This has good range, lighting up my entire garden, although the resulting footage is a lot softer, removing some more detail from the image. I’d say that footage is on a par with that shot from Ring’s cameras, but Arlo’s 2K cameras (the Pro 3 and Pro 4) shoot better video and I’ve not seen a camera come close to that of the Arlo Ultra. Cameras that capture 4K (Ultra HD) or 2K video are also available, but you need a strong network connection to stream such high-res video without choppiness or lag, plus lots of room to store recordings; that last requirement may add significantly to the cost for cloud storage fees. Camera is weather-resistant. Some features, including mobile notifications, remote control, video streaming and video recording, require working Internet and Wi-Fi. If you prefer, you can use a tripod mount, using the screw thread underneath, or you can buy the optional stand for indoor use. 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.Finding footage in the Google Home app isn’t as easy as it was with the Nest app. With the Nest app, opening it up would show you a preview of the camera. Tap the preview and you’d get the live view and the timeline to scroll through, with filtering options to find events. 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). 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. 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. Google treats everything outside of a zone as the special Outside of zone area, which can have its own recording and notification rules. Most cameras treat everything outside of a zone as not important, so there’s a bit more flexibility here.
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. 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.
How Much Should You Spend on an Outdoor Security Camera?
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. What sets this camera apart is an iOS/Android app that’s several notches above the competition. That’s not so surprising, given that Google is behind its development. The app shows you a live feed from your cameras, and provided you take out a subscription, it allows you to customise your notifications by setting up to three active motion zones. These are areas within the camera’s view which can be drawn and designated as sensitive to movement.
As the Nest Cam (outdoor or indoor, battery) installs via the Google Home app it’s only compatible with the Google Assistant, and it doesn’t have IFTTT support. With a smart display, such as the Nest Hub (2nd generation), you can view the live feed. There’s no Alexa support, although the launch of Matter in the future may change that. Video quality With cameras, such as the Arlo Pro 3, you can use geolocation and a schedule, and you can adjust mode using SmartThings or IFTTT. Both Ring and Arlo have more powerful control, which can be important. After all, nobody really wants to record lots of footage of themselves. 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 Still, what you get here is video footage that’s more than good enough for its intended purpose. Final thoughtsNest 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. 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. We haven't seen any that run on the Matter platform yet, but that's surely going to happen at some point. At night when it gets dark, the camera switches to IR mode. It’s not fooled into switching modes by a torch being shone at it, either, so you know that the Nest Cam Outdoor will record reliably. I was impressed by the IR light, which clearly illuminated my 40ft garden, all the way to the shed at the bottom. 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.
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