Review: Nest Cam Outdoor and Nest Cam IQ Indoor

Shortly after we installed the Nest home security cameras, my spouse arrived home from work scowling. He opened the Nest app and started scrolling through the day’s footage.

“What’s going on?” I asked, certain that a package had been stolen or some other grave injustice had been done.

“Did those [unprintables] forget to pick up the garbage?” he asked. We watched on his phone as the outdoor Nest cam caught the garbage truck rolling nonchalantly past the full bins we left out on the curb. He stormed into his home office, and I overheard him leave an indignant phone message.

If you don’t have a Klimt hanging over your fireplace, home security cameras may seem like paranoiac overkill. But as we discovered over several weeks with the Nest indoor and outdoor cameras, we found plenty of reasons to appreciate their utility.

Like all of Nest’s products, both cameras were easy to install. Just plug them in and add the cameras in the Nest app or online.

The Nest Cam Outdoor came with a 25-foot long cable with a rugged, weatherproof plug should you choose to plug it in an outside outlet. Our porch has an overhang with inset light fixtures that are powered through an outlet in the attic, so we chose to drill through the roof and plug the cam inside.

This also thwarts potential burglars who might simply sneak around and unplug the camera, and also saved us from needing a longer cable. But in some cases, a 25-foot long cable might be too short.

Studies show that the mere sight of an outdoor camera is enough to deter burglars. But, of course, we actually wanted to use it. The minute the camera came online, our phones started getting bombarded with push notifications, warning us about every passing car.

The outdoor Nest camera comes with a free 1-month trial of Nest Aware, a subscription upgrade that nets you access to better alerts and more advanced identification algorithms. With Nest Aware, I was able to select activity zones by highlighting areas in the camera’s field of vision. Designating activity zones, like the front yard and the gates, significantly reduced the amount of notifications that I got. If you choose, you can still see all the footage from the past ten days in the app’s timeline.

Without Nest Aware, the camera saves only about three hours’ worth of footage, which isn’t even a full work day. After three hours, it will still alert you but only still frames will be saved.

Photograph: Nest

Both cameras have spectacular 1080p HD resolution on a 130-degree wide angle lens that covered the whole front yard and footage is a pleasure to view. You can also zoom in digitally. The night vision was excellent. On the outdoor camera, we’re able to clearly distinguish our neighbors across the street coming and going from approximately 100 feet away. The motion sensors are sensitive enough to be triggered by a tarp flapping gently in the breeze.

One of the most significant differences between the Nest Cam and the Nest Cam IQ is facial recognition. Both cameras were excellent at letting me know when they’d spotted people, but the Nest IQ goes one step further—it can also identify familiar faces. The facial software was pretty accurate, alerting me that my spouse or nanny was moving around the house.

Moving your hands near your face can trip it up, however, as can being an infant. Every few hours, the indoor cam alerts me that there was a new person in the living room when it was just my six-month-old. Which, to be honest, he very well could be.

With Nest Aware, the Nest IQ also has a feature called Supersight, which zooms in and tracks on people of interest. Supersight uses the camera’s 4K sensor and HDR to to produce super clear, bright images. It worked well. It was fascinating and slightly disorienting to watch the camera zinging around the kitchen while we were making dinner. However, I didn’t particularly appreciate the greater image brightness or clarity, since most of the time I was checking footage on my phone while I was away from home. The footage from the Nest outdoor cam looked comparable in quality.

Another feature of Nest Aware is the ability to create, save, and download video clips. Open the camera that you want, click on the link for clips, and then follow the instructions to select, save, edit and download them. As a working parent of two young kids, I liked this feature a lot. It's important to capture irreplaceable moments, even if that footage comes from a creepy surveillance vantage point.

The camera also comes with two-way audio. I didn’t have the occasion to shout at burglars remotely or warn the nanny that the baby was tipping out of the high chair, but I did talk to a friend who swung by to pick up a package while we were out of town. Texting probably would’ve worked just as well, however.

With Nest products, you’re paying for their beauty and the assurance that they have top-of-the-line resources for keeping your footage secure; the exquisite ease of use within the Nest ecosystem, and of course, all the features that may or may not be available in lesser cameras. But do all of these come together to justify their insanely high price tag? The Nest Cam Outdoor is $199 and he Nest IQ has a whopping price tag of $299, and both benefit greatly from the $10-per-month Nest Aware subscription.

Of course, there are always workarounds. You could always download Blue Iris to review the day’s footage without paying for Nest Aware, but that would add another task to a lengthy list of ones already facing me at the end of the day.

So to me, the value proposition isn't all that hot. Unless you're fully committed to Nest with a number of other Nest devices, you’d probably be better served by saving $180 and getting a cheaper device, like an Amazon Cloud Cam. Sure, the Nest’s features are a little nicer and the outdoor cam is weatherproof. Maybe the Cloud Cam can’t distinguish familiar faces, but is it worth an additional $180 for push notifications that are mildly less alarming?

So far, the software is not at the point where I find the familiar faces feature to be particularly valuable. Scratching your nose can still thwart the camera, and my phone is still alerting me that my infant, the one person who is constantly on the premises, is the one person who is a constant unknown threat.

Supersight is nice, but again, probably not worth $180. If you’re just checking in occasionally on your kids and dogs, and not capturing footage for an Errol Morris film, then you probably don’t need to be constantly zooming in on people’s faces. I found the standard Nest cam footage to be clear enough for my purposes.

Of course, with so many new products in this category, my evaluation could change completely within the next six months. If the price dropped, or if the software started to improve drastically, that would be enough for me to take a serious, long, second look. Nest, are you working on if-then programming that can identify my brother-in-law, and automatically drop the temperature in the house by 10 degrees? Just let me know.