Nest Cam (Battery) review: The Googliest

This new Nest Cam for indoor or outdoor use costs $180 and comes with built-in person, animal and vehicle detection thanks to Google’s new machine learning chip. But is it our new favorite?

*CNET may get a commission from this offer.

0:00 Intro
0:33 The Basics
1:30 The Camera
2:11 Alerts
2:36 Privacy
3:30 The Competition
3:56 Should You Buy?

[CNET]

*CNET may get a commission from this offer

[jguti]

Imagine doing a review of a surveillance camera and not showing much footage of the video quality 🤔

[JesslynHendrix]

I have one and got it in the doorbell/camera/hub bundle. I'm happy with it so far and frankly, am willing to live without features of other brands. We are a Google house and already heavily invested in Google assistant, home and wifi devices. Having just gotten rid of our last Canary device, I can't tell you how much easier it is to have a single app to run all of my smart home stuff. My only desire at this point is the ability to get all notifications on our Nest hubs as well as on our phones.

[muncheez]

I wish the older cameras could still be available for purchase. I bought the Nest IQ many years ago, it's been up on my house ever since I purchased it. Never once did I ever have any issue with it nor did I ever have to touch it for any reason, it's a workhorse. It gets rained on and beat up by the Arizona heat year after year and yet it performs like it did on day one. Been meaning to buy a few more to cover the back of the house too but now that they moved on to these cheaper magnetic cameras, I'm starting to hesitate in my purchase. They don't appeal to me like the IQ's did

[georgerepper]

a three percent drop in battery every twenty four hours is only thirty three days before you have to re charge and that's on battery saver mode... not even close to the advertised time

[twoweeledsoto]

Not waterproof? That is a deal breaker, especially at $180.

[Gravage]

A Nest camera without 24/7 recording is useless for me. That's literally the only reason I use Nest instead of Ring right now.

[needleontherecord]

What’s to stop someone pulling it off the magnet and running away with it?

[victorvillalobos]

Costco Black Friday 3 pack for $379 I’m vested with all Nest products. Doorbell, Thermostat, Cameras and smoke detector/carbon monoxide detector. The main reason is bc it’s so much easier to have everything on one APPS. So far I have no issues with camera (battery). Works fine. Only records if something triggers camera to turn on. Not 24 hour recorded surveillance like the WIRED doorbell. I bought a camera shade to place over camera to protect better from the Texas heat. Video is extremely clear if your 10-15 ft from camera. Further out not super clear. Motion very sensitive. Picked up cats walking by. Etc etc. My cellphone gets alerts immediately when it picks up anything walking by. All in all. It’s just what I suspected. Good camera. I chose battery camera because don’t want to deal with wires. Extremely easy to mount.

[talloncote]

I love the shuttle burn to your producer.

[maxi]

how can i schedule turn off and turn on the cam ?

[Censtudios]

I don't understand why magnets though... You can tell me "it's a strong magnet", but in every video I see people removing it with relative ease. What happens when it gets a bit stormy outside? Or... someone just taking it.

[mztik]

"It only comes in one color"

"Snoh"

[WILLY]

How long does the battery last when its -10 celsius ?

[Rdabosss]

3 hours of free cloud storage is still woefully inadequate. If there's an event while your sleeping, tough luck

[MutebiBashir]

CNET is back with my most favorite journalist.

[cjmstk]

My pair arrived today, but, you're saying they're not weatherproof, but it's their "outdoor" one? I just wasted a few hundred dollars if that's the case.

[williambarbaretti]

Soooo, how does one charge it once battery is dead and camera is “offline”

[weirdflex]

Been waiting for this to come out so I can finally buy the previous versions for cheaper. And your producer, yeah he’s tweakin.

[jacktownsend]

What distance will it begin to activate?