Google - Nest Cam 2 Pack Indoor/Outdoor Wire Free Security Cameras - Snow

I have always been interested in buying a Google Outdoor Camera but I was more interested in a battery powered, wire free approach and Google didn’t offer that. Well, finally Google has released their “Google - Nest Camera Battery” and for me it is a hit! UNBOXING & INSTALL: - Taking the Camera out you realize how great of a job Google did making this. It’s modern, sleek, and nothing about it feels cheap. - It’s size is a little bigger than a baseball, so not too small but not overly large either. - Installation was super easy on this! The main thing is that this required the “Google Home” app to set up, and the app does a pretty great job helping you step by step on setting this up. - I personally set this up for outdoor use and did not hard wire it as I want to use the battery. And mounting this outside was very easy. You just need to drill two screws into the wall you were mounting it too, connect the base, and the rest is just magnets! So you can easily adjust the camera or take it off when you need to recharge it or use it somewhere else. PROS: - I know I said this, but I do really like the look of this camera. Especially since it is outside, its just nice that it isn’t an eye sore. - The picture quality really is great on this camera! Yes it isn’t perfect super high end clarity but that is the trade off for a battery operated model. But regardless I was really impressed with the video quality! You can zoom in, it has a really nice viewing angle so you can see a lot of area, and overall works exactly how I need it to. - The smart features in this are no joke. It has facial recognition for people that come around a lot, can detect cars, animals, packages, or just any motion in general. It does a really good job telling you what is happening based on what it sees. - There is no base required, its all wireless if you want it to be! For me I really like the clutter free aspect of it since some outdoor cameras require a separate indoor base to connect to. - Something I like about the magnetic base / battery is that you can easily grab the camera and move it if you want to. If you want to move the camera from your yard to your dog’s kennel or your kids playroom you can easily do that! Just nice to be able to quickly swap it around if you need to keep an eye on something that you usually don’t. CONS: - As of the time of this review, the Google Nest Camera Battery does not work with the “Nest” app. I really like the Nest app as it is clean and easy to use, and its disappointing I can’t have this camera hooked up to the Nest app. - That being said, I don’t love the Google Home app. Yes it has a lot of nice perks, but I think for the camera integration I want something more focused on the cameras as soon as I open the app, with more picture settings, and easier history viewing. But those can all be fixed with time. - The Camera does not come with an “indoor” table top mount. That is an optional accessory you buy on the side, and it just would have been nice to come with it. BOTTOM LINE: - Google finally made a well priced battery operated indoor/outdoor camera and they did it right! The camera looks high quality, the picture is great, it has a lot or smart features, works well with your existing Google Smart Home, and helps add an additional level of security to your home. I’d highly recommend the purchase because I don’t think you will be disappointed!

I purchased this nest camera battery to replace another battery brand camera on the side of my house. I went into this knowing the new nest cam wouldn’t work with the Nest app and would have to use Google Home app to view it but having all cameras under one app is the end goal for myself. The camera itself so far seems to be great. I’m already subscribed to the nest subscription so it’s great not needing onboard storage and everything is uploaded to the cloud. My nest cam is roughly 9’ above ground whereas google recommends approx 6.5’ but it’s had no issues picking up people in the zone I’ve created. So far the battery has dropped 3% in just 24 hours but I blame the excessive motion it picked up yesterday. I found adding a zone for alerts only and setting the motion sensitivity to medium works best. I’m also using full resolution video so that will also deplete battery faster. I can see Google claims of battery life being accurate - pretty standard amongst other battery operated cameras, possibly a bit worse but this camera has much more onboard intelligence whereas my legacy nest cameras use the cloud for their processing. The big winner here will be when Google Nest releases their solar panel so it doesn’t need to be recharged every couple of months. The deduction of the star is simply due to Google’s inability to create at least one app that does everything. The Google Home app allows you to scrub events (battery) in the app or scrub video 24/7 if your battery cam is connected to a power source. Have an existing Nest doorbell or other older Nest cameras? Can’t scrub video - you’ll need to go back to the Nest app to do this on your other cameras where you’ll not find your new Nest Cam battery because it’s only in the home app! I’m sure (not really) google will introduce all these functions into the Home app, but why not now? Makes zero sense to me. Here are photos comparing the two cameras. The Nest cam has the much larger FOV.

Great quality, easy to set up. We added this after already having a few Nest cameras already, so this was a breeze. That said, nearly every Google product we have (and that is a LOT) leaves one, seemingly simple feature out. This is true with our Apple and MSFT products as well, but Google in particular seems to always leave out one or two things so that they can improve the product the following year and people go through a whole new round of upgrading (take Chromecast, for example: who like us has multiple generations of dongles collecting dust?). For Nest products - instead of out with the old in with the new, it's more like add to the old with the new but you still need the Nest app if you want to use original Nest features. With the latest Google Nest cameras, there are no "meaningful" alerts for heard events. It says animal alerts, but beware: that pertains only to living things that move. For those of us who have learned to rely on the doorbell or Hub Max to let us know when one of our dogs is barking, this is a disappointing bait and switch approach to selling products. The new cameras are able to tell you what it sees but not what it hears (unless it's a carbon monoxide or fire alarm, which is POINTLESS given the % of those systems that notify people and services in a more meaningful way). Thus, I can't say I don't like this product, the video is great and it took 60 seconds to set up. But this divide between original Nest and Google Nest stuff is getting frustrating. If you have therms and doorbells already, be prepared to open Nest and Home intentionally and errantly many, many times a day because you need them both and they start to look very similar. PS The battery life is just fine. Unless you want to watch the video from this device on highest resolution 24/7, don't listen to the battery bashers, they're always out there complaining about devices not being able to serve media up indefatigably. I haven't recharged this device since setting it up. I threw it in the middle of a yard to test battery life and video quality 65 feet and two walls away from the nearest Nest WiFi Pro access point. See screenshot included.