Customer Ratings & Reviews

This is my first indoor camera. I have half a dozen outdoor cameras. With this camera you get Google Gemini capabilities. More on that later. This camera records full 2K color video night or day. The camera has a full 2K 152-degree diagonal view as opposed to the previous version’s 1080P 130-degree view. This camera requires a Google Home Premium Subscription. It is simple to connect to your Google Home Network and once you do, Gemini gives you lots of power that you didn’t have before. You can get daily summaries of everything that the camera sees throughout the day. You can go back to see what you missed. The screen shows 10 second previews for up to 6 hours of activities. The videos will have Gemini generated detailed event descriptions. You can zoom in on the videos to see what is important, and crop out what doesn’t matter. The camera also has the ability to do continuous recording as opposed to just event recording. Gemini allows you to automate tasks by just talking to the application. You could for example tell Gemini to “Set the inside camera to continuous recording whenever nobody is home.” Gemini will then write an automation that sets the camera to continuous recording whenever there is nobody home and you are in away mode. The fact that it creates detailed event descriptions allows you to use plain language searches. You can for example ask it “Which of the dogs ate my shoe?” and it will bring up videos that show your dogs eating a shoe. Overall it’s a nice camera. The resolution is much better than the previous version and the integration with Gemini makes it a lot easier to use. My big complaint is that fact that in order to use the new Gemini features, you must be a subscriber of Google Home Premium. It can only store up to 6 hours of clips and many of the features require that subscription. They offer 2 versions, Standard and Advanced. Standard costs $10 per month or $100 for a year and Advanced costs $20 per month or $200 per year. That can be a significant cost to factor into your purchase. While I have been a big Google Home user for a number of years, I personally feel that the price of integrating Gemini is higher than I am willing to pay. As a result, I don’t recommend this camera.

I’m impressed with the hardware design of this camera. The camera mount is designed to work on either a flat surface or be twisted to support attaching flat against a wall while still allowing vertical and horizontal adjustment of the camera. It’s a fantastic design that requires no assembly. The 2K camera with HDR provides up to a 6x zoom capturing an excellent amount of detail for such a small device. 
On the software side, connecting to Google Home took a few seconds, and a new Cameras section appeared in the Google Home app with a thumbnail view of the live feed from the camera. Tapping it reveals a split screen navigation with the camera image on the top of the screen and a recent clips history below. The past clips default to a view telling you what you are looking for with a timestamp and a clip length followed by a looping fast video playback of the each clip. I love that the clips automatically fast play, giving me an almost instant understanding if the clip can be ignored or if it needs to be played back for a more detailed review. If you don’t like it, there’s a toggle switch to go to a traditional static timeline view without the auto clip playing. The software experience is easy to navigate and simple to use as long as you are currently using Google Home for your Smart Home. Where I start to get frustrated is that Nest continues to be a closed ecosystem where paid subscribers get great features, but the device is handicapped unless you subscribe. There’s no local storage on this device and no method to bring your own storage. I run Home Assistant and this device can not be brought into Home Assistant without first playing Google a fee to access the API’s and even then the cameras are not able to use my existing storage servers. Instead Google offers 6-hour video preview without a subscription, or moving up to Google Home Premium gets you 60 days of history. It’s only with Google Home Premium Plus subscriptions that you get access to continuous video recording, but archiving is only good for 60 days. Bottom line: if you are already a Google Nest User with a subscription, this is a great camera to upgrade to.

Quite responsive device. Setup was a bit challenging but can be completed. Don’t trash anything…what is a sticker covering the camera display is a QR code needed for setup. Hold onto instructions and the box.

It's a pain in the butt to set up. I tried adding it half a dozen times to my Google home and it gets stuck out can't find device or doesn't connect once added.