Customer Ratings & Reviews

I have been using a Nest doorbell camera for a few years now, and a couple of years ago added another indoor camera. When I saw the new Nest Indoor Cameras I thought it was time to add a second indoor camera. I’ve been using this new Gen 3 camera for a little more than a week now and I can easily say that this was a great addition to your setup. The video and audio is very clear. I already thought my older Nest cameras were great, but this new one definitely adds some fidelity to both the video and audio. Video is very clear even at night when the house is dark you can still easily make out details. A cool new feature that thankfully came to all of my Nest cameras is the addition to Gemini. While I thought it was a bit of a gimmic at first, I am happy to see that it is actually quite useful. Instead of just getting a notification that there was motion from a camera it gives you a brief description. I was at work and got a notification that there was a person with a leaf blower at our front door. Sure enough, our gardener was out taking care of the yard. I’ve also had numerous notifications from this indoor camera where the description says that our dog is on the couch. I can only imagine that these notifications will get better as the AI integration matures. I have been very happy with our Nest cameras which is why I have 3 of them. This new one is a nice upgrade to both video and audio quality. Setup is a breeze and it’s nice that they include some hardware to mount the camera on the wall as well. The power cable is very long so that should make it easier to find an effective place to set the camera up. The new Gemini are just icing on an already delicious cake. This is an easy recommendation.

The Google Nest Cam 3rd generation is quite an improvement from the previous Nest Cam that I have used. It captures video a 2K resolution - which is enough to get details and zoom in on areas when needed. Color stay clear even in low light settings, making it great to see what is happening at any time. The 2K resolution gives a large field of view, capturing areas that my previous camera could not. The Gemini features on this camera are pretty useful. They can tell you when people are detected. You can ask natural langue questions about items that were captured by the camera. It can also provide summaries for events that have happened, which helps make alerts more meaningful. You can set custom activity zones to keep alerts only for areas that you are interested in. I like that you can look back at previews with six hours of ten second previews. This has been enough for me to keep track of goings on, but you can also subscribe for more event history. It is a nicely designed camera, easy to set up with the Google Home app, and plenty of useful features.

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.