The Nest Hello smart doorbell looks great! A well-connected doorbell that makes use of
your home network and can use Google Home devices on the same WiFi as its chime, meaning
the range isn’t restricted to receivers close enough to the doorbell itself - ideal
for larger houses or when you want a receiver at the bottom of your garden.
I haven’t bought one though, because I’m holding out with my fingers and toes crossed
for either a second-gen model or at least a newer version, and I’ll tell you why...
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As I said in the intro, the Nest Hello looks great - and I didn’t even mention the video
feed and the ability to speak to the person at your front door with amazing integration
with the Google Home Hub. Plus, the ability to silence the chime and have it revert back
to normal after a set time would be great for when our young children are napping during
the day. For me, though, there are two key problems with the Nest Hello which I would
love to see fixed. Nest; if you’re watching, please make these two little changes and then
you can take my money!
The first is the way the Nest Hello is powered and the way it integrates with your existing
doorbell. It’s supposedly easy to install, IF YOU HAVE A WIRED DOORBELL. That’s the
issue; it assumes you have an existing, hardwired doorbell and if you go through the little
wizard on the Nest website, as soon as you say you haven’t got one then it immediately
recommends professional installation. The blurb on the website does make this very clear,
so I’m not crying foul play or anything, it says: “Nest Hello requires a wired doorbell,
chime and the right transformer.” But the question is, why???
Here’s the thing - most houses here in the UK don’t have a mains-powered doorbell at
the front door, nor do most houses have a fixed chime inside. OK, my parents’ house
that I grew up in does.... oh and actually my grandmother’s house did... but I think
most fellow Brits would agree that those are the exception rather than the rule so it’s
safe to assume most houses have nothing hard wired. My own front door has a battery-operated
button stuck to the front and then some receivers like this which plug in, and I bought the
same set twice so I have 4 rather than just 2 to cover the house and garden.
They’re OK, but they take up a plug socket and have to be close enough to the front door,
plus the range drops even more when the batteries get weaker so being able to ditch these and
have my Google Home devices ring instead would be amazing!
HOWEVER - with what you get in the box of the Nest Hello, there’s no way for me to
power the device on my front door. Sure, if you look online you can find unofficial power
adaptors which you can just run to where you need, but if makes me slightly nervous putting
an unofficial power adaptor into a gadget which isn’t cheap. You can of course buy
one from a reputable source such as your local DIY or electrical retailer, but that leads
me to my first suggestion/plea to Nest: include a mains power adaptor in the box, for those
of us that would need it. Or at least sell an officially certified one as a separate
add-on!
My second plea is less of a game-changer but something that I think is a real shame to
be missing from the proposition, and that’s better integration with other Nest devices,
namely the Nest Protect. Living in a house where we’ve converted the loft, local building
regulations required me to fit mains-powered and inter-connected Smoke alarms, so I already
have a Nest Protect on all 3 floors of my house, up on the ceiling out of the way and
not using up a power socket. They have a really good and clear speaker in them, so why can’t
they chime as well when someone rings my doorbell?
Now, I fully appreciate that these devices are there to potentially save the lives of
my family and me, so that has to be their number 1 priority and any extra features which
could potentially jeopardize the safe operation of that primary purpose would be an absolute
no-no. But if it’s at all possible for that feature to be added in a firmware upgrade
whilst still maintaining absolute 100% reliability, I would really love to see that as I think
it would be so neat.
As a side note, it looks like with the current design they would be very easy to steal as
all a thief would need is a bent paperclip. Unfortunately, at the time of making this
video there’s no replacement programme here in the UK for if your expensive doorbell gets
nicked, like there is in the USA. Granted, a stolen Nest Hello will be bricked and not
work on any account other than your own, but would an opportunist thief know that?
I would really like to add the Nest Hello to my smart home - I could live without it
chiming on my smoke alarms but obviously being able to power the device at my front door
is essential, and given the correct adaptor and length of cable I’m quite happy to do
it myself, I don’t want to have to pay someone else to install it for me.
You can find more information about the Nest hello doorbell as well as checking pricing
and availability by clicking the first link in the video description.
So what’s your take on this? Do you agree with what I’ve said, or do you think I’m
bonkers and talking a load of rubbish? Let me know if the comments section below and
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if you’ve not done so already.
I hope you enjoyed this video, feel free to check out some of the other videos on-screen
now and I’ll see you again soon!