Hey ya’ll it’s Rose. Today I’m going to compare using Camio and Nest Aware software
with Nest Cam. I’ve been using Camio for several months and it's a software that you
can use to turn old iPhones or Android devices into security cameras, but it also is compatible
with Nest Cam, but you have to pay. Where Camio offers 30 days of video history for
the same price that Nest Aware offers 10 days. I’ve still decided to ditch my Camio subscription.
I use my Nest camera as a neighborhood watch type solution and there are some very specific
reasons why Nest Aware is better for this type of application than Camio.
I first noticed Camio’s weaknesses when trying to help out a neighbor. I had been
bragging at a party just a couple weeks before about how smart Camio is and how I could search
for black cars vs white cars vs purple packages. My neighbor’s request was reasonable, she
wanted to find footage from a certain day of all black cars. In theory, I should of
been able to type black car into the search field, select a date and go, but the process
is cumbersome and I fell flat. While you can select a date and search parameters, it isn’t
a graceful process. Typing in black car might change the date you’ve set, it might pull
up cars that aren’t black at all, and in general it’s hard to tell what date you’re
on and what footage you’re actually looking at. And the other problem is that Camio doesn’t
record video when paired with Nest Cam, it records clips. Basically it sews together
multiple pictures and creates a flip book style video.
By contrast, it’s very easy to use Nest Cam’s timeline. I can pick a date, and use
the activity zone to see everything that happened on the street. While I can’t search for
a black car, it’s pretty safe to assume that Nest Cam recorded any motion and all
cars that went down the street. So I can pick a date, select my zone, and Nest Cam will
add this handy color dot onto the timeline that shows where related activity occurred.
I can hover over the dot and quickly see if it’s a black car or not. Or, I can create
a timelapse and watch an entire days footage in a few minutes.
It also seems like Camio dumbs down the resolution slightly and as mentioned it records multiple
pictures, not videos. When zooming in you can tell that things get grainy, where Nest
Cam is slightly more smooth. While it may not seem like a huge difference, it is when
you are trying to find something that’s important.
The pro to recording flipbook style is that it’s easier on your bandwidth, but when
you are trying to pull video evidence, it’s annoying. Also, when you download the photos
to your phone’s gallery, they break into multiple pictures. By contrast, you can create
custom clips with Nest Aware. You aren’t stuck with what they’ve deemed to be a clip.
The downside to this is that you can’t download videos from your phone’s app, only from
the Nest Aware web portal. Also, Nest uses its fair share of bandwidth.
The biggest pro of Camio is that it’s smart. And it’s hard to leave the software that
I’ve learned to trust. You can teach Camio what’s important to you and it actually learns.
It puts top events into one basket, all events into another, and it only notifies you if
you want to be notified. While I’ve tested a lot of learning devices, Camio is by far
the fastest and smartest learner.
Camio does have a free plan, but Nest Cam is not compatible. If you’re a Nest Cam
user, you must start with the Plus plan for $9.90 per month per camera, which includes
30 days of video history. Also, you can use Camio to record footage from multiple types
of IP Cameras or you can turn your old smartphone into a home security camera.
Nest Aware offers two plans. You can use Nest for free, but you won’t have any video storage.
So if you want video storage, the entry level plan is $10 per month plus tax and offers
10 days of video history. You do get a 50% discount for adding multiple cameras, but
the plan only supports Dropcam and Nest Cam. The plan also offers smarter motion detection,
video history, the ability to make clips, and time lapse.
So there you have it. If you just want to be able to store video, Camio is more economical
option. But if you want to be able to sift through the video and potentially share it
with somebody else, Nest Aware offers a better quality video, a more efficient search process,
and it also offers the option to create video clips. The biggest bummer is that no matter
which solution you choose, you’re going to end up paying for storage for your Nest
camera. If you guys have questions about either solution, feel free to comment below. And
if this video was helpful to you, I would appreciate a thumbs up. And thank you so much
for spending time with today. I will see y’all later.