this is the nest cam IQ outdoor it is one of the best outdoor security cameras
that we've reviewed but if you're considering buying one there's some
things you need to know before you make your decision the IQ outdoor is an
updated version of nests outdoor security camera the design is new so is
the mount on the new mount the cable comes out of the back and if you drill a
hole in your wall you can run it straight into your house and no one
outside can see the cable it makes for a much neater installation if you do need
to run the cable though down this side of your house then there are channels
built in here for it also new the camera now mechanically attaches to the mount
the only way to get it out is with an allen key the previous version used a
magnet and that made it really easy to put up but also really easy to steal the
view from the camera out the front there's a hundred and thirty degree
field of view which is fairly standard for a home security camera it has night
vision which is pretty standard too and two-way audio that means that when
you're watching video from the camera you can't just hear what's going on but
if someone's there you can press the button on your phone and you can talk to
them as well and we'll broadcast out of the camera video from the IQ outdoor is
sharp and clear it is a 1080p high-definition video image but that's
not where the story ends with the video in this camera inside here behind the
lens is a 4k video imaging sensor that's four times
high-definition but it's important to understand you are never gonna see that
4k image the 4k video is circulated within the camera and used by the
systems that look for movement and look for things that are going on but because
that 4k image data is so large Ness doesn't send it up to their cloud what
comes out of the back of the camera and goes up to the cloud is a down converted
high-definition video image it's still a really good image it's one of the best
we've seen but when you see 4k with this don't be thinking that you can they be
getting 4k video one of the other areas where it is an advantage though is when
you're setting up the camera and you see the complete image that it's that it can
see if you're not interested in some of that you can usually do a
digital zoom and just concentrate on part of their area well if you've got a
high-definition sensor in here and you zoom in you're going to end up with less
some high-definition because on this you're starting with a 4k image when you
zoom in until at least you get to a quarter of that image you're going to be
getting a high-definition video signal coming out because it has all those
extra pixels in there and all that extra resolution so even when you zoom in
you're gonna be getting a good image but again that's only when you set it up
that's when you tell the camera this is the area I'm interested in one of the
other really nice features of this is a nest design service called super site
now you have to have a subscription for a super site but it's a pretty slick
thing when the camera sees somebody it attempts to zoom in to show you a
close-up view of their face now going back to what we're just saying that zoom
in is on a high definition image and the way the camera zooms in and the way it
pans it almost looks like somebody's controlling the camera for you and if
you want you can press a button and go back to full frame so that's super sight
the other thing or one of the other things that you get with the
subscription is a facial recognition the camera won't just alert you if
somebody's there but once it's you've trained it and it knows members of your
family and your friends it will tell you who's there or if it's a stranger so
that subscription service not the cheaper subscription service out there
for a home security camera ten dollars a month or a hundred dollars a year and
that will get you ten days of storage for your videos and there's also another
option which is $30 a month 300 a year for 30 days if you decide not to
subscribe you don't get the super site you don't get the facial recognition
ness gives you three hours of video storage which is not very much it's fine
in the daytime if say you can alert on your phone you're in a meeting and you
can look at it 30 minutes later but at nighttime say someone's in front of your
house at 2:00 a.m. if you wake up at 6 a.m. it's gone it's deleted so if you
have one of these cameras you're probably going to end up with a
subscription service so when you're considering buying one factor the cost
of the subscription service into your decision
this camera is reasonably expensive it's 349 dollars you can get 2 for 598
dollars but if we just thinking about one of these 349 dollars if you have it
for 4 years you're more than doubling your
investment in this system so do your sums and make sure it's a
figure that you're happy with one of the other features of a nest is that it's
always streaming to nest in the cloud that's one of the reasons why the
subscription service is so expensive and it's a nice feature because it means
that you've got video for the last 10 or 30 days always available to you in the
cloud service even if the camera didn't spot anything even if you didn't get an
alert the video is there and you can go back and look at it but it sends a lot
of video Ness says that the minimum internet speed for one of these is 2
megabits per second but you really don't worry about that consider the amount of
data it sends every month because most home internet connections do have a data
cap if you go over the data cap you're either going to get slowed down or more
than likely you're going to get charged more money there are 4 quality settings
in this camera in the lowest quality setting the app tells you that the
camera is going to try not to exceed a hundred gigabytes of data transfer a
month in the highest quality setting 400 gigabytes a month if you have two of
these cameras at 800 gigabytes I looked at my home internet connection
and my data cap is at 500 gigabytes after which they start charging me more
money so if you're gonna buy one of these or two of these or 3 or 4 check
your home internet you might have to upgrade that or you might end up paying
extra money so factor all of that into your decision as well that's really the
big negative with this the price of the camera and the subscription and the
amount of data it uses which might force you to get a better internet in the
internet package from your provider more expensive one but on the positive side
the app is really good love the new mount super side is really well done in
a very useful feature and you get a great image from the camera so that's
what we think about the nest cam IQ outdoor