if you're looking around for a video doorbell definitely consider the nest
hello it has one of the best image qualities we've seen and is a worthy
competitor to rings video doorbell - and a recently introduced new subscription
option makes the ongoing running cost now more affordable than ever one of the
hallmarks of nest security camera systems is the superb
image quality and in that respect the nest hello does not let the family down
we got a great image during the daytime it dealt with areas of darkness and
brightness really well and even when the Sun was shining directly into the camera
it didn't wash out the image but the image resolution suffers as you go down
in quality this is the high quality mode a resolution of 1600 by 1200 that
actually makes it horizontally a higher resolution image than a high-definition
video picture but it's been cut off at the sides instead of being widescreen
sixteen by nine it's four by three and that actually makes a lot more sense for
a doorbell when most of the things you're gonna be looking at are standing
upright rather than worrying about what's going on at the sides but at
medium and low quality the resolution drops further each of these modes has an
effect on the amount of streaming bandwidth they use more about that later
there's also an infrared night vision system in there some small infrared
lights will illuminate and give you that grayscale night vision image that a lot
of security cameras deliver when I was testing this one of the things I did
discover was that when my porch lights went on it provided enough light for the
camera to sometimes which to color mode thinking it was daytime this is the only
video doorbell that's done that so far so it's probably an indication of a good
sensitive image sensor inside the device the doorbell video lives at the top of
the nest app you can easily see here the difference between it and the widescreen
video from other nest cameras clicking on the video brings up a list of events
it seen and you can click on one of those to watch what happened when you do
go into that list and look back at things that have happened the amount of
time you can look back depends on the subscription that you have there is a
free option with this where you can see live video and snapshots from the last
three hours but that's not particularly useful so
you're probably going to end up subscribing the good news is that Ness
subscription plans have just been added recently with a lower-cost plan for five
dollars a month or $50 a year you get video from the last five days there's a
big difference also between nest and its competitors the competitors are out
there looking for motion and looking for movement and storing in the cloud just
clips when it detects things happening nest is streaming all of the time
everything is stored there it pulls out clips of motion and interesting things
that it sees to make it easier for you to go review them but if it didn't
detect something that missed something the video is still going to be in the
cloud with the competitors that video is not there so the five-day history that
you get with nest is a true 5 day history there are other plans there's a
10 day and a 1 month plan also if you have any existing nest devices then the
subscription price for subsequent cameras is haft by so it's going you're
going to be $2 50 if you add a nest doorbell to a system where you already
have nest cameras when it does detect something you get alerts by email or by
push message or by both if someone comes to the door and rings your doorbell then
the app will open in full screen you can talk to them remotely or you can get the
doorbell to announce one of three pre-programmed phrases it's a good idea
but we found that pre-programmed phrases were pretty specific to certain things
that might be going on so maybe not totally useful in all situations at the
moment there's no way to add your own programmed phrases to the doorbell you
can also set detection zones these allow you to restrict detection of movement to
certain parts of the video image useful if say cars are always driving by and
setting things off but the detection zones are only programmable through the
web interface you can't program at the moment through the smartphone app nest
is a unit of Google so of course it integrates wonderfully into Google home
and Google assistant there's a setting on it where you can tell it to use the
speaker in Google home to announce that someone's at the door when that's
flicked on then when someone the doorbell even if you can't hear the
doorbell a Google home nearby will tell you that there's someone at your door is
constantly streaming as already mentioned that is going to have a impact
on your home internet connection if you have a fast connection if you have lots
of bandwidth you don't need to worry about it but if you have any slower
connection or you have a data cap then you're going to want to consider this -
insulation was really easy has a great metal bracket to fix to the war which is
unusual most of the competitors are plastic getting it on the wall was very
simple the most fiddly part actually was hooking up this thing they call a chime
connector which is something to do with power regulation from your doorbell you
put it up in your doorbell chime box and because it has that little plastic box
there it can be a little bit fiddly to sort of jam in and get the cover case
back on the doorbell chime but I managed to do it and then everything worked
wonderfully so that's the nest hello we love the image quality lovely build
quality of the unit itself the app is great and it integrates really well into
Google home and Google assistant and the subscription prices have come down with
that new plan so we're not complaining as much about the ongoing running cost
as we used to we are scoring it four out of five but
if you're buying a video doorbell it's not the only one out there so check tech
I've comm for reviews of all the current video doorbells on the market if you
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