- So, a fun fact.
I've installed something like six
video doorbells here at my house.
I know.
It's a little ridiculous,
but they excite me because I think
for a couple of hundred bucks it's one
of the smartest things you can put in your home.
I mean, you've got the convenience
of seeing who's at the door,
without actually having to go to the door.
And there's a security factor too right?
Awesome.
So I settled on the Ring Pro a little while back
and I've enjoyed the hell out of it for a couple years now.
But there's something new.
It's finally here.
I've installed it.
It's the Nest Hello.
Let's go look at it.
(upbeat music)
Alright, let's just get the basics out
of the way first shall we?
Nest Hello is a smart video doorbell.
It's
$229.
And you will absolutely want to look
into this Nest Aware subscription service
that comes along side of it.
They've got three plans that go with it.
I recommend at least just starting with the most basic one.
For $5 a month or $50 a year you get
five days worth of continuous recording.
You get Smart Zone so you can decide
where it's gonna detect motion and stuff like that.
You get smart alerts.
We'll talk more about those in a second.
Just go ahead and do it and you get a free trial anyway.
Installation is pretty much like any other doorbell.
In fact it's almost identical to
how you stick in a ring doorbell.
You've got to have a wired low
voltage doorbell already in place.
And you'll need a transformer that'll handle
at least 16 volts and I actually had to swap that out,
back when I put in the Ring Pro.
Again, it's relatively easy.
It's just home owners stuff to do.
So real quick.
Here's everything that's in the box.
And this is one of the really cool things that Nest does.
They include pretty much everything you're gonna need
to do the installation yourself.
You can still call a Nest Pro if you want, but look at that.
They even gave you the drill bit
and aw it's got a little Nest logo on it.
Oh and look at that!
It's a little Nest security sticker.
Nice.
So you're gonna do a little work up there,
in your old doorbell takin' things apart.
Really really simple.
Then you're gonna head outside
and it's time to install the Nest Hello.
Now I actually had to do a little major surgery here
to reroute some of the wires just
because they come in from behind,
in a different spot than they did for the Ring.
And it wasn't a huge deal,
it's just there's a little less wiggle room to play with,
and it's one of those things you run into
when you do home improvement stuff like this.
So look, I'm not actually gonna walk you through
the entire installation process
because the Nest app itself does a really good job
of that when you're setting all this up in the first place.
But I do recommend go ahead and watching
the installation video just on your
own time before you get started.
It'll help give you context through
all this if you haven't done it already.
And Nest did a really really good job with it.
Super simple to follow and it's
definitely gonna help keep you out of trouble.
So, what is it like to use Nest Hello?
And is it better than Ring?
You know what, yeah.
I think it is and here's why.
So first, the software just seems a lot more stable right?
There hasn't been a single time,
that I've gotten a notification
whether somebody rang the bell itself,
or if it just saw somebody out there,
that I've opened up the app and it
has failed to connect to the camera.
Hasn't happened once.
And the only real lag I've seen
and this is something Nest needs to work on in general
is when you do the app from a cold start
and it's launching for the first time,
that takes a few extra seconds.
So back to the Nest Hello itself.
The camera actually has a different
aspect ratio then you might be used to.
They do it so you get a greater vertical view
so you can see the top to somebodies head,
maybe down to their feet.
Depends on where their standing,
how tall they are, you get the idea.
In my case, I really just kinda get
a better look at my ceiling fan.
So it is gonna very some depending on
just what all is around your door.
So back to the Nest Aware subscription thing.
Again, totally worth paying for I think.
$5 a month, not a big deal.
You get to create motion zones, that's good.
You get smarter notifications.
And along with the subscription you
get this really cool thing where Nest can identify faces.
So it'll see somebody there and say,
hey that looks like a face.
Do you know who that is?
And I'll say yeah, that's my daughter Isabella
and I type in her name and it says alright.
Here are all the other times we've seen Isabella.
If she comes up to the door and rings the bell,
it'll announce hey Isabella's here.
I see Isabella.
Is it creepy?
Ah I don't think so because I had to tell it
who the person is.
It just doesn't automatically pluck
their name out of the sky right?
Now that also ties into the notifications again.
When somebody rings the bell,
you can hook it up to any Google Home device
that you have in your house.
Now, I kinda have a few.
Listen, see how many times you
hear Google Home fire off here.
(doorbell rings)
- [Google Home] Someone's at the front door.
Someone's at the front door. Someone's at the front door.
- Okay.
Yeah it's a little ridiculous.
But $29 Google Home mini?
Pretty awesome 'cause I can be sitting out back
and know when somebody rings the doorbell
even if I don't hear the doorbell itself go off.
(doorbell rings)
- [Google Home] Someone's at the front door.
- Alright a quick reminder.
This is what Ring Pro looks like and sounds like.
And I've been plenty impressed with it
all these months that I've been using it.
Does struggle a little bit.
It's dark under here and it's very bright out there.
That's not uncommon for cameras though,
especially relatively inexpensive ones
like even this doorbell.
So, how's it gonna stand up to the Nest Hello?
I don't know.
Let's go find out.
Alright so this is the Nest doorbell
that we are now seeing me through of.
I actually got it turned up to the highest resolution,
the highest quality of video just to see what would happen,
see what it looks like.
So far so good.
Installation wasn't too bad.
I had to finagle some wires a little bit
but basic home improvement stuff.
So, we'll see how it looks.
We'll see how it sounds.
We'll see how it reacts when people
are actually usin' the thing.
But good enough for now.
So audio quality as you heard, it's just okay.
It's pretty much what you would expect
from something like this.
Yeah, you can talk to the person who's at the door.
They can talk to you.
You can hear them, they can hear you.
You can have a nice little conversation.
So this is where we get into actually probably
my biggest complaint about Nest Hello,
is that it only records half the conversation.
If I'm talking to somebody through the app,
Nest Hello does not record that.
It only records what it hears through the microphone,
outside.
What?
What you doin'?
Nothin?
Aren't you supposed to be in school?
Oh one more cool thing is quick replies.
So if somebody rings the bell
and for whatever reason you don't want to talk to 'em,
you just pick on of these three can replies
and send it back their way.
Well here, you can just hear what they sound like.
- Hi there, no one can answer the door right now.
We'll be notified you stopped by.
Just a sec.
We'll be right there.
Hi there.
You can just leave it.
Thanks.
- Am I gonna use those a lot?
I dunno yet.
Haven't so far but it's a cool little option
and I'd like to be able to record my own actually.
That'd be neat.
Couple of other things I want to mention here.
I've had the video quality actually turned all the way up.
And that uses a lot of data.
Nest says it will try to keep it
to under 300 gigabytes a month.
If you've got a data cap on your ISP
obviously that's somthin' you'll want to think about.
But I cranked it all the way up,
'cause I wanted to really push it
and see how bad the lag would be in that case.
Haven't had any real complaints about that
so I'm just gonna leave it at the highest setting.
And yeah, how awesome does that HDR
look in this little camera?
Crazy.
Night vision is pretty good too.
No real complaints there.
A couple of other things I think I'd like to see Nest do.
I would love to see a native app for my laptop
and not just the web portal.
It's just something I can find quicker
when somebody is at the door and I don't have
to go hunting through my browser tabs
'cause if you're anything like me
you've got a couple hundred open right?
And I definitely want better control over family members.
They already have sort of secondary accounts,
for the Nest Secure alarm system
and I'll show you something on that after a little while.
Just hang on, it's comin'.
But I had to give my kids like full access
to the entire Nest account for them
to be able to see the doorbell.
And that includes all the other cameras,
and maybe I don't want them to see all the other cameras.
Maybe I don't want them being able to change the thermostat.
I know I could put a lock on it
but you know what I mean right?
So, we need more discreet controls in that regard.
And again, to repeat.
Nest Hello has to record what I'm saying into the app
to somebody at the front door.
It can't just record half that conversation.
They need to fix that.
So let's wrap it up.
Here's the short version.
Nest Hello is easy to install and it's as easy
as any of the other video doorbells that I've used.
The video itself looks great.
Love the HDR.
And I haven't had any real lag even at the highest setting.
229 bucks.
It's available now and Nest Aware subscriptions start
at $5 a month or 50 bucks a year.
And it can record continuously so you don't have to wait
for the camera to spin up when it detects motion.
Haven't missed a thing.
And you know what?
It just looks cool.
So Nest Hello is definitely my new favorite nerd doorbell
and it's the one I'm gonna recommend to people,
especially if you're already at all in the Nest eco system.
So that's it for Nest Hello.
If you got any other questions about it,
hit me up down below in the comments.
I'll have links where you can buy
all this stuff as well of course.
Be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't already.
We got a bunch of really cool stuff in the works.
Thanks for watchin', see ya later.
(upbeat music)