Gabe Turner: Hey, folks, this is Gabe at Security Baron...
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Gabe: ...and in the immortal words of Lionel Richie, we say, "Hello, is this the video
doorbell that you're looking for?" Today, we're checking out the Nest Hello Video Doorbell.
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Gabe: In today's review of the Nest Hello Video Doorbell, we're going to go over some
pros and cons, its design, its feature set, the installation experience, before diving
into its mobile application, the Nest App, to make sure you have all the information
you need to know if the Nest Hello is the right video doorbell for you.
If you want to see a list of our favorite video doorbells, google, "Security Baron best
video doorbells." If you have a question about today's review, leave us a comment and I'll
get back to you.
Let's kick off today's review of the Nest Hello Video Doorbell, checking out some pros
and cons, beginning with the pros. Now, it has crisp, clear, 1600 HD video. It integrates
with Google Assistant, and it has person detection. On the con side, it is a bit pricey retailing
for $229 out of the box. If you want to fully unlock the features, you're going to have
to subscribe to Nest Aware, which is at least five dollars a month.
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Gabe: Now that we've gone over the pros and cons for the Nest Hello Video Doorbell, I
want to talk about its design. I'm honestly a pretty big fan of the design. The first
thing that I always want to point out is the fact that it is flush on the front. There's
nothing protruding. You have that nice flush front with the glossy black. It's essentially
a two-tone with the glossy black and the white on the side.
If you see here on the front, I like that it's a really intuitive design for your visitors.
There's a large button to press here to let people know, "Hey, I've made it to your front
porch." The microphone is here, and you'll see the camera. When you're trying to be heard,
the speakers are found on the bottom. I think that should be pretty loud.
You'll see that it's got this nice, white encasing and the sleek metal mounting plate.
Overall, it's pretty capable of handling any temperatures you throw at it. It's 5 to 104
degrees, which would probably take care of 95 percent of us, at least in the contiguous
United States. Beyond that, it is IPX 4-rated, so it can handle all types of dust and water
being thrown at it.
You shouldn't have to worry about losing the ability to see who's at your front door just
because of a thunderstorm. Overall, I'm a big fan of the design of the Nest Hello Video
Doorbell.
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Gabe: I want to jump into the feature set for the Nest Hello Video Doorbell, beginning
with the actual video quality, and the Nest Hello Video Doorbell does not disappoint.
It has 1600 high definition video. It has eight times zoom and a 160-degree field of
view.
Now, if that's not enough for you, it has a 4:3 aspect ratio, which really lets you
capture everything that's going on, from north to south, on your front porch.
Beyond that, if you're looking at nighttime, for example, it has amazing infrared LED capacity.
That really makes sure that you're capturing anything going on, even when that porch light
is off. Overall, we're really happy with that crisp, clear, 1600 HD video, both in the daytime
and at night.
When it comes to audio, the Nest Hello Video Doorbell is really elevating the game with
the HD Talk and Listen, which is enhancing your standard two-way audio experience. The
reduced ambient noise and echo cancellation that comes built in really allows you to hear
and speak clearly with whoever is in front of your video doorbell.
If you cannot speak, for whatever reason, you have the ability to set up pre-recorded
audio messages. If you have a UPS or Amazon driver who you have a message for, you can
just say so right there in your Nest app. Really want to point out that Nest is showing
out when it comes to this audio experience.
With your Nest Hello Video Doorbell, you get 24/7 live-streaming. If you want to save any
of those clips, you're going to have to get the Nest Aware subscription.
For $5 a month, you get 5 days of cloud storage. For $10 a month, you get 10 days of cloud
storage. For $30 a month, you get 30 days of cloud storage. Something to think about
when looking at your Nest Hello Video Doorbell is the fact that it is a bit pricey to hold
onto your favorite clips.
The Nest Hello Video Doorbell has pretty extensive smart platform integrations. It integrates
with both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. With Amazon Alexa, you can say, "Alexa, show
me my front door," and watch that on your Amazon Fire television, Amazon Echo Spot,
or Amazon Echo Show.
With Google Assistant, you get slightly broader capabilities. You can, of course, send any
of your video from your video doorbell to your Google Home and Nest Hub, or any Google
Chromecast-enabled television. You can even use Google Home or Google Mini as a doorbell
chime for your home. Overall, there's some pretty impressive integrations with smart
platforms with the Nest Hello Video Doorbell.
The Nest Hello Video Doorbell has some substantial artificial intelligence capabilities. One
is the ability to actually detect when a person is there. If someone comes up to your porch,
you can get a notification no matter where you are in the world, that someone is there.
That's useful for those of us trying to keep tabs on what's going on near our abode.
Beyond that, you can actually dive deeper and get familiar face alerts. If you have
a dog walker or a babysitter, you can know whenever they arrive, because not only does
your phone notify you that someone's come, but it tells you who that person is. Overall,
I'm really impressed with deep and robust feature set that you get with your Nest Hello
Video Doorbell.
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Gabe: Whoa, whoa. I hope you're enjoying today's review of the Nest Hello Video Doorbell. If
you want to be kept up to date on the newest in smart doorbells, VPNs, passwords managers,
and smart home security, subscribe to our channel, Security Baron. We're dropping new
content weekly. All right, let's get back to the video.
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Gabe: Now that we've gone over the feature set for the Nest Hello Video Doorbell, let's
talk about the installation process. If you live in a traditional home with an existing
doorbell infrastructure, you can get just go to your chime box, take your chime connector
that Nest provides you with, and set this up inside of your home.
Then, you're going to go to your existing traditional doorbell, unscrew it, and replace
it with the Nest Hello Video Doorbell, which will provide it with both power and the ability
to coordinate with the chime itself.
If you need assistance or need to have part of that process facilitated for you beyond
the mobile application, there are numerous resources on the Nest website to help you
get through that process. Nest has actually completely done away with the need to do that.
If you live in a space without that existing infrastructure, or just don't want to go through
that, you can actually just order a power adapter from Nest, which will provide power
to your Nest Hello Video Doorbell. If you don't want to use your phone and the notifications
for your doorbell, you can actually use a Google Home or Google Home Mini as your chime.
The speaker will go off when someone presses the button on your Nest Hello Video Doorbell.
Overall, Nest provides two easy options for you to set up your Nest Hello Video Doorbell.
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Gabe: Now that we've set up our Nest Hello Video Doorbell, let's talk about where you're
going to be interfacing predominantly with your Nest device, the mobile application,
Nest app.
Here, of course you'll be live streaming your footage, pulling up old clips, and in the
Apple app store, people don't seem to really love that experience, where it has a 2.2 out
of 5 star rating. Fortunately, people seem to have much better experience in the Google
Play store, where it has a 3.7 out of 5 star rating. Let's go ahead and check it out on
my iPhone 7 Plus.
Here I am checking out the Nest Hello Video Doorbell on my iPhone. You'll see here, there
is basically from the get-go just a solid view of what's going on outside of my home.
If I click here, I'm looking at the live view. One thing you'll note, is that aspect ratio
that really allows you to capture what's going on right here from a pretty north to south
perspective.
I can shift back and forth to get more of that landscape perspective. I can even zoom,
so let's check out what's going on. Look at that plant. This is all live footage. If I
wanted to talk to someone outside, I could actually just click on the microphone. This
is me talking.
If anyone were outside of that home right now, they would probably be pretty freaked
out by this random person speaking to them. In today's world with all the things going
on, people are pretty familiar with it.
Let's move on to some of the other elements of this particular page like looking at the
timeline. Today, there have been 179 events. To give you a brief overview of what that
looks like, we can do this really cool time lapse video. Let's hit dark, we'll hit the
dark soon, and boom, now you can see what it's like when it's dark, but this is with
the porch light actually on.
We can go back a few days. Yesterday, there was a lot more events. There's a lot going
on right here in the app. Let's go ahead and make a new clip. I'll click here, and I'll
make new clip, and it says adding clip to your Nest account.
One thing I want to note is that you can do things right here in the mobile application,
but you also have a lot of functionality if you go to your desktop, and go to your Nest
account. There you can really flip between things more quickly, and see the full functionality
of the Nest ecosystem.
Now you see I was able to save a clip right here in the mobile application. What's fun
about saving clips here is that you can, of course, save it to the camera roll on your
mobile device, or you can share a link.
Sharing a link is fun because I can do it in a message or an email. You could send it
as a WhatsApp messages. There's just a host of ways of sharing whatever has taken place
in front of your home for the day.
If I go to People, I can actually see all of the new people that were seen at my home
today. I can go to Quiet Time, and actually turn off the chime and the visitor announcements
for a certain period of time. 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, however long I want
to take a nap.
I can prevent anyone from waking me up by just ringing on my door. If you look here
on this page, on the right-hand side, you see three dots and three lines. Tap there,
you'll see it says, "Sound, sound, sound, sound, sound." If I click here, I can actually
filter.
I can filter it by the zone, by the sound, by the motion, person, unfamiliar face, familiar
face, doorbell ring, which is really useful because I'm looking into my past, and I don't
want to see everyone that I know coming.
I'd rather see all the people that I don't know. I can just click off of all of these,
except for unfamiliar face, and this will show me everyone who came to my home today
that I do not recognize. If I want to know when the kids arrive, for example, I would
do the opposite. I would just turn on familiar face, and it would tell me each time that
a familiar face came to my home.
Let's go ahead and turn all these back on so that I can stay apprised of everything
going on around my home. If I go into Settings, right here on the front door, in the upper
right-hand corner, you'll see that you have a lot of things that you can optimize, customize,
with your Nest Hello Video Doorbell, like turning the camera on and off, turning the
indoor chime on and off.
I can go to my Home Away, Home Assist. I can set up a schedule. I can set up notifications,
the types. Here, I have a zone one on for people and all other motion. If I wanted to
turn off the zone, I could do so. I turned off people and all of the motion. Let's go
to activity zones themselves.
Activity zones are useful. I've created the zone already, which is over the stairs. This
means any time someone comes over the stairs, I will be notified. Anything happening to
the left or the right, maybe the garbage truck comes by, or someone who lives next door to
me walks through the yard, I probably won't see it.
With this activity zone, I can be sure that anyone coming up the stairs will be visible.
Let's create a new zone. We're going to go all the way to the left side of the screen.
I know if someone comes over to the left side of my screen. Now, I've created the zone.
We have two different types of zones created, which can be useful for different reasons.
Maybe you don't pay as much attention, for example, to the activity zone on the left
side because it's not someone actually approaching your home, but you do want to make sure you're
paying attention to what goes on exactly in front of your home in activity zone one with
people coming up your staircase.
I can also go look at familiar faces, which are all the people that come to my particular
home. Pretty useful. Visitor announcements is another element. This actually allows your
Google Assistant-enabled speakers and display to announce when a visitor rings your Nest
Hello.
What's even cooler is that if they are a familiar face, it will even tell you who it is ringing
your doorbell.
Finally, I'm going to look in this section at the Nest Aware subscription service itself,
where it talks about the features, like familiar face alerts, five-day history, close ups,
activity zones, and sharing your particular clips.
Below that, you'll see you have your video options in terms of quality and bandwidth,
night vision, camera sharing, and device options, like status light, the duration of your chime,
how your microphone is either on or off, so you can listen or not listen to whoever's
there.
You can even change things like the spoken language. I, of course, have mine on English,
United States, but I can change it to Mexican Spanish, Spain Spanish. I could change it
to Quebecois French or French from France. There are a lot of options for those who want
to use the Nest app, and the language that they're the most comfortable with.
Overall, there's a lot of robust features to be found on the Nest Hello mobile application.
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Gabe: All right, we've come a long way with our Nest Hello Video Doorbell, but you want
to know, "Gabe, is this the right video doorbell for me?"
I'll say this. If you are looking for top quality high-definition video, the next level
of audio capacity, and artificial intelligence features that really bring your porch game
to the next level, then you want to look at the Nest Hello Video Doorbell.
However, if you're not looking to pay over $200 right off the top, along with, at least,
$5 a month from there forward just to access the premium features of this device, you want
to look somewhere else.
Overall, yes, the Nest Hello is really bringing everything that I've come to expect from a
video doorbell, but you're definitely going to be paying for it.
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Gabe: That concludes our look at the Nest Hello Video Doorbell. If you appreciated today's
video, give us a like. Hit that subscribe button. As always, this is Gabe at Security
Baron. Be secure.
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