the Nest Cam IQ Indoor is one of the premier smart home cameras on the market today
and with the $300 price tag you have to wonder is it worth it so let's jump into
a deep review of the Nest Cam IQ Indoor and by the end of this video you're going to
know whether or not you want to head down this path with Nest and their
top-line camera let's start out with some specifications on the Nest Cam IQ Indoor
now there is a 4k sensor on this camera but it records video at 1080p and 30
frames a second now it's recording in h.264 which is your standard High
Definition capability but you can lower and raise the quality of video being
sent to the cloud there's no local storage so more on that in a bit but you
can change the quality from 720p all the way up to 1080p at 30 frames a second
the sensor is quite large here on this camera and you can tell just from the
glass on the front of this device that it is quite large it gives you a hundred
and thirty degree field of recording basically so you're able to see quite
far out it's giving you a very wide shot and basically I can't tell you enough
good things about the quality of recording that comes out of this camera
to be honest as a youtuber I've looked at this and I've thought boy maybe I
should be using this instead of my GoPro that I have here on the side of the
table so you know that should tell you a lot in terms of the video quality and
the ability to digitally zoom while that doesn't help you you know necessarily in
terms of quality it does help you to see additional things in your video so all
of that comes down to a fantastic video quality one of the biggest features here
is the facial recognition or what they call familiar faces with the Nest Cam IQ Indoor
it will recognize people in your home so it recognizes when it sees a face
and then it shows up in your application whenever you go into the Nest
application that it's actually recognize someone and over time you build a
library of people and you can merge people together as it sees the same face
multiple times you can actually merge that together now what that leaves is
the ability for the Nest Cam IQ Indoor to tell you whether or not you know the person
in your home there is a problem with this and I'll get to that in a minute
at night the Nest Cam IQ Indoor has an incredible ability to use its IR LED and
give you true night vision now what I mean by this is twenty to thirty feet
and the entire scene that the camera can see at the point will be lit up very
similarly to what you see during the day the only difference is really going to
be its black and white so that's kind of what it triggers over to in night vision
or night mode and you will see black and white now the difference between this
camera and some of the other cameras that I've worked with that have suppose
a night vision is the IR LED being used here is bright enough and pushed out
enough in the range of the camera to actually show you the entire field that
it's looking at or the entire scene that it's looking at lots of other cameras
will just have a brighter spot in the middle sometimes over bright spot in the
middle and it will get darker as it goes out into the the edges of the scene in
terms of audio this camera is actually very good at audio and you wouldn't
expect that from a camera it does have a speaker on the back and it does have a 3
a 3 series of microphones on it so it is capable and because it has the Google
Assistant on board it is capable of talking to you not just as two-way
communication which it can do as well but also as a smart home assistant so
now what I'll tell you is it is not capable right off the bat of you know
playing music and it's not capable of a lot of the smart home functions I'll get
to that in a minute but it is a capable speaker and the two-way communication is
as good as in as I've ever seen or worked with here so
you know what you see with lots of smart home cameras is a bad echo that goes on
whenever you're speaking or whenever someone speaking to you I have not had
that experience with the Nest Cam IQ Indoor so it is high high quality and that's
actually some software that they built into it that as you're speaking that is
not picked up and sent back to you so very high quality audio on this device
in general now in terms of that Google assistant on board because that is a big
feature and it clearly separates this product from any other product really on
the market it has a smart home voice assistant on board now the Google
assistant is capable of doing things like making calendar entries but what
you're not going to find are those kind of audio heavy features working on the
Google Assistant so it's kind of a stripped down version of the Google
assistant overall you don't have the ability to play music you don't have the
ability to get news you're not going to be using it for those kinds of things
anyways because the speaker is not big enough but what you can do with it
things like calendars and smart home control so you can actually ask whatever
it seemed to show up on something like a Google Home Hub I have a Lenovo smart
display here or any of the smart displays or a Google chromecast if you
have one of those in your home as well so the ability to control smart lights
and all the products that you have in the Google home app and that integration
that goes with it in terms of the physical device you know in general the
Nest Cam IQ Indoor is a pleasing device to look at in terms of smart home devices now it
is 327 grams so it's a little heavier than you're going to find in something
like out WyzeCam or some of the smaller smart home cameras on the market you
know Arlo Q's are a lot smaller as well so in general it's a heavier camera but
in terms of mounting hardware you get all the mounting hardware you could need
to stick it on a wall you get a 10-foot cable and the mounting hardware all of
the details around how you can mount it and let me give me some
examples of that the mounting plate that fits on it is going to absorb some
vibration from things around your house keep this a very very steady camera
that's just because it has a very soft base or the very bottom of that mounting
plate is very soft so it keeps vibration out of the camera that's very important
when we're talking about high quality video another couple of things with that
ten-foot cable this is relatively strong I'll say it's relatively strong and
rigid the ability for you to actually plug in the USB see adapter the power
adapter into the back of this camera it actually is a recessed connection point
so as you make that connection it is physically deep into the device and the
power cord is basically never going to fall out it's a secure strong connection
so you're not going to find your power cable sitting on the floor and another
thing in terms of actually mounting this device you can actually mount it upside
down and when you do that you are capable of flipping the image in the
application so they're giving you lots of these detailed things within the
physical properties of this device that really set it apart from other smart
home cameras one thing Nest did despite maybe not selling this everywhere in the
world they really made the power adapter and this whole system international
ready and what I mean by that is that's a fifty to sixty Hertz 50 or 60 Hertz
power adapter that you have in this device it's 110 to 240 volt capable so
all you'll need is an adapter to change the plug style basically in your
Nest Cam IQ Indoor and its international ready in terms of wireless capabilities this is
quite an interesting device it is dual band in terms of the Wi-Fi signal so
it's capable of two point four or five gigahertz and on the five gigahertz side
it actually has the AC wireless protocol so that's 802 . 11th AC which is up
until very recently the fastest and protocol out there for Wi-Fi
communication now on top of that it also has low-power bluetooth available to it
so you know that's a big differential from other smart home cameras as well
and all of this is encrypted with 128-bit AES encryption so very secure
and very good wireless capabilities we've already talked about this a little
bit but the integration with the Google home application is becoming deeper and
deeper and you know now you can directly connect to these cameras within the
Google home application you can actually see the feed live as you as you go there
obviously with devices like this you can show the feed and chromecast you can
show the feed from your camera so over time the integration will get deeper and
deeper and it's already pretty good so now that we've talked about the
specifications let's move down the list here let's talk about some of the other
details of this product as far as cameras go clearly the Nest Cam IQ Indoor is
one of the top on the market if not the top on the market you could probably say
the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor, the IQ version of that is a little bit better since
it's in night vision goes fifty feet but other than that this cameras pretty much
tops in the smart home market now where I start to have some issues with this
product and where the review takes a bit of a turn is in terms of cost so you
know there's three issues basically that I have with the Nest Cam IQ Indoor that will
affect your decision to make a purchase of this product the first being it is a
$300 u.s. smart home camera and with that in mind I expect to get everything
I need that is obviously the most expensive camera that I can think of
there's some that come close and yeah there's probably some that that go above
it in certain instances but ultimately this is one of the most expensive smart
home devices you can buy today and so I expect to get everything
with it now that brings me to my second point in order to enable a number of
features including the facial recognition which we talked about zones
of control so basically zones that you want to blur block out from motion
detection or you want to have different zones of motion detection to see people
at different spots you need you basically to do a number of these
functions including recording anything on this camera you need what's called
Nest Aware and Nest Aware is a subscription service that is at a
minimum fifty dollars a year for you to go ahead and be able to bring any video
to Nest cloud Nest servers and get all of those other functions and
capabilities that I talked about now when you think about all of that
you're now spending in the first year three hundred and fifty dollars at a
minimum and the prices go up from there so that $50 subscription is for five
days of video being stored on Nest servers now you can go with a ten or a
thirty day subscription and it goes basically up accordingly so five is 50
and 30 is 300 or you can go on a monthly basis for $30 a month but that ends up
being more expensive so if you want five day recording this is suddenly a $350
Nest Cam IQ Indoor and will continue to grow in cost over the years that brings me to my
third point or my third real issue with the Nest Cam IQ Indoor now basically with this
being so high quality and I told you you know your lowest quality setting was
720p so that means that with it being an entirely cloud-based camera you need to
upload all of that data so if you have a Nest Aware subscription and we've kind
of already talked that that's really important to get most of the features
that you want with this camera then you will be uploading through your router
through your wireless system at you will be uploading a 100 gigs as a
minimum for the video at 720p and no matter what Nest Aware subscription you
have so that's at a minimum and it goes all the way up to 400 gigabytes per
month of space you have to have for one Nest Cam IQ Indoor so if you've got a lot of
these you better have quite the data plan for your home internet in you
better be capable of your home internet handling that much traffic across it so
that's a lot of data and I would prefer a local storage option from Nest to be
honest so how do you go about making a purchasing decision here on the Nest Cam
IQ if money is no object and it is for some people hey go buy this camera it is
unbelievable you will love every second of it get a
Nest Aware subscription and go forward and enjoy it and pair it with a
Google Home Hub and you will be happy no matter what now beyond that if money
becomes an object then I think there are some other lower cost alternatives and
you know when you consider you're paying this $300 here you can go and buy a less
expensive camera and still have it integrate with say a Google Home Hub or
a Chromecast all those devices you can get a Google Assistant on board those
devices as well so you know in general I'd say the cost point here or the price
point here doesn't necessarily match up for a lot of people that are just
looking to build the average smart home but if you're a business I will tell you
that this is the camera I would want in my business especially with the facial
recognition capabilities and that Nest Aware logging capabilities this is what
I want and I would be sure that I would have very good footage of anybody who
entered my place of business so I think that sums it up pretty well here for the
Nest Cam IQ Indoor overall love the device the price in that subscription model
really starts to hit home I think for a lot of people but overall like I said
amazing camera so thanks again for watching everyone we'll see you next
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