Smart doorbells are now a common sight on doors around UK homes, and most of them appear to be Amazon Ring cameras. My parents-in-law have even been there for years, and techy aren’t. They are very popular because one thing makes a lot of sense. When someone rings the door they will send messages to your phone or tablet so you can see the camera to see who they are and communicate with them – whether you’re upstairs or on the other side of the world .
My problem with the Amazon Ring is simply that the sound of the doorbell bothers me so when it came time to get a video doorbell it made me look for another place. As its main competitor in the luxury home space, it’s no surprise that Google offers an equivalent – the Google Nest Hello. the RRP in the UK is quite high at £ 229 ($ 229 in the US) but is usually now available for £ 179.
The Nest Hello gets one above the ring instantly by getting a non-weird door chime sound. You can also change, which you cannot do in the Ring. A nice touch is a range of seasonal themes, for Halloween, Christmas, Hanukkah and Hogmanay. They are fun but inevitably cheesy; their children were running for cover when someone rang the doorbell that is against what I wanted.
Image quality is very good, with the camera delivering a resolution of 1,600 x 1,200 and in a sensible 4: 3 ratio so you can see high rather than wide; it’s best to see the person at the door – depending on how you put it up. It also automatically switches to night mode at dusk, making it easy to see what’s going on in lower light.
BENNY HAR-EVEN
The camera also records audio, and the range is good. In fact, I was able to hear what my people were saying when they were chatting outside my house. Note – walls now have ears …
Aware Nest
To get the most out of your Nest Hello you need to subscribe to the Nest Aware service. This is a disadvantage compared to cameras that just register to your own NAS driver, but if you want to do the hard work of a camera review it is, quite literally, the price you have to pay. .
Until recently Google used a charge per camera but earlier this year they moved to a scheme where one payment covers every Nest camera you have, thus making it more attractive to move to eco- Nest based system in your home. However, if you only have one camera it works out worse value, because on the older model you got access to 24/7 video recordings as standard – but to get that you have to pay for a higher level. For many Nest cameras though it is a better deal.
While you can watch your live camera at any time, once you are registered with Nest Aware for (£ 5 / $ 6 or £ 50 / $ 60 a year) your cameras will warn to “event history” over the past 30 days, allowing you to review key moments that trigger movement or sound. If you want to be able to move through your recordings 24/7 for the last 10 days, you need to raise £ 10 / $ 12 per month or £ 100 / $ 120 for Nest Aware Plus and it will show you event history also the last 60 days.
You may want to go for the Nest Aware Plus because scrolling through your video history is very easy, with a simple timeline approach – and you can do it both on your smartphone and in the web browser. Each minute is marked on the timeline as “Sound” or “Move”. The software has a “parcel alert” feature which can tell if there is a delivery left on your driveway, but that was not helpful to me as if someone were leaving a full view, they would be necessary to leave it on the street, so I turned it off.
You can set “Zones”, so you’ll only be warned about what’s in that area, and it’s also very easy to create a short cookie that you can send to someone, such as the Police if you must.
My favorite feature is that face recognition technology, which shows you all the faces that came up to the camera. You then name them as when they return the notification saying who is at the door – it works well. You can review who saw it regularly and help the camera identify them in case it has a problem.
Get it working
The Nest Hello uses Wi-Fi to connect to your network (no Ethernet connection) and must be connected to a power supply to operate (no battery option). Installation is not the easiest and certainly designed with the US in mind. It requires power transformers to work on UK electricity networks, although these are very easy to come by from the likes of Amazon or Screwfix.
Luckily, I had a capable friend to help me but if you don’t and you’re not helpful, you have to include the cost of a professional installation. Find “Nest Pro” in your search engine to find someone close to you.
I already had a bell wire running from the door through to a cupboard under the stairs where I could insert it. If you have a chime, the Nest can link to that, but it didn’t bother me to install one. they can use Google Nest Home Mini’s as doorbells – and let visitors know when the doorbell rings.
I also have a Nest Home Max downstairs and a Nest Home Hub upstairs in the bedroom, and because these have screens, they can show you who they are when the doorbell rings. The integration works well.
Once it is installed it is a matter of connecting it to your Wi-Fi, but I had a problem. Since acquiring Nest, Google has migrated from Nest account to Google accounts – however, the Nest ecosystem does not support G-Suite accounts, even though it is a paid Google service and as so I need to log in using a regular Gmail account. . Also, a bit confusing, it was set up through the Google Home app, but to use all your Nest results you have to use a separate Nest app.
The app lets you see all your cameras in one view and Nest Thermostat if you have one. You can have a live view of your cameras when you open the app, but I turned that off because it was faster to load.
Worth a look
Overall, then the Nest Hello proved to be a great addition to my home and one of the most useful “smart home” gadgets out there.
What was sweeping the copybook though was a constant problem. Often while launching the app, or watching the feed live, the message came, “There was a problem connecting to the Nest service. Please try again in a few minutes, ”he explains. Pushing back always lets me back in, but after months of use, across different iPhones, different routers and different ISPs the message still appears regularly.
BENNY HAR-EVEN
It’s kind of weird, being open, and not something you’d expect for a device that costs as much as Google Nest Hello. But, since recall always works, and it doesn’t happen, every time, it’s a temptation I learned to live with.
Either way Nest Hello is a good home security camera. The connection problem seems to be an issue with my home networks, so if you are confident that your Wi-Fi is up to date, and you are willing to deal with the installation, the Nest Hello deserves it consideration.