Nest Cam with Floodlight (wired) review

Our Verdict

The Nest Cam with Floodlight (wired) adds a bright dual floodlight to the already-excellent Nest Cam (battery).

For

• Excellent video quality
• Free tier is actually useful
• Thoughtful app experience
• On-device movement and facial recognition processing
• 5 GHz WiFi radio
• Bombardment fill-in
• Upward to 3 hours on-device storage if Internet goes out

Against

• Only compatible with Google Dwelling
• No expanded local storage choice
• Some on-device features subscription-locked

Tom's Guide Verdict

The Nest Cam with Floodlight (wired) adds a bright dual floodlight to the already-splendid Nest Cam (bombardment).

Pros

• +

  Excellent video quality

• +

  Gratis tier is actually useful

• +

  Thoughtful app experience

• +

  On-device motion and facial recognition processing

• +

  five GHz WiFi radio

• +

  Battery backup

• +

  Up to iii hours on-device storage if Internet goes out

Cons

• -

  Merely compatible with Google Home

• -

  No expanded local storage choice

• -

  Some on-device features subscription-locked

Nest Cam with Floodlight (Wired): Specs

Camera Size: 3.3 in Ten iii.3 in
Floodlight Size: six.5 in 50 x 12.4 in W 10 3.66 in H
Resolution: 1080p/30 fps
Aspect ratio: xvi:9
Field of view: 130° diagonal
Sensor: 1/2.8 inch, 2 MP
Night vision: Up to twenty ft, 6 850 nm infrared LEDs
Wi-Fi: 802.11b/thou/n (2.iv/5 GHz)
Conditions Resistance: IP54
Audio: Full-Duplex 2-way audio westward/noise counterfoil
Lighting: 2 4000K LED lights, 2400 lumens max, dimmable
Power: Wired westward/battery backup (camera simply) up to 7 months

Google has finally released some updates to its somewhat languishing Nest camera line, including the Nest Cam with Floodlight (wired), a wired take on the Nest Cam (battery), which we praised for its excellent video quality, better-than-average free plan, and pleasant blueprint. Happily, all of these things use to the Nest Cam with Floodlight, but with the added bonus of a dainty, vivid set of floodlights.

I came away from this Nest Cam with Floodlight review thoroughly impressed with Google's effort hither. Not merely is it one of the best outdoor security cameras, but it sets a new standard for cameras in its price range, and other photographic camera makers now take their work cutting out for them.

• Best outdoor security cameras
• Best home security cameras

Nest Cam with Floodlight (wired) Review: The Friendliest Camera

If the goal of smart habitation security cameras is to wait imposing and, well, surveillance-y, and so the electric current ingather of Nest Cams are failing miserably—these are just about the most cheerful, friendly-looking cameras on the marketplace right now, with nary a harsh detail to be constitute.

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

The outer casing is a soft-to-the-touch matte white plastic, and but near everywhere the surface turns is handled with a curve, rather than a corner, giving the camera an almost organic appearance. The large dual floodlights are 2400-lumen, 4000K LEDs behind frosted glass for nice, even lighting that'due south very bright without being harsh, and bathes a much larger surface area in clear light than nearly of the tiny LEDs on cameras similar the Arlo Pro 4 or the EufyCam 2C Pro.

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

The short stalks that connect them to the floodlight's torso allow yous to swivel the lights and point them all around, making for a far more versatile lighting situation than normally accompanies these smart home cameras. There is a large, 180-degree movement sensor on the bottom of the body.

(Prototype credit: Tom'south Guide)

The blunt stop of the torso has a concave divot in the middle where the Nest Cam attaches magnetically, and from the lesser of the barrel a pocket-size, white, magnetic accuse cable provides continuous power to the Nest Cam. The camera itself is literally the same camera nosotros reviewed before—shaped like a large coffee mug without a handle, its front end has a matte black surround that holds the microphone and status LED, with the camera'southward 1/ii.8-inch, two-megapixel lens in the centre.

Nest Cam with Floodlight (wired) Review: Installation

Installation will be the virtually intimidating part for most people, but if you take an existing floodlight and have ever inverse out a light switch or power outlet, you lot'll exist perfectly capable of installing this floodlight. Well-nigh of the tools needed are provided, merely I used an additional flathead screwdriver to remove the old screws on the previously-installed fixture.

(Epitome credit: Tom's Guide)

The Nest app gives a very easy-to-follow video for installing the photographic camera, and the blueprint of the mounting subclass, as well as the included S-claw for keeping the floodlight body aloft while I wired it up, fabricated this a very quick installation—in all, it took me perhaps 15 minutes of bodily work, and I'm typically slow at these things.

(Prototype credit: Tom'southward Guide)

The kit comes with one size of seafoam green wire basics, which are adept enough to fit the fourteen-judge Romex that's typical of virtually homes' bones wiring, but you may need to supply your own nuts for the larger 10-or-12-gauge that yous might observe on circuits shared with large appliances. And of course, the fact that the camera is wired is going to severely limit placement options; in my case, I would dearest to identify this camera somewhere else than the side of my garage, but doing and then would require cutting a hole in the garage's wall, every bit well as slicing upwardly conduit to install a new junction box, which would make installation apparently far more than involved, time-intensive, and plush, particularly if you don't already have the actress wiring, junction box, and tools simply lying effectually for the project. If y'all're looking for a security camera and floodlight that doesn't crave this wiring, check out our Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight review.

(Prototype credit: Tom's Guide)

Installation on the software side was characteristically easy, with the camera walking you through all of the steps, and addressing most of the key configurations during the process. Everything is done inside the Google Home app, and this part of the setup process only takes nigh 5 minutes.

Nest Cam with Floodlight (wired) Review: Nest Aware

Google'southward subscription plan is called Nest Enlightened, and right now, the Nest Cam with Floodlight comes with a 30 twenty-four hour period free trial of the Nest Aware basic plan, which is $6/month or $threescore/yr. That programme comes with xxx days of result-based video history, on-device facial recognition, Smoke/CO/glass breakage alarms, and e911, which allows yous to telephone call 911 via any compatible Google Assistant-based speaker or display. For $12/month or $120/yr, the Nest Aware Plus doubles event-based video history to threescore days and throws in continuous, 24/seven recording that's accessible for 10 days.

(Image credit: Google)

The facial recognition feature, as I said, is all on-device, which is a great feature for privacy and it means that notifications of familiar faces show up almost immediately, just it does mean that you lot will need to teach information technology all the faces you want it to recognize. Apple does a similar matter for HomeKit Secure Video, except where Google depends on you to build the library of faces, Apple tree uses data from your iCloud photo library, which is obviously more convenient, simply perhaps has privacy implications that might requite some pause.

In all, information technology'south not exactly the nearly thrilling list of features (except peradventure the continuous recording bit for $12/month), and I'1000 not a fan of the fact that the then-called "intelligent alerts" features—facial recognition and the fume/CO/glass breakage alarms—are all tucked behind a subscription, given that they're on-device features. That'south like buying a machine and not being allowed to use the stereo system without paying a monthly fee, and information technology's a trend I would honey to encounter the end of. But Google is not the worst offender when it comes to that (Arlo'southward cameras keep activity zones and person sensing/package detection locked in their Arlo Secure plans, for instance).

Google also isn't offer any sort of professional monitoring plan at the moment. On the plus side, both of the Nest Aware plans use to all the Nest cameras you ain, and so it only takes having two cameras to brand it competitive versus other camera makers' offerings.

I'll too give Google credit for their complimentary tier which, cameras with local storage aside, may be the all-time around. Where most free tiers for smart home security cameras corporeality to footling more than basic motility sensors with a livestream video attached, Google at least gives you 3 hours of recording history, then you're not missing events you're notified of. You too get person, animal, and vehicle recognition, though at that place is no package detection to be constitute here or on a paid program, which is odd, since Google's Nest Doorbell has had the characteristic since 2019. This makes the current lineup of Nest Cams legitimately useful, even without a subscription, which is markedly refreshing. To run across how Google compares with Arlo, Ring, and others, cheque out our guide to the best security camera storage plans.

Nest Cam with Floodlight (wired) Review: Video Quality

I can't stress this enough: the Nest Cam with floodlight has splendid video quality for a security camera, and it does so with a very modest, 2-megapixel lens capturing 1080p video at xxx frames/second. This shouldn't necessarily surprise, considering how well Google does with software processing on their phones' cameras, really, and it makes this one of the best-looking smart domicile cameras today from a video quality perspective. I exercise wish information technology had a wider field of view—the Arlo Pro 4, for example, boasts a 160-caste field of view—the 130-degree FOV here means a lower mount is going to leave more out of frame; although, every bit I'll cover shortly, you should mount this photographic camera pretty high up, anyway.

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(Paradigm credit: Tom'south Guide)

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(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

On detail, the Nest Cam with Floodlight is very sharp for a security camera, beating out nearly cameras I've used — I was able to get similar results with the 1080p Band Stick Up Cam (battery), simply merely when it was indoors with a stronger signal; otherwise, pinch artifacts were a lot more obvious, leading to a muddier, less-detailed image. Additionally, the Nest Cam with Floodlight showcases a rich HDR image with rich, warm color, as opposed to the sort of done-out color smart home security cameras tend to have.

(Epitome credit: Tom's Guide)

Night footage with only the IR LEDs on is expectedly less detailed, simply remains best-in-class, with very little trailing and good item even when the discipline is in motility.

(Image credit: Tom'due south Guide)

With no lighting, IR or floodlight, the camera at to the lowest degree notwithstanding had skilful color, and made use of plenty ambient light to make the raised print on my hat visible enough in the sample video, but I wouldn't rely on it any more than than I would on whatever other camera.

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

In the sample provided, what's visible is a picayune more than you lot can see with the naked middle, but that's in a lawn that's fairly well lit thanks to a neighboring apartment building's tall exterior lighting. Because of the brightness of the spotlights, I would hang this photographic camera at to the lowest degree ten feet up, as anything too close to the camera will be overexposed, making text illegible or faces unrecognizable.

(Prototype credit: Tom'southward Guide)

That said, the quality of videos recorded with the spotlight on arroyo daylight quality, with text on habiliment clear and legible — a cardinal necessity in the upshot of actual trespassing or suspension-ins.

Nest Cam with Floodlight (wired) Review: Audio

Some other area where the Nest Cam with Floodlight impresses is audio. Similar any good smart home security camera, the Nest supports 2-way sound, so the owner of the camera can concord a conversation with someone on the other finish using their smartphone. And information technology's total-duplex, too, so all you need do is tap the microphone push on the live view, and you'll be able to talk with the person until you're done, with no need to hold downwardly the button while you speak. The audio coming from the camera is clear and loud, allowing me to hear my partner talking through it quite a ways away, but what really surprised me was how proficient the microphone is on the photographic camera. While testing, you could actually understand what I was saying while whispering at 15 feet out. Communication was well-nigh-real-time, making property a conversation as natural as, well, holding a conversation through a security camera tin can be.

Nest Cam with Floodlight (wired) Review: Features

The Nest Cam with Floodlight isn't the well-nigh fully featured, but those it has are the right ones. As said before, without a subscription, you still get people, animal, and vehicle detection, with audio detection added if you lot have Nest Aware. You'll as well get recording zones—upwards to 4 per photographic camera—and each one has eight points of joint, so you won't just be drawing rectangles.

(Image credit: Google)

Where Google again impressed me was the amount of granularity involved in recording zones; yous tin can really set preferences for the kind of motion you lot'd like to record and/or exist notified about per zone. That is, y'all could have ane part of the video recording animals, one part recording people, one recording vehicles, i doing all three or some combination of them, and and then y'all can fix those same preferences for the expanse outside of the zones, making that expanse a sort of 5th action zone. I haven't personally seen this level of command for activity zones on whatever other camera, and it was a feature I didn't realize I wanted until I had information technology.

(Image credit: Google)

The Nest Cam also offers geofencing, merely information technology'southward an easy feature to miss, as Google never refers to it every bit such. Role of their so-called presence sensing feature, it uses your phone'southward location to determine whether you're domicile, allowing y'all to automate turning the cameras on or off, while information technology as well uses Nest Thermostats, Protects, Detects, and Guards to detect the presence of a person in your home, fifty-fifty if the camera doesn't see them. If you should cull not to activate this feature, y'all volition find it non under the camera's settings, just under the Google Home app settings.

(Prototype credit: Google)

By default, the camera too comes with a timeline feature, although I establish this to be too slow-loading, versus the recorded events listing you lot can quickly tap on at the lesser correct of the abode screen. From that list, you can tap "Become to history" to see all logged events and filter by device and type of event—some other excellent feature I would love to meet implemented on other systems. The fashion Google handles this entire part of the experience shows a great deal of consideration that puts to shame other manufacturers' efforts.

(Image credit: Google)

Considering the camera module itself has the same 6 Ah, three.65V lithium-ion battery as is used in the Nest Outdoor Cam, the Nest Cam with Floodlight has a built-in battery backup. In the consequence of a power outage, while you'll lose the floodlight office of the camera, the battery will go along powering the camera, with its six loftier-powered IR cameras. Google says the battery can terminal up to 7 months in low-traffic areas, or 1.5 months in high-traffic areas, and so if for some reason you ever lost power to the floodlight body longer-term, yous wouldn't necessarily have to supersede the camera entirely. The Nest cam tin can even store a limited amount of footage on-device, so you can keep recording for upwards to 3 hours, or until power is restored—whichever comes first.

Among the missing features I would similar to come across included are blacked-out privacy areas similar those found on Ring, Arlo, and Eufy'southward cameras, then yous can make sure your camera is only recording your property, and then yous're not inadvertently invading neighbors' privacy. I'd also really similar to meet local storage, and since this is a wired camera, the add-on of 24/7 recording to NAS would exist a very welcome inclusion, though I'm not holding my breath for those last two.

Nest Cam with Floodlight (wired) Review: App

Direction of Google's Nest Cams is handled in the Google Home app, equally I mentioned above, and it's a fairly intuitive experience. You can access the camera and its footage iii dissimilar ways: past tapping through the device categories at the top of the home screen, by scrolling to a specific camera and tapping, or by borer the events tab at the bottom right, which shows a list of all events. The first option was my preferred way to manage individual cameras, as I didn't need to scroll downward to discover the camera; tapping the "Cameras" button gives you a screen with large tiles for each photographic camera, and each tile has a button for turning off the camera, if you need to practise that, or you tin can tap the camera to get to its folio.

(Image credit: Google)

Once in a given camera'due south page, you're presented with a microphone push with iii tabs beneath information technology, labeled History, Live, and More, with an options gear icon at the peak right. There's besides a 3 dots bill of fare to bring you to the events history screen (which is labeled "total history"), which I call up should be its own tab at the bottom, rather than being two taps deep. The History tab shows you a video in the center, with a timeline underneath that you can scrub to go to specific times and between events. In this view, for any reason, events have a tendency to load slowly, so I generally avoided looking at videos using this method.

(Image credit: Google)

The options screen for each camera lets you toggle video history for a given device, set move sensitivity and event recording length (thirty seconds is the default just yous can become upwardly to 3 minutes per outcome), and accommodate settings for video quality (Max or High), nighttime vision, and, surprisingly, status low-cal brightness. Here y'all volition too be able to rotate the video 180°, in the outcome that you are unable to hang the photographic camera upright. Information technology's also where you'll set your Action zones, toggle and manage facial recognition, choose the sort of events you'd like to appear in video history, set the camera's speaker book and toggle the microphone, suit floodlight behavior, and more.

Camera apps can be confusing, but I feel like Google has made an like shooting fish in a barrel app experience that most people will be able to grasp. It's non necessarily filled with a ton of bells and whistles, but it's piece of cake to navigate and configure, and that counts for a lot.

Nest Cam with Floodlight (wired) Review: Smart Home Compatibility

Unfortunately, the Nest Cam is just compatible with Google'southward platform, for the fourth dimension being, making this maybe the biggest drawback of the system. While I think it would be a pipe dream to hope for HomeKit Secure Video, it doesn't seem like adding IFTTT or fifty-fifty Amazon support should be out of the realm of possibility, and would broaden its entreatment to anyone who uses those platforms primarily.

Nest Cam with Floodlight (wired) review: Competition

The Nest Cam with Floodlight enters a market with ii major competitors: The Ring Floodlight Cam ($249)  and the Arlo Pro three Floodlight ($180), both of which are less expensive.

Each of the three offers a very bright floodlight, with Google's being the brightest at 2400 lumens and the Arlo and Ring cameras at 2000 lumens (although if you choose to keep the Arlo plugged in, it can put out 3000 lumens). For those who similar a warmer tone, the Ring Floodlight'due south 3000K LEDs may be preferable. Also, whereas both Google and Band have dual, independently adjustable lights, the Arlo features a single, broad LED that gives it a bacteria, more unique appearance.

The Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight offers the easiest and most versatile installation, as its bombardment-powered, all-in-1 design means all you need to practice is attach the camera to a wall or ceiling of your choice. It adds the inconvenience of having to recharge the camera periodically, which may not be ideal in some climates, just many people will prefer not to fuss with their home's wiring, or may not be able to easily wire a photographic camera in their preferred location.

The Nest Cam with Floodlight also has the narrowest field of view of the three, only offering a 130-degree diagonal FOV, versus 160 degrees for Arlo and roughly the aforementioned for Ring. The Arlo's higher resolution of 2K too enables a unique feature: digital pan and zoom, which helps give yous a better view of subjects.

If you just need one camera, both Ring and Arlo offer $3/month plans that roughly equal Google's lowest-priced option. Ring's offering even covers 60 days of video history versus Arlo and Google'due south xxx days on the lowest tier. All the same, when you lot add two or more cameras, the balance tips toward Google, as their plan has no camera limit, where the other ii will need to pay more than per photographic camera or switch to the $ten/calendar month options.

Arlo offers the nearly compatibility of the three besides, every bit it supports, to varying degrees, Google Banana, Alexa, HomeKit, SmartThings, and IFTTT. By comparison, the Band Floodlight lacks compatibility with Google Assistant and HomeKit, and Nest compatibility is limited to Google Banana.

Nest Cam with Floodlight (wired) Review: Verdict

The Nest Cam with Floodlight has the best video quality I've seen on a smart home camera, and its gratis tier, while lacking local storage, is non the hobbled experience and then many other smart dwelling house cameras end up being if you're not willing to pay upwards. In improver, information technology's a very squeamish-looking camera, with great audio, a fantastic microphone, and an intuitive app experience, with lots of little details that make it pleasant to use. The floodlights themselves offer pleasant lighting over a broad swath of expanse, and I like how easy they are to point them where I desire them to cast low-cal.

Subscribers may be disappointed they aren't getting more for their money, though Nest Aware is bolstered a picayune by facial recognition — and Google should merely accept a page from Apple'south volume and add storage for those who subscribe to Google One.

Still, for the price, the Nest Cam with Floodlight offers the best outdoor security camera experience in its class. Information technology has excellent video quality, born bombardment backup, local storage, and an intuitive app. It as well offers features for free that with other security cameras crave a subscription, which definitely counts for something.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/nest-cam-with-floodlight

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