Google’s Super Smart New Nest Cameras Raise the Bar—and the Price

The new Nest Cam Indoor and Nest Cam Outdoor boast the easiest setup experience I’ve encountered. Simply plug them in (the Nest Cam Indoor comes with a 10-foot USB-C cable, the Nest Cam Outdoor has an 18-foot weatherproof cable), scan the QR code sticker on the front of each camera with the Google Home app, connect to Wi-Fi, and you’re up and running in no time (both support 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz bands). The elegant magnetic mount for the Nest Cam Outdoor needs a couple of screws, while my Nest Cam Indoor is perched neatly on a shelf.

While Google has lagged behind competitors for years with its 1080p cameras, support for HDR and a high frame rate helped keep the last-gen Nest cams relevant. That said, the jump to a 2560 x 1400 resolution with a wider 152-degree diagonal field of view is a clear and immediate upgrade. This resolution bump also enables 6X digital zoom, so the Nest Cams can serve up notifications that zoom in on the subject of each animated alert. These notifications show a few frames of each event, making it far easier to decide whether you need to tap through and watch the full video. You can also zoom in on the live feed and crop the view to stay focused on a specific area, like a garden gate or path.

Both cameras detect more activity and alert more accurately and swiftly than their predecessors. The range seems to be better, too. For example, my indoor camera faces a side door, and it can pick up people across the street and zoom in on them as they walk by. I don’t necessarily want it to do that, but the reach is impressive. It’s more successful with the outdoor camera, as only the newer model picks up on me entering the back door of the distant garage compared to the prior generation. The outdoor camera is also far faster to alert and upload accessible video than the old battery-powered model (this is generally true for cameras).

The cameras get six hours of cloud video history at no extra cost (up from three for the previous generation), but that’s your allotment without an expensive subscription. On that note, Google has killed off Nest Aware in favor of the two-tier Google Home Premium: Standard is $10 per month or $100 per year, and Advanced is $20 per month or $200 per year.

Google’s Home Premium subscriptions include everything you got with Nest Aware (30 days of video history, Familiar Faces, and garage door, package, smoke and CO alarm detection) and Nest Aware Plus (60 days of video history or 10 days of 24/7), but Standard also includes Gemini Live on compatible smart speakers and displays, and the option to create automations by typing what you want in the Home app. This last feature works well if you have a bunch of smart home devices set up in Google Home, and you can tell it to do things like “turn on the lights at sunset” or “have the side door camera trigger the outside lights.” It’s far easier than using the old script editor.

Advanced AI

The cream of the AI goodies requires the Advanced subscription. This adds descriptive notifications, so instead of “person detected,” you get messages like “person walks up stairs” or “cat is on the table” instead of “animal detected.” The searchable video history using the Ask Home search bar is genuinely handy; you can ask questions like “who opened the back door last night?” or “Did FedEx deliver a package today?” and jump straight to the event. You also get daily summaries with Home Brief, giving you an often weirdly comical digest of highlights from the day.