What is Nest Cam IQ Outdoor?
With its 4K sensor, the Nest Cam IQ turned out to be the best quality indoor security camera I have ever tested. Now, with Nest Cam IQ Outdoor, the same quality and features come to a device to be used outdoors.
With face recognition, which allows the camera to determine enemy friends, a more economical Nest Aware subscription, and flexible installation options, this is the ultimate security camera for controlling the exterior of your home.
Nest Cam IQ Outdoor: design and construction
The current Nest Cam Outdoor, which is still available, was one of the easiest to install, using a magnetic mount and a plug that could be connected to an outside power outlet . The drawback was that the camera was easy to steal and could be easily unplugged.
With the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor, the installation has changed. While getting it in its place is more complicated, this model is much more difficult to manipulate or steal. As such, you may need a professional installation, whose details can be found on the Nest website.
There is no external power supply option with this device, and Cam IQ Outdoor must have its power cord through with a hole in the wall and connected to an indoor power outlet.
There are two options. The cable can be placed through the back of the bracket, which is screwed to the wall, or can be partially passed to the outside and through the wall. The first one is safer, since it leaves nothing visible from the outside.
Related: The best security cameras
You get a whopping 7.5m USB-C cable to run, so you should not find it too hard to get to a point of power within your house. It is important to plug the cable in the correct direction, since one end is locked in its position in the camera; There is a switch to release it, if you need to unplug it.
Once the camera is hooked into the holder, it can only be removed with the hexagonal wrench in the box. This L-shaped tool is placed behind the camera, with a simple twist that releases the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor mount.
While it would not be impossible for a thief to remove the camera, it is certainly more complicated and difficult to do, in addition, you would catch them on the spot. In terms of physical security, Nest Cam IQ Outdoor is a big step forward from the previous model.
Nest has also enhanced the outdoor credentials of this model. It has an IP66 rating for complete waterproofing, and will operate at temperatures between -45C and + 45C.
Once again, Nest has done a great job with the appearance of this camera. Its clean white finish and sculpted body look fantastic and, more importantly, it stands out enough to attract the attention of a thief, but not so much as to ruin the look of your home. It helps that the camera is bigger this time, measures 128 x 93 x 93 mm; it weighs 568g.
There are also many adjustments in the offer: you can align it and get the field of vision you want. It is useful to have a 130-degree wide-angle lens to easily cover the space of a front or back garden.
Nest Cam IQ Outdoor – Features
Making the camera work means turning to the Nest app, which is used to control all Nest devices, from the thermostat to any other camera you have. The camera can be connected to 802.11ac networks, which is useful, since you will need this network speed to deliver the best quality video.
The sensor of the 4K camera is the same as that used in the Nest Cam IQ. As with that product, the footage is recorded at 1080p, but the higher resolution of the sensor has several advantages. First, the video recorded at 4K and then sampled to the bottom is better than the footage filmed natively at 1080p. Secondly, a 4K sensor offers the same range of intelligent features that came first to Nest Cam IQ.
The most important thing is to get a 4x zoom while maintaining the 1080p resolution, and there is an additional digital zoom for a combined total of 12x. With Supersight technology, the camera can zoom in and follow any captured area of interest, providing a close-up view.
A six-core processor powers the camera, allowing it to process a lot locally. This means that the camera can detect the difference between the general movement and a person.
As with all Nest cameras, you can set a recording schedule or have Cam IQ Outdoor turn on or off automatically when you exit using Start / Detect presence of distance help.
Frustratingly, the use of a schedule and home / absent assistance can cause unpredictable results. For example, having a schedule to turn on your camera during the day will be canceled when you get home. It should be that when you leave, the camera is always on, regardless of the programming. If you return home, you should only turn off the camera if the time is also set to turn off the camera.
A built-in microphone and speaker allow you to talk to anyone you can see in the feeder. The speaker is, according to Nest, 14 times more powerful in this model. Certainly, it is very strong and clear and will attract attention.
A matrix of three microphones is found inside the camera. Built-in noise cancellation makes the recordings cleaner, but you can also enable sound detection from the application. With this activated, the camera can warn you about dogs barking, people talking or just other loud noises.
Nest Cam IQ Outdoor – Performance and Nest Aware
As with previous Nest cameras, Cam IQ Outdoor relies heavily on a Nest Aware subscription to unlock the most powerful features.
Fortunately, with the release of this camera, Nest has created a new basic plan that offers five days of video history for £ 4 per month or £ 10 per year. You can still subscribe to previous plans, which offer a 10-day history for £ 8 a month (£ 80 a year) or 30 days of history for £ 24 a month (£ 240 a year).
For most, the five-day history of home users will be more than enough, and Nest Aware has a price similar to most of the competition. Nest becomes more expensive only when you add more cameras, and each additional model incurs a new fee: £ 3 a month £ 30 a year for five days of history; £ 4 a month £ 40 a year for 10 days of history; and £ 12 a month £ 120 a year for 30 days of history.
It is important to note that Nest Aware offers you transmission in 24 hours, with all the material saved in the cloud. If something happens on your property, you do not have to wait for a motion clip to activate, since you will have the footage.
It's fair to say that Nest Aware is still the best cloud storage system for security cameras. The Nest application is excellent, which allows you to move without problems through alerts. The thumbnails in the timeline allow you to see the triggered events, and you can jump to a particular day using the calendar view. Alternatively, there is an event view mode, where you can scroll and jump to activated events.
You can download and save events and even clips, where you can set the start and end times, preserving any evidence you might have.
With an outdoor camera, in particular, it is important to be able to reduce false alerts, which is where activity zones come into play. These allow you to configure the areas of the image that you monitor (or ignore).
Nest Aware will automatically detect doors, drawing a zone around them, but you can add your own. Interestingly, this has to be done in the web application, since the mobile application is not yet compatible with the creation of the Activity Zone.
Now, Nest Aware allows you to configure the notifications that you get by area: none, movement, person or movement detection and person. That's great, since you can reduce false alerts and control key areas for people, ignoring all other movements.
If you have everything turned on, then you should not bother with too many alerts, since the movement detection is excellent. Small movements, like the foliage that blows in the wind, do not activate the camera, avoiding the bombardment of alerts.
Face recognition is as bright here as in the Nest Cam IQ. No wonder, since Nest uses Google's incredible face detection algorithms, which feed Google Photos. As the camera detects new faces, you can tell the camera if you recognize them or not, naming what you do.
All faces recognized by your Nest Cam IQ are transferred, so you can start Nest Cam IQ Outdoor with a built-in library of friends and family.
The detection is excellent during the day, with the camera showing a high success rate; He was able to identify me with and without glasses. At night, the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor did not always pick me up, which triggered an alert from & # 39; person & # 39; default
There is a possibility that the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor thinks that a person is two different people. Now, you can join faces as a person to solve the problem.
Notifications change depending on whether the Cam IQ has detected a person you know or a stranger. There is no way to tell the camera to just warn you about the people you recognize, which is a feature I would like to see in a future update.
Super vision is still as impressive here as it is in Nest Cam's IQ. The automatic follow-up and the following are great, allowing you to see the suspicious activity clearer. Intelligently, you end up with two 1080p video streams: the tracking version and the full, unformatted version. The change between the two views is simple too.
Audio alerts also worked well. The general external noises did not activate anything, but the camera soon took a conversation outside.
Nest Cam IQ Outdoor – Video Quality
Video quality is excellent and by far the best quality exterior camera than me & # 39; revised Many cameras obscure the details, especially when it comes to a lot of foliage, but the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor offers super sharp images, directly in the image. Every detail is easy to detect, and I found fantastic details on people's faces. You will have no problem identifying the people in the images here.
Go to Live View, and the zoom is impressive, with a true 4x zoom using the camera's sensor. If you want to see what is happening in the foreground, then this is the camera for you.
At night, the camera is turned on with 850nm IR LED. These provide a clear image and a good distance of light: far enough to catch people before they get too close to your home. The details are a little softer, but impressive, with easy-to-distinguish faces.
Nest Cam IQ Outdoor – IFTTT, works with Nest, Google Home and Amazon Alexa
IFTTT support allows you to activate other devices when your camera detects movement or listens to a sound. Having the ability to create your own rules in this way is clear.
Works with Nest (Philips Hue, LIFX and TP-Link bulbs) have also been improved with compatible lights. By using automatic rules, Nest can automatically turn on the selected lights after a short delay when suspicious activity is detected. It gives the impression that someone is at home, as if you were investigating the action; Your lights go off after 15 minutes. By default, the rule only works after being absent for more than 24 hours.
Support for Google Home and Amazon Alexa are integrated, allowing you to display images from your camera on your Chromecast, Echo Show or Echo Spot. You can not do much more than this, but any of the options can be a good way to see what is happening.
Why buy the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor?
Security cameras are a good defense against thieves, acting as a deterrent first, and then as a means to provide evidence. Nothing works as well as the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor. For the first, the orderly body attracts attention and warns the thieves; for the latter, you get the highest quality video from any outdoor security camera available.
It used to be at this point that the big price warning from Nest Aware could come back to head. This is no longer the case: the subscription of £ 4 a month is very competitive, especially if it is considered to include a constant recording. No other system offers the same level of recording or functions.
That said, the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor is not cheap for the device itself. The old Nest Cam Outdoor is considerably cheaper, and the Netatmo Presence also costs less with local recording and has more granular motion detection alerts (can detect the difference between people, animals and cars).
Still, if you want the best quality video with the best service in the cloud, the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor is the camera that must be purchased.
Related: Best security cameras
Verdict
A super awesome outdoor security camera, with the best cloud storage service and the best video quality.