Home security video cams have been around for many years, but the current digital type is a lot easier to set up and use. This is the smartest one yet and it’s designed as a pleasant-looking home equipment that shouldn’t be hidden away. A couple of infra-red LEDs help it see in the dark, while three microphones pick up sound and a speaker lets you
shout at thieves. It’s all fueled via USB Type-C from a provided mains adapter.
The Nest Cam IQ shoots very sharp 1080p video, which is even much better than
the original Nest Cam in good light, and about on a par in the dark. Its 130-degree field of view should suggest you can place it to cover an whole room or open-plan area. That’s just as well, because at nearly 300 quid for one camera you won’t want to be buying many.
The IQ brings face recognition. A big part of how these cameras work is figuring
out when something suspicious is going on, so they can alert you and begin recording. The IQ not just understands that something moving around is a person,but whether it’s someone you’ve earlier identified as trusted. There is an option to ignore movement and faces when your smartphone is detected at home, because you’re probably at home
with it. You can also activate recording manually at any time from anywhere using Nest’s application, and sit back and watch a live feed.
The catch is that recording to the cloud uses a lot of bandwidth on your broadband
– Nest Cam IQ estimates 150 to 300GB a month,based on quality and how often it gets triggered – and demands a Nest Aware subscription. That expenses £8 a month to keep the previous 10 days of recordings,or £23 for 30 days. There’s no option to avoid this by recording to your PERSONAL COMPUTER, for instance. Even though being able to monitor your house over the net is comforting,we think this is too costly.
Nest Cam IQ SPECIFICATIONS
1080p camera with mic, speaker and motion
detection • Requires broadband internet connection
and Nest Aware subscription for some features •
Requires Android 4.1 or iOS 9 or higher device or
computer with Windows 7 or OS X 10.9 or later •
124x24x74mm (HxWxD)
photo:nest cam