Nest Cam IQ Outdoor Review - Review 2022

Nest continues to bolster its line of dwelling house security products with the new Nest Cam IQ Outdoor. Built to withstand the elements, this hefty domicile security photographic camera boasts several improvements over the Nest Cam Outdoor nosotros reviewed in 2022, including a more powerful image sensor, facial recognition, alerts that differentiate between people and other motion events, and enhanced sound. It also carries a much higher $349 cost forth with a subscription fee to unlock some features, and may require drilling a pigsty through the side of your house. If you can live without facial recognition, the Netgear Arlo Pro 2 is much easier to install and remains our top pick, only the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor is also worth because.

Design and Features

The Nest Cam IQ Outdoor ($269.00 at Amazon) looks like the Nest Cam Outdoor on steroids. Information technology measures 5.0 inches deep and iii.7 inches wide. The soft white enclosure has an IP66 weatherproof rating, which offers a loftier level of protection against h2o and dust particles, and is attached to a mounting arm that allows yous to tilt and swivel the camera for the optimal viewing angle. It tin can exist mounted on a wall or upside down on a soffit.

Different the Nest Cam Outdoor, which uses an outdoor power source, the IQ Outdoor'southward ability adapter is not weatherproof and must be plugged into an indoor ability outlet. Even so, the 25-pes power cable tin can withstand the elements and it's a apartment wire that tin can exist tucked away more easily than a round cablevision. But unless y'all have an opening such every bit an attic vent close to where yous'll be mounting the camera, you'll most likely take to drill a pigsty in the side of your house or soffit to road the power cable to an available AC outlet.

Nest Cam IQ Outdoor

The Nest Cam IQ Outdoor uses an 8-megapixel 4K sensor that delivers High Dynamic Range (HDR) video at 1080p, a major comeback over the iii-megapixel sensor used on the before model. It also boasts an improved 2-way sound arrangement with a more powerful speaker and a triple microphone assortment, and updated circuitry that supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

The camera contains an RGB light band that glows blue during setup and xanthous if in that location's a power or connectivity issue. It also has 4 infrared LEDs that provide upwardly to l feet of nighttime vision, a 130-degree field of view, motion and sound detection, and a 12X digital zoom. As with the Nest Cam IQ Indoor, the Outdoor model provides 24/7 streaming and is always recording, and offers motion tracking with automatic zooming that zeroes in on moving objects and follows them until they are out of the field of view.

Yous'll demand a Nest Aware subscription plan to brand utilise of many of the camera'southward features including 24/vii continuous recording, person alerts, familiar face up alerts, intelligent sound alerts, and the ability to create clips and time-lapses, configure activeness zones, and admission your video history. The $five per month/$50 per year Nest Enlightened plan gives yous access to five days of continuous video history and all of the above features, and the $10 per calendar month/$100 per year plan increases days of video history to x. For $xxx per month/$300 per year, you lot get access to 30 days of video history.

App

The Nest Cam IQ Outdoor uses the same Android and iOS mobile app and spider web-based app as other Nest devices including the Learning Thermostat, the Protect smoke alert, and all of the previous Nest Cam cameras. It opens to a home screen where you encounter a list of all installed Nest devices and their current status. Tap the camera name to open up a alive video screen with a list of Sightline activities beneath it. Sightline allows you lot to use swiping gestures to fast frontwards or rewind through recorded video to find a specific betoken in time. You tin then view the video from that time and create a clip to share or send to your phone'due south camera gyre. Turn your telephone sideways to view the video in full-screen (landscape) mode.

Nest Cam IQ Outdoor

At the lesser of the screen are buttons for viewing video history by appointment, a Filter button that lets you choose what types of events you'll see (Sound, Movement, Talking, Person, Familiar Face), a Talk push for 2-way sound, a New Clip push for saving and sharing a selected video, and a People push for identifying and calculation new people to the face database.

To access the photographic camera'due south settings, tap the gear icon in the upper right corner. Hither you can turn the camera on and off, enable Dwelling/Abroad Assist, which uses your phone'due south location services to arm or disarm the camera, create an automatic On/Off schedule, and configure button and e-mail notifications for people, all other motion, and sounds. Use the Familiar Faces settings to identify faces, give them a proper name, and add them to the database. Other settings let you to enable zoomed motility tracking, adjust video quality, share the camera with friends and family, configure Wi-Fi settings, and turn the microphone and audio recording on and off.

As with other Nest cameras, the IQ Outdoor interacts with other Nest products as well equally smart abode devices that support the Works With Nest initiative, including Philips Hue lighting, Chamberlain garage door openers, SkyBell video doorbells, August Abode locks and doorbells, and more than. Information technology also supports Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant phonation commands and will work with other devices that support If This Then That (IFTTT) applets.

Installation and Functioning

To install the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor you lot take to ready it up indoors first. If this is your start Nest device you'll have to download the app and create an business relationship. I opened the app, tapped the gear icon in the upper right corner of the home screen, and tapped Add Product. I was prompted to scan the QR lawmaking on the base of the camera and select a location. Popular selections include Backyard, Driveway, Front Yard, and Outside, or you can create a custom location. The app needed a few seconds to connect to the camera, but then stalled while it tried to connect to another Nest photographic camera, which was offline.

As information technology turns out, the setup process uses something chosen Nest Assist in which the app needs to connect to other installed Nest products in order to add the new device. Since the other devices in my Nest account were offline, I had to choose between deleting them, bringing them dorsum online, or creating a second home in the app in which to install the new camera. I chose to bring a photographic camera online and the app completed the installation immediately. In my instance, Nest Assist added an extra stride, but if you have another Nest device up and running, it'south a nice characteristic considering it grabs your Wi-Fi information from the previously installed device and quickly configures the new camera for you.

Nest Cam IQ Outdoor

Once the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor was added to my account and I verified that it was able to deliver live video, I unplugged information technology and installed it outside overlooking my backyard. I was able to road the power cable through an attic vent and plug the ability adapter into an outlet in my attic, thereby avoiding the need to drill a hole in my house.

The camera provided very crisp 1080p video with rich, evenly saturated colors and precipitous item in testing. There was no noticeable barrel distortion or flicker, and black-and-white night video showed first-class contrast and was well-lit to 40 feet. The facial recognition feature worked wonderfully, never failing to identify a familiar face and alerting me when an unfamiliar face entered the camera's field of view. Motion and sound detection also worked without neglect: The camera knew the difference between a person and other movement events such as my domestic dog and blowing leaves, and it also knew the deviation betwixt the sound of a dog barking and a person talking. I created an IFTTT applet to accept a Netgear Arlo Pro two camera tape a prune when the Nest Cam IQ detected a sound and it worked perfectly. My applet to plough on a D-Link Smart Switch when the camera detected motion also worked without issue.

Conclusions

Packed with features, the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor is one of the more versatile outdoor security cameras we've seen. Its facial recognition engine works equally advertised and it does an splendid job of differentiating between motion caused by people and other things like pets and objects. It'due south an excellent choice, especially if you've already invested in the Nest ecosystem and require a camera that will interact with your other smart devices.

Information technology's as well an expensive choice, and you'll have to spend fifty-fifty more money to take advantage of some of its features. Y'all'll too probably have to exercise some drilling to install it. The Netgear Arlo Pro 2 volition cost yous $100 more, but for that cost, you get two cameras. They're completely wireless and thus very easy to install, and you become seven days of free cloud-based video storage. The Arlo Pro two remains our Editors' Choice, only if you observe the Nest Cam IQ's features more appealing, you won't be disappointed.

Nest Cam IQ Outdoor Specs

Connectivity	Bluetooth, Wi-Fi
Integration	Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, IFTTT, Nest
Notifications	E-mail, Push
Field of View	130 degrees
Resolution	1080p
Storage	Cloud
Ii-Mode Audio	Yep
Mechanical Pan/Tilt	No
Night Vision	Yeah
Warning	No