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As with the Cam Indoor, the Outdoor version has a microphone and speaker so that you can speak to anyone outside. It could be handy for talking to couriers or for warning off a would-be thief. A great IFTTT channel lets you integrate the camera with other smart devices – turning on lights when the camera detects movement, for example. Performance and Nest Aware To get the camera working, you have to use the supplied app to connect it to your Wi-Fi network (802.11n, 2.4GHz only). Nest has one app for all of its devices, which is handy, as you can use the same app for the outdoor camera, the Nest Cam Indoor, and the Nest Thermostat. I found it painless to get my camera online and connected to my Wi-Fi, using the live preview the app offers to ensure that I was capturing the right parts of my garden. Installation is now via the Google Home app, rather than the old Nest app. This is a clear sign that Google tends to remove the Nest app, as only older products, such as the still-available Nest Cam Outdoor, will use this. Although it isn't cheap, the Arlo Go 2 earns our Editors’ Choice award for its easy wire-free installation, excellent 1080p video quality, and ability to connect from just about anywhere using either a cellular or Wi-Fi radio. A premium price means premium features including support for voice commands, lots of third-party integrations, intelligent alerts, a built-in spotlight, and color night vision. Who It’s For At night, the camera turns on its IR sensor. This has good range, lighting up my entire garden, although the resulting footage is a lot softer, removing some more detail from the image. I’d say that footage is on a par with that shot from Ring’s cameras, but Arlo’s 2K cameras (the Pro 3 and Pro 4) shoot better video and I’ve not seen a camera come close to that of the Arlo Ultra.
Video footage is captured at a resolution of 1920 x 1080. The camera uses a 130-degree (diagonal) field of view, which is good enough for outside use: I could get most of my garden in with this; you can get cameras with wider fields of view if you want to capture more. Testing the Nest Cam (outdoor or indoor, battery) out, I found that its footage was pretty good but not class-leading. During the day, video has clear signs of compression, filtering out the detail on my t-shirt, for example, and the video is quite clearly sharpened. However, there’s enough detail left to spot individuals and the image is well exposed, even when facing direct sunlight. Camera is weather-resistant. Some features, including mobile notifications, remote control, video streaming and video recording, require working Internet and Wi-Fi. The closest competition is the Netatmo Presence, which can tell the difference (mostly) between people, animals and cars. It’s more expensive than the Nest Cam Outdoor, but it has no monthly subscription cost, integrating for free with Dropbox or an FTP server. The downside is that Netatmo’s camera is harder to install, and the overall experience isn’t quite as neat. Verdict
Arlo Go 2 LTE/Wi-Fi Camera
If you’re running the camera on battery power, Google recommends that you don’t turn on all-motion recording, as this can reduce battery life. However, you can use any magnetic mount: outside, I had the old Nest Cam Outdoor, so just repurposed that mount instead, although Google has said that the smaller mount here may not be able to take the weight, so use the provided one instead.
Savings claim based on purchasing each of the items included with the bundle separately at their total current selling price. At night when it gets dark, the camera switches to IR mode. It’s not fooled into switching modes by a torch being shone at it, either, so you know that the Nest Cam Outdoor will record reliably. I was impressed by the IR light, which clearly illuminated my 40ft garden, all the way to the shed at the bottom. With cameras, such as the Arlo Pro 3, you can use geolocation and a schedule, and you can adjust mode using SmartThings or IFTTT. Both Ring and Arlo have more powerful control, which can be important. After all, nobody really wants to record lots of footage of themselves.
Cameras that capture 4K (Ultra HD) or 2K video are also available, but you need a strong network connection to stream such high-res video without choppiness or lag, plus lots of room to store recordings; that last requirement may add significantly to the cost for cloud storage fees. You can use this level of detection to control exactly how the camera works. First, you can set which events you get notifications for, say only getting alerted when a person is spotted. Secondly, you can control which events the camera records for. Cleverly, if your Wi-Fi goes down or power is cut to your camera, the Nest Cam (outdoor or indoor, battery) can record up to three hours of video on battery power, uploading the results when the connection is restored. That makes this camera more reliable than the cloud-only competition. You can manually turn the camera on and off using the Google Home app. If you want to automate it, then you need to enable the Home/Away routines in the app, which can use your phone (and those of other people in your household) to detect who’s at home to change mode automatically. You can also schedule the camera to turn on and off. I’ve got mine configured to record from roughly when it gets dark, until 9am in the morning. Nest’s scheduling is a little confusing to use at first, as the app displays bars that you naturally want to touch and slide but can’t. This is a minor complaint, though, and once your schedule is set correctly, you’re unlikely to need to touch this setting.
Even better, the Nest Cam (outdoor or indoor, battery) lets you draw activity zones, to only monitor the part of the image that you’re interested in. For each zone, you can then choose which events you want to record and which you want to be notified for. For example, you could record people and animals in one zone, getting alerts for people only, and then record people only in another zone. Nest Aware also turns on Familiar face detection, or facial recognition to me and you. This lets the camera spot and recognise people that you know. You can create profiles for each person, so you can be told who the camera has spotted. This information is shared between all cameras, including the doorbell and is still a unique feature that the competition doesn’t have. With this, you can choose to have your camera turn on and off automatically, or you can choose to only get notifications when you’re away from home. It’s a good tool but not as comprehensive as the competition. With Ring, if you have the Ring Alarm, you can adjust cameras based on the mode of the alarm: different settings for whether the alarm is set to on, at home or turned off.Monitoring the outside of your house makes a lot of sense – especially if there’s been a spate of break-ins in your area. The difficulty is that outdoor cameras have traditionally been a bit of a pain to set up and configure. The Nest Cam Outdoor hopes to change that, thanks to painless installation, smart monitoring and a design that makes the camera actually look good when it’s installed. Design and Build Nest includes everything you need to install its outdoor camera, from the screws and wall plugs that fix the magnetic base, to the cable clips that secure the heavy-duty USB cable. The camera itself is held securely in place by the magnet, but with nothing else to keep it there other than the cable, a desirable gadget like this could itself become a target for thieves. Install well out of reach is our advice.
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