Nest Cam Outdoor: everything you need to know about this 1080p home security camera in a box

published 14 July 2016

Nest already rules thesmart thermostatand smoke alarm worlds, and its Nest Cam is one of the best of themany, many home monitoring, web-connected cams available. We recently got a look at the new Nest Cam Outdoor.

Announced officially today, it's set for release 'before the end of 2016' in the UK (it's available for pre-order now in North America). UK pricing is TBC but in the States it's $199. That is the same cost as the indoor cam, and the intention is to price along the same lines over here.

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The cam shoots 1080p…

With a 130 degree field of vision and eight LED night vision. Footage is then beamed to the web, with alerts sent to your phone when something comes into view, so you can check that it's a cat, and not a man in a stripey jumper with a bag marked 'Swag'.

Subscribers to Nest Aware (£8 per month plus £4 for each additional cam, no contract required) can also now receive 'person alerts', with AI used to discern whether what's in the cam's eye view is a human as opposed to a moving shadow, or a Ford Fiesta.

Nest Aware subscribers also get 30-day video history and can set 'activity zones' within the camera's field of vision - so for instance, attention can be focussed on your shed, with the road behind it ignored.

It lets you communicate wirelessly

Although power is via a cable, the web connection is wireless. This is more convenient than having to run ethernet to it as well, but could potentially present connectivity problems; we'll see when review units come in.

A mic and speakers mean you can talk to delivery persons or tell shifty looking characters to jog on. It's a very full-featured device.

Magnetic attraction

Nest Cam Outdoor attaches via a screw-in, magnetic mount. As in, you can screw it to a wooden or brick wall, or attach it magnetically to anything metal, and then the camera itself clamps to the mount via further magnets. We can vouch for the fact that the magnets used are extremely strong.

Security, boxed

Nest is calling this "the first security camera made for consumers". As such, it's providing everything you need except installation (although it does have a network of installers who'll be happy to help, for a fee).

So as well as the camera you get 7.5 metres of toughened cable, secure wall clips and a junction box. All that's needed is a secure outdoor plug socket, or installation through the wall into your house.

There's a new app, too

In other Nest news, its app is getting a spruce up, with release to the public by the end of July 2016.

The main new features are a larger camera view on the home screen and the ability to view two cameras simultaneously in landscape view, or four on a tablet. You can then scroll down to see further Nest Cams and Nest Cam Outdoorses.

Nest devices are also now organised by room within the app.

Apple Watch support, too

And finally, as Trevor McDonald used to say, the Android Wear wearable Nest app now has competition from a Watch OS one, with notifications, thermostat and home/away geofencing controls all right there on your wrist, if you're still persisting with your Apple Watch.

Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years.

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."