Nest Hello video doorbell hands on: this is Nest's most stylish and useful home security camera to date

This smart video doorbell is both a security camera and a way to manage deliveries and guests… including the unwanted variety

Nest Hello
Duncan Bell
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published
in News

Taking a leaf out of 2016 T3 Award winner Ring (recently purchased by Amazon), Nest Hello is a smart doorbell with an HD video camera, that will let you know when people approach your door, and let you communicate with them wherever you are, whether that's the garden, or miles away.

A typically sleek and attractive product from the brand who pioneered smart thermostats, Nest Hello is designed to be fitted in place of a standard door bell, and needs to be connected to an old-fashioned, not-so-sleek-and-attractive doorbell chime and transformer. A Quiet Time mode lets you turn off your chime while still receiving notifications, however.

We had a brief play with Hello a few weeks ago and under controlled conditions, connectivity was rapid and lag-free, and operation as effortless as you'd wish from a doorbell.

As well as  the standard ding-dong sound, notifications of visitors – whether that's guests, delivery people or burly men in stripey jumpers bearing bags marked 'swag'  – are sent to your phone. You can then have a conversation via Nest's HD Talk and Listen or choose from a short list of preset replies, to be delivered by a satnav-style voice on your behalf. Alerts can also be received on Google Home speakers. 

With an HD camera built in, Nest Hello also shows you your visitors, and can act as a 24/7 security camera. Its 2K HDR image sensor has a 4:3 aspect ratio and 160° field of view – so "you can see your visitors head to toe when they ring the bell." IR LEDs provide night vision.

As ever with Nest there are some neat additional touches, including a motion sensing light ring that plainly shows your guests where the button is to actually ring the doorbell. 

There's video streaming so you can check what’s happening at the front door from your mobile device at any time, although more usefully, Person Alerts notify you when someone is there. Out of the box there's a 3-hour video history to peruse.

Add a Nest Aware subscription and you'll get cloud video storage, face recognition technology so you know if it’s a friend or stranger at the door and a choice of 5-, 10- or 30-day video history to browse as you see fit, like the ultimate high-tech curtain twitcher.

Nest Hello is available to order from today for £229 or £329 with Nest Pro installation. Nest Aware costs from £4 per month or £40 per year with a 5-day video history, up to £24 per month/£240 per year with a 30-day cloud backup. 

This handy online widget should give you an idea if Pro installation will be required.

Duncan Bell
Duncan Bell

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."

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