Nest cam. NC5100US Hello Video Doorbell, 3 MP, IPX4-Rated for Water Resistance, 160° Diagonal.

 Nest Hello door bell/cameraPhysical installation of the aluminum cased device is straightforward. a) attach the base plate at your doorbell location, b) attach the two wires from your existing doorbell to the Nest unit and c) snap the Nest unit into the base plate. If your door has side windows, and maybe even otherwise, after step “a”, mount the included 13 degree aluminum “wedge” or the (optional) adjustable mount over the base plate to angle the camera more toward the middle.Your doorbell’s transformer output must be 16 to 24 volts DC – test using an accurate multi-meter – Home Depot, Lowes, & Amazon sell transformers if needed. Doorbell can be electric or electronic. Follow the Nest Hello installation instructions step by step, but before you start the install, sign up for a (free) Nest Hello account from the Nest dot com web site.You’ll need a reliable Wi-Fi signal with a download speed of at least 2.5 Mbps. Google “speed test” and run the test standing outside where the Nest device will be installed. The test should be on a Wi-Fi connected device and not one connected to your router via an Ethernet cable, which would typically be faster. (For reference, our Comcast home Wi-Fi is 30 Mbps download and 5.6 Mbps upload.) If the signal is weak at the install location, consider buying a Wi-Fi extender or a better router. Note that if there is a power outage to your router, Nest Hello will be off-line – unless your modem & router are on a battery backup (UPS).To get full value out of this camera, you absolutely need the Nest Aware service; otherwise, no video will be stored in “the cloud” for you to access. This is where you pay Nest $50 per year to store the last 5 days (120 hours) of 24/7 videos from your door camera on their server. (Bundled offers are available.) Or, 10 days for $100/year or 30 days storage for $300/year.The majority of customers (reviews on other sites) seem happy with the video quality, but I’d call it simply OK, even at Nest’s “quality” setting. My inexpensive Chinese-made 5-year old dash cam makes comparable videos for example. A Nest video can be digitally zoomed using a sliding bar, but that only results in a blurry close up. However, it does an impressive job at night, where video has detail via infrared technology that your eyes couldn’t possibly make out due to low light. Just OK video quality isn’t a serious issue on a smart phone’s small screen, but is obvious when viewing on a desktop or other large screen. If you ever need to share a clip with the police, you’ll wish it was higher quality. Car tags for example have to be really close to make them out.When talking to a visitor at the door via a smart phone, a visitor can easily hear us. But, we can barely hear the person speaking, even with phone volume at max. (Nest operates in duplex, so you can both be talking.) Door answering is most viable if you are in a quiet environment. In a noisy restaurant or out in public, not so much – particularly if you’re hard of hearing. A Nest advertisement shows a homeowner conversing easily with would-be thieves as they approach the front door, which is sales hype. It’s nowhere near that seamless; there will typically be frustrating delays when conversing. Based on customer reviews, the other brands are no better in this regard. Perhaps with future models that ideal will be attainable.Nest Hello can also be operated on a laptop, desktop, or tablet, but there it’s not duplex. You have to click on a microphone icon to talk; then click “done” to turn the microphone off to hear the person at the door. Then, repeat that cycle over and over. When I tried it, there was a multi-second delay each time the mode changed, making a desktop useless for door answering. However, a large screen is best for reviewing what the camera sees now or has recorded.Whether talking to a visitor via your smart phone, PC, laptop, etc., YOUR voice is not part of the Nest audio/visual recording. That is, on replay, you only hear the visitor talking, but not what YOU said. One star off for this defect.It’s easy to save “clips” of your 24/7 recorded video. Each can be 15 seconds to an hour long (if saved via desktop), for a total of 3 hours of clips per account. You can share any clip via a hyper-link, on Facebook, Twitter, your own social network, or create an MP3 video file to save on your computer or phone, text, or email. If these options (icons) don’t appear when viewing clips, try a different browser.When viewing saved clips via the Nest application, there are two action icons: delete and done (for when you’re through watching), which are adjacent to each other – if you mistakenly hit delete, that clip is instantly gone. It doesn’t ask, e.g., “are you sure?”, like most software. Nest should fix this. Before you accidently delete a wanted clip, save it to a file or post on social media.The first day after installation, my smart phone received 1,432 “alerts” – for people or sensed motion. Yikes. However, after defining a “zone” that excluded the public street and choosing alerts for motions or people in that zone (and people only out of that zone), there are virtually no false alerts. The Nest software, for the most part, is quite sophisticated, with only minor flaws. You can access your video/account from smart phones, desktops, etc., concurrently.After Nest Hello records a video of a person, you can tell the system if this person is known to you, and tell Nest his/her name. The face recognition software actually works. Next time they come to the door, Nest alerts you that “Tommy is at the front door”.We enjoy having the Nest Hello doorbell/camera. I like the 24/7 camera and video recordings (via Nest Aware), being able to check who’s at the front door or in our driveway from literally anywhere, remotely answering the door, reviewing recorded videos to see who that was at the door; what utility workers were doing; and to watch the UPS guy toss my latest electronic gizmo onto the concrete porch, etc.

This product is awesome. I love everything about it. My husband researched this product and many others . He researched above and beyond and he couldn’t decide. So one day I decided for him and so far we have no regrets. My husband installed it while I was at church. I am speechless. We have been using it for under a month and we love it. We are still learning about it. We are enjoying it especially me. I don’t have a peephole because I have a fancy door with tinted glass pane in the middle, so having this doorbell is especially helpful to us. We suggested it to our tenant but I understand to a certain degree why they would not jump to the idea of getting one because it is a little pricey. In my opinion it is well worth it. It is everything I would like in a doorbell and it has exceeded my expectations. Thank you very much.

Cloud recording is expensive no free option or local storage.

We installed two of these at our house. We have one for our front door and one for our side door. I had to upgrade our doorbell transformer from our ancient unit to a 24volt unit ($30) in order to have enough powered to run both doorbells. They run flawlessly now save for one issue hence the three stars. The doorbell on our front door is exposed to direct sunlight throughout the afternoon...so much so that the unit overheated and locked up. Fortunately, all I had to do was reset the circuit breaker and the unit restarted. This is simply not acceptable. One of the primary reasons for the camera is so that I can monitor activity while I'm away. If Nest can't make the units more resistant to overheating, they atleast need to build in the ability to reset the device remotely. These devices areo cheap and this kind of flaw is simply not acceptable.Also the fact that Nest has no integration with Apple Home Kit is super lame. If I had it to do over I would have gone with the Ring Pro.