ANIU-181121-1 Hello Video Doorbell HD Streaming Smart Two Way Talk WiFi Wired NC5100US

 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.

I purchased and installed the Ring 2 video doorbell on my front door. My son purchased and I installed the Nest video doorbell on his front door. Both have been in use for almost a year so it seems this is a valid period to see and compare the advantages/disadvantages of the two systems.Ring: this door bell was easy to install (much easier than the Nest) and worked well right out of the box. It draws its power from the door chime wires that were present when I took off the old button. Overall, the picture quality is good, but the color and sharpness are not as good as the Nest. What I like best about this system is the separate door ringer I could install remotely form the main door chime. We have a 4800 sq ft house and it is difficult to hear the door chime when you are upstairs. By installing this remote chime, problem eliminated. I also like how it handles alert history...by putting a brief video on file marked with date and time so you can find it and view when you want. This makes it easier to find a video from the past. I purchased the Ring cloud storage so these videos are available and retrievable any time I wish. I needed to install this doorbell at an angle due to how my front door is framed and there were a lot of aftermarket products that allowed me to do just that. What I do not like about this product is actually fairly frequently the “live” view is not available, when it senses movement it can take some period of time before you can see it, and it’s false identification of movement. I have set the detection range to minimum and it still detects a lot of cars going by and all trucks. My house sits roughly in the center of a 1/2 acre lot, so the front door is not near the street.Nest: this was a little difficult to install as I had to take the door chime assembly apart to install a module in the door chime itself. The video color and sharpness was very good (better than the ring) and I am able to monitor my son’s front door from my house. What I like best about the Nest is how it is live all of the time and you can see little oblong objects showing on the screen to indicate the unit has picked up movement in its range. What is extra nice is it trains to know faces and bodies so it will tell you if the person it sees is familiar or not. It rarely has false alerts and can sense the difference between a person approaching your front door, a car driving by or the wind blowing the tree around (yes, it has let me know it has seen the tree moving, lol). It does not send alerts for cars passing by. The system rarely goes down or gives false alerts on movement. The message that gets broadcast will say it has spotted an “unfamiliar person” or maybe “mom”, “dad”, or whoever you have told them the person is. The only drawback I have seen in this system is it will sometimes go off line when someone bumps the hub unit that is plugged into the wall and cause it to lose power.So in summary, both systems are quality units, delivering a clear picture in day or night. The Ring is easier to install, but the nest is much less likely to go offline and it is far superior at detecting human movement vs random street movement. I plan on replacing my Ring with a Nest for those reasons.