Google Nest Doorbell (Wired) Review: Smart Doorbell From A Smart Brand

How The Nest Doorbell Improved Our Home Security

The main reason that we tested the Nest Doorbell (wired) was that we wanted to see how much value it could add to our home security, and we weren’t disappointed.

Doorbell Ring Notifications

The very essence of a video doorbell is to tell you when someone rings your doorbell, and that’s exactly what the Nest Doorbell did for us. It sent us email and phone notifications that included snapshots of the event viewable for up to three hours.

We found those snapshots time-saving as they eliminated the need for us to check our Nest Doorbell’s feed every time it alerted us. And when we got our Nest Aware subscription, those snapshot alerts became video clip alerts. Even better!

Person Alerts

More than just motion and ring alerts, the Nest Doorbell is contextually aware. It knows that a speeding vehicle is probably not a concern for us, but a person walking towards our door definitely is. That’s why it sent us only notifications whenever it saw a moving person. As our house faces a busy street, that’s a feature we certainly appreciated.

Additionally, person detection allows the Nest Doorbell to zoom in on every guest’s face. That made it easier for us to determine whether the guest is someone we know or a total stranger, even without watching the whole clip.

Even More Intelligent Alerts with Nest Aware

That’s not even the best part yet. Halfway through our testing, we bought a subscription to Nest Aware. Nest Aware is Nest’s cloud subscription service that, besides giving users cloud storage for videos, gives users access to familiar face alerts, package tracking, and activity zones.

• Familiar face alerts: Familiar face alerts improved on person alerts by telling us whether the person in question was someone we knew or a stranger. We taught the Nest Doorbell by naming the faces it captured, so the next time it saw a person it recognized, the Nest App told us who it was. It was nice for the app to alert us when our plant sitter came, but also, we were glad to know when an unfamiliar face was on our property.
• Package tracking: The package tracking feature let us know if the Nest Doorbell saw a package left or picked up from our stoop. That way, we’d know to respond immediately in case of package theft. Video doorbells have been known for some time as effective porch pirate deterrents,1 but the package tracking feature made us feel even safer from package thieves.
• Activity zones: Finally, activity zones let us limit the detection range of the Nest Doorbell so that we’d only get alerts if the movement occurred in an area we deemed important. For instance, we drew a zone that covered our front lawn, if you can call the patch of concrete in front of our brownstone that. As a result, we stopped receiving alerts about joggers passing by on the street ahead. But when a kid entered our area to get his basketball, we got an alert.
• Custom notifications: The point of all those smart features available through Nest Aware was to improve the quality of notifications, and that’s exactly what we got by customizing our alerts. For example, when we know everyone is out, we set the Nest Doorbell to alert us only when an unfamiliar face is seen. That way, it wouldn’t bother us when one of us comes home. These insightful and highly customizable notifications freed us up to do other more important things than always being on our phone to check notifications.

Live Streaming

The Nest Doorbell served as our virtual peephole, allowing us to live stream its footage whenever we received alerts. The Nest App provided that feature for us while we were away, and conveniently, we were able to start the stream by clicking on ring notifications. Two-way talk and on-demand recording were also available.

Whenever we’re home, we found it much more convenient to use our Nest Hub Max smart display, also a product of Google Nest. With a simple voice command (e.g. “Hey Google, show me my front door”), the Nest Doorbell streamed live footage to our Nest Hub Max.

One thing to note here is that the camera on the Nest Doorbell itself goes into standby mode when there’s no activity, so there may be a slight delay between you giving the command and the livestream appearing on your screen. If you have a good connection, the delay shouldn’t be more than five seconds.

That said, the Nest Doorbell uses H.264 encoding, which compresses live streams efficiently to limit their bandwidth usage and makes the streams more fluid, even when you’re on mobile data. That means less lag and a better viewing experience overall.

Two-Way Audio

The Nest Doorbell also functions as an intercom. As mentioned above, two-way talk is available while live-streaming. By default, you can hear the sounds coming from the doorbell on your Nest app, but by pressing the mic button on the app, you’ll be able to stream your voice from your phone to the doorbell for a two-way communication.

We used the feature all the time to speak to guests at our door when we weren’t home, like that one time a total stranger rang our doorbell. He turned out to be a door-to-door salesman, so we just told him that we were busy. But if he were a thief, we’re confident that simply talking to us would have made him go away.

The police warn us frequently about knock-knock burglars, burglars who knock or ring the doorbell to check if anyone’s home before breaking in.2 Usually, they go away if someone answers, so having the Nest Doorbell’s two-way audio boosted our home security.

Pre-Recorded Quick Response

Being the busy people that we are, we didn’t always have the time to answer our door, even using the Nest Doorbell. In such cases, the Nest App’s pre-recorded quick responses proved useful. We made recordings of what we would normally say to people ringing our Nest Video Doorbell, like, “Please leave our packages behind those plants,” or, “Our spare keys are under the mat,” and simply played them whenever appropriate.

For instance, we were busy at work when our parents came to visit, so using the recorded response, we let them know where our keys were so they could let themselves in.

About The Nest Doorbell’s Video Quality

One of the things that stood out while we were testing the Nest Doorbell was its video quality. There was something about it that made the footage easier on the eyes, and it wasn’t just the resolution. In fact, the impressive video quality of the Nest Doorbell was a team effort from a number of video-related features.

HD Video Quality

The resolution, a.k.a. the number of pixels present in each frame plays a vital role in the video quality of a camera. The resolution of the Nest Doorbell was 960 x 1280; that’s 960 pixels horizontally and 1280 pixels vertically. It’s not the highest resolution on video doorbells, but it’s balanced and it provides a good 3:4 aspect ratio.

Of course, we were more interested in the end result, which happened to be the high-definition video that was crystal clear even when we zoomed in up to six times. Living in New York City, we have a lot to look at, so the clear zoomed-in clips were helpful in identifying people approaching our stoop or looking at our house from the street.

Wide-Angle Field of View

In addition, the 145-degree diagonal field of view contributed to the stellar video quality of the Nest Doorbell. It covered our entire front stoop and then some, but it didn’t have that distorted fisheye effect that most wide-angle cameras do.

High Dynamic Range

The High Dynamic Range or HDR was another video-related feature that we really appreciated. Basically, the HDR helped the Nest Doorbell adapt to outdoor lighting, which made its videos seem more life-like. As a result, we saw the faces of our guests clearly even when our outdoor lights were on at night or when the sun was shining directly on our stoop during the day. Otherwise, we’d see a lot of shadows and overexposure, as you find in typical outdoor footage.

Infrared Night Vision

We don’t leave our stoop light on all night, and as soon as we turned it off, the infrared LED lights built into the Nest Doorbell turned on. The 850nm infrared LED light, which is invisible to the human eye, was more than sufficient to illuminate our front yard area and part of the street. If someone were to approach our front stoop in the middle of the night, the Nest Doorbell would’ve recorded them despite it being pitch-black outside.

The Nest Doorbell In Action

After reading about the features of the Nest Doorbell, we thought you might want to see what it can do with your own eyes. Watch our video below if you want to see the Nest Hello in action, but note that Nest no longer sells Nest Secure, their security system.

We tested out Nest’s latest video doorbell, which is battery-powered. Watch our video review to see it in action.

Smart Platform Integrations

The Nest Doorbell worked incredibly well on its own, but smart platform integrations made it all the more useful. Those integrations are available on both the original Doorbell and the newer wire-free version.

The Nest Doorbell worked primarily with other Nest and Google products, including Nest cameras and smart speakers with the Google Assistant built-in like the Google Nest Mini. In addition, it worked with the Nest Secure security system, which has been discontinued.

The Google Assistant integration was interesting as it allowed us to ask the Nest Doorbell to start a live stream on our Nest Hub Max or Chromecast. Our Nest Hub Max also functioned as a chime, playing a sound whenever someone pressed our doorbell at our front door and even announcing who was at the door whenever our Nest Doorbell saw a familiar face.

Although Google and Amazon are tight rivals, the Nest Doorbell also worked with Alexa. However, it worked only with Alexa devices with a screen, like our Fire TV and Amazon Echo Show.

The integration was also limited. Using voice commands, we could stream only live videos. In short, the Nest Doorbell is clearly better for those in the Google ecosystem over Amazon.

Nest Aware: Cloud Storage For All Nest Cameras

When it came to recording videos, we were a bit disappointed that the Nest Doorbell didn’t have a local storage option or any free cloud storage, much like all of the Nest cameras. We have heard, though, that the new wire-free version of the doorbell comes with three free hours. For now, we were glad that Nest launched revamped Nest Aware pricing that is far more affordable and practical as compared to the old pricing. Here are the options:

In case you’re wondering, the new Nest Aware subscription covered all our Nest cameras and Google smart home devices. That’s a huge improvement compared to the old pricing that only covered one device per plan.

Now, between the Nest Aware and the Nest Aware Plus, we preferred the latter as it included a 10-day continuously recorded video history in addition to the 60-day event history. We took comfort in knowing that on the off chance that our Nest Doorbell failed to notice and record an important event, we would’ve had the continuously recorded history to fall back on. We viewed the 10-day rolling video history via the Nest App’s Timeline feature.

Of course, uploading videos to the cloud 24/7 could put a strain on your bandwidth, so if your internet service provider imposes a data cap, the $6 per month Nest Aware might be a better choice. It records only event clips, so it has a lighter bandwidth usage.

In addition, the new wire-free Doorbell doesn’t allow continuous recording because it relies on a battery for power. We discussed Nest’s pricing for the Nest Doorbell and Nest Aware in detail on our Nest doorbell pricing page, so be sure to check that out as well.

The Nest App: One App To Control Them All

We used the Nest App to control and access our Nest Doorbell. It has a stellar 4.7 stars rating on the Apple App store and 4.2 stars rating on the Google Play store. That wasn’t surprising, considering how easy it was to use the app and the number of features and customizations it offered.

The app provided a way for us to check our video doorbell, receive notifications, customize the settings, review recorded clips and rolling videos, and more. In addition, it worked in the background to improve our experience. For instance, the Home/Away Assist feature triggered our Nest Doorbell to arm and disarm its motion sensor based on our phones’ GPS location. It turned off the sensor whenever we were home and turned it on as soon as we left the premises.

Overall, we liked the app’s user interface. It could be a tad confusing for new users because it offers so many features, but with enough practice, it’s pretty easy to use.

Is The Nest Doorbell The Right Doorbell For You?

That’s quite a lot to take in, so we prepared a list of things to consider if you’re looking into getting a Nest Doorbell.

Overall, we think the Nest Doorbell is a truly high-end video doorbell. The hardware itself was impressive, with its superb camera and stylish design. On top of that, it offered a compelling set of smart features, like person alerts, facial recognition, and activity zones.

And with the new Nest Aware subscription, it’s now a lot more practical to add cloud storage to the Nest Video Doorbell and other Nest cameras. Sure, the Nest Doorbell is one of the more expensive video doorbells you can buy, plus it requires a monthly fee if you want access to its full features, but in our expert opinion, the Nest Doorbell is well worth it.