Google's new Nest Cam and Doorbell can run on batteries
Google is refreshing its Nest lineup with three new products and a refresh for the wired indoor Nest Cam. Among the newcomers are Google’s first battery-powered Nest Cam and Doorbell, as a recent leak indicated. You’ll be able to install them just about anywhere around your home, and connect them to a wired power source, if you prefer.
The battery life depends on how many recorded events the devices detect and factors like the temperature and settings. Google says the Doorbell’s battery will run for up to six months on a single charge, while the Nest Cam can run for up to seven months before you need to juice it up. You can recharge the Doorbell over USB-C, and the camera using an included USB-A adaptor.
The Doorbell captures video at a resolution of 989 x 1280 pixels at up to 30 frames per second. It has a 6x digital zoom, 145-degree diagonal field of view and can see up to 10 feet away in the dark thanks to its night vision capabilities. It also has a 3:4 field of view so you can get a full head-to-toe look at whoever shows up at your door.
As for the Nest Cam, it can capture video in 1080p at up to 30 fps. The device has a 130-degree diagonal field of view, 6x digital zoom and night vision that can see objects up to 20 feet away. It has an IP54 rating for weather resistance too. As well as mounting it outside, you can set up the camera indoors.
Both products, which are designed with recycled materials, offer up to three hours of event video history. You can increase that with a Nest Aware subscription. Like some other Nest cameras, the battery-powered Nest Cam offers around-the-clock video recording with a Nest Aware Plus subscription, though you'll need to hook it up to a continuous power source.
In addition, the company is offering a Nest Cam with an integrated floodlight for the first time. One thing that all four devices have in common is that they're designed to only alert you to important events. They all have on-device machine learning capabilities to recognize and alert you to people, animals and vehicles. The Doorbell can detect and recognize packages placed as close as eight inches to your door. Google says don't need a subscription to use these features and that it trained the machine learning model on 40 million images to account for a variety of environments and lighting conditions.
The devices also offer a familiar-face detection feature for Nest Aware subscribers. You can decide who they're able to recognize.
Meanwhile, the on-device processing capabilities allow the Doorbell and cameras to store up to an hour of video events locally if the power or Wi-Fi go out. That's approximately a week's worth of events depending on activity levels around your home. When everything's up and running again, they'll upload those events to the cloud.
As you’d expect, the cameras and Doorbell are work with the Google Home app and other Google products, such as Nest displays. Google also says Nest camera data is encrypted.
The battery-powered Nest Cam and Doorbell (which each cost $180) are available to pre-order today in 18 countries, including the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand. They'll be available in those countries on August 24th, in Japan two days later and in Mexico later this year. The Nest Cam with floodlight ($280) and second-gen wired Nest Cam ($100) are coming soon.