I recently picked up the new Nest Cam IQ, which touts a better microphone, 4K HDR Video, face recognition and better wifi connectivity, along with other features.

Initial Impressions:

• The facial recognition stuff is awesome. It seemed to learn pretty quick.
• The video quality is fantastic!
• I love how the video alerts and quick playback functions zoom right to the area of interest, while maintaining the full view if needed (see below)
• The microphone is definitely louder than the old Nest cams
• The IR lights seem to make the night video much brighter
• The circular power adapter is bigger than the old little bricks and can make connections a bit tight depending where you are plugging in

Integrations

Before I lose anyone on this post, I want to talk about the neat integrations that Nest has! For example, my PetNet smart cat feeder can take a snapshot of my Nest cameras at meal time when it dispenses food. My Lifx lights can turn on when the cameras detect motion. I can use IFTTT to do a lot of really cool things! Be sure if you’re a current Nest owner, you look these up, or comment if you want more info!

 

 

Night Video

I’ve been really impressed with the night video. The IR seems to be much more powerful on this vs the first Nest generation.

 

 

Zoom View

The view will auto shift to the area of interest, while still maintaining the full view.. Here, my cat came into frame and the camera zoomed into him. The notifications you get on your phone/watch etc will mimic this as well, and you’ll get a zoomed in photo. The one complicating thing here is if something else happens at same time on other side of frame, the camera just picks one, so you have to go to the full view and look at the other spot, but sometimes it likes to lock on the first subject it picked.

 

Face Recognition

The cameras continuously learn your face and other new faces. Even in the dark, it can recognize faces. Here you see it asking if I recognize my face.. That way if someone besides me (or my fiance) come into the house, it can tell me that someone I don’t know is in the house. It syncs between the cams too, so if it learns my face on the living room camera, it will know me on the Garage, too.

 

Buy One!

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