At night when it gets dark, the camera switches to IR mode. It’s not fooled into switching modes by a torch being shone at it, either, so you know that the Nest Cam Outdoor will record reliably. I was impressed by the IR light, which clearly illuminated my 40ft garden, all the way to the shed at the bottom. Even better, the Nest Cam (outdoor or indoor, battery) lets you draw activity zones, to only monitor the part of the image that you’re interested in. For each zone, you can then choose which events you want to record and which you want to be notified for. For example, you could record people and animals in one zone, getting alerts for people only, and then record people only in another zone. What sets this camera apart is an iOS/Android app that’s several notches above the competition. That’s not so surprising, given that Google is behind its development. The app shows you a live feed from your cameras, and provided you take out a subscription, it allows you to customise your notifications by setting up to three active motion zones. These are areas within the camera’s view which can be drawn and designated as sensitive to movement. Although the Nest Cam Outdoor can record at 1080p, it defaults to 720p. You can manually force the camera into 1080p mode, although you get a warning telling you that the camera may get warm and that it will use more bandwidth. Look for an outdoor Wi-Fi camera that can connect to either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz radio band to alleviate network congestion. If you have trouble getting a good signal outside, try boosting it with a wireless range extender. Google Nest Cam (Outdoor or Indoor, Battery) (Credit: Google)

As you can probably tell from the name of the product, this is both an indoor and outdoor camera, and it’s battery operated, although you can also permanently power it. Built-in storage and smart on-device object detection mean that you don’t need to worry about a cloud subscription, although opt for Nest Aware and you’ll get some advanced features.We haven't seen any that run on the Matter platform yet, but that's surely going to happen at some point. You can also schedule the camera to turn on and off. I’ve got mine configured to record from roughly when it gets dark, until 9am in the morning. Nest’s scheduling is a little confusing to use at first, as the app displays bars that you naturally want to touch and slide but can’t. This is a minor complaint, though, and once your schedule is set correctly, you’re unlikely to need to touch this setting. Nest includes everything you need to install its outdoor camera, from the screws and wall plugs that fix the magnetic base, to the cable clips that secure the heavy-duty USB cable. The camera itself is held securely in place by the magnet, but with nothing else to keep it there other than the cable, a desirable gadget like this could itself become a target for thieves. Install well out of reach is our advice. It’s tough, too, rated at IP65. That means it’s completely dustproof and can withstand low-pressure water jets. That’s more than enough even for a heavy spring downpour.

Video footage is captured at a resolution of 1920 x 1080. The camera uses a 130-degree (diagonal) field of view, which is good enough for outside use: I could get most of my garden in with this; you can get cameras with wider fields of view if you want to capture more. Although it isn't cheap, the Arlo Go 2 earns our Editors’ Choice award for its easy wire-free installation, excellent 1080p video quality, and ability to connect from just about anywhere using either a cellular or Wi-Fi radio. A premium price means premium features including support for voice commands, lots of third-party integrations, intelligent alerts, a built-in spotlight, and color night vision. Who It’s ForMore importantly, the Nest Cam Outdoor is super-easy to self-install for most people. Rather than having to be hard-wired into an electrical circuit, the Nest Cam Outdoor comes with a waterproof power supply composed of two parts. There’s a junction box hard-wired to a three-pin plug, and the camera has a captive weatherproofed USB cable that connects to the junction box. There’s a charging cable in the box that magnetically attaches to the bottom of the camera to top up the battery. If you’d rather have the camera permanently powered, you can buy the optional weatherproof adaptor (5m or 10m lengths available). Image quality is excellent. In daylight, the picture is sharp, and faces can clearly be seen. Some detail is blurred out in uniform areas, such as grass, but the important information is kept.

The closest competition is the Netatmo Presence, which can tell the difference (mostly) between people, animals and cars. It’s more expensive than the Nest Cam Outdoor, but it has no monthly subscription cost, integrating for free with Dropbox or an FTP server. The downside is that Netatmo’s camera is harder to install, and the overall experience isn’t quite as neat. Verdict You can use this level of detection to control exactly how the camera works. First, you can set which events you get notifications for, say only getting alerted when a person is spotted. Secondly, you can control which events the camera records for. Google treats everything outside of a zone as the special Outside of zone area, which can have its own recording and notification rules. Most cameras treat everything outside of a zone as not important, so there’s a bit more flexibility here.

What Type of Weather Can Outdoor Security Cameras Handle?

The 1080p camera actually defaults to 720p mode and we think it looks good in either resolution. Ten IR sensors ensure that it can see clearly in the dark as well. A microphone and speaker are built-in for two-way audio communication, but you won’t find a microSD card slot for local video storage. At night, the camera turns on its IR sensor. This has good range, lighting up my entire garden, although the resulting footage is a lot softer, removing some more detail from the image. I’d say that footage is on a par with that shot from Ring’s cameras, but Arlo’s 2K cameras (the Pro 3 and Pro 4) shoot better video and I’ve not seen a camera come close to that of the Arlo Ultra.

Testing the Nest Cam (outdoor or indoor, battery) out, I found that its footage was pretty good but not class-leading. During the day, video has clear signs of compression, filtering out the detail on my t-shirt, for example, and the video is quite clearly sharpened. However, there’s enough detail left to spot individuals and the image is well exposed, even when facing direct sunlight. Nest Aware also turns on Familiar face detection, or facial recognition to me and you. This lets the camera spot and recognise people that you know. You can create profiles for each person, so you can be told who the camera has spotted. This information is shared between all cameras, including the doorbell and is still a unique feature that the competition doesn’t have. Nest Aware can distinguish between people and other movements, giving different notifications. There’s no way to set the camera only to notify when it detects people, which you can do with the Netatmo Presence. Find the right Nest camera for your home. App Requires Google Home app Requires Google Home app Requires Google Home app Smart floodlight Weather-resistant Included alerts 1 Motion, people, vehicles, animals Motion, people, vehicles, animals Motion, people, vehicles, animals Three-hour event video history 1 Video clips Video clips Video clips 1080p HD video with HDR and Night Vision 24/7 live streaming Up to 60 days of event video history with Nest Aware 1,2 24/7 video history with Nest Aware Plus 1,2,3 When wired Power cable sold separately Talk and Listen Records during a Wi-Fi outage Up to one hour Up to one hour Up to one hour Power source Battery or wired Power cable sold separately Wired Wired Field of view You do need to manage profiles carefully, deleting incorrectly categorised snapshots, and merging duplicate profiles, or facial recognition can get things wrong. Properly looked after, it’s a system that works really well.

How Do Outdoor Security Cameras Work?

Monitoring the outside of your house makes a lot of sense – especially if there’s been a spate of break-ins in your area. The difficulty is that outdoor cameras have traditionally been a bit of a pain to set up and configure. The Nest Cam Outdoor hopes to change that, thanks to painless installation, smart monitoring and a design that makes the camera actually look good when it’s installed. Design and Build