Nest Video Doorbell (Wired) 2nd Gen Review 2024
A smarter, better-looking Nest Doorbell with video quality you have to see to believe
What We Like
- Superb video quality: With HDR, a 3:4 aspect ratio, up to six times digital zoom, and a 960 by 1280 resolution, the Google Nest Doorbell offers superb video quality.
- Smart platform integrations: Not only did the Nest Doorbell integrate with Google Assistant and Alexa; it also worked well in conjunction with other Nest cameras and products.
- Artificial intelligence: The Nest Doorbell was able to distinguish people from moving objects, animals, and vehicles, resulting in necessary notifications only. And with Nest Aware, we could even put a name to familiar faces, which made our notifications even more specific.
What We Don't Like
- A bit pricey: At $179.99, the newer generation Nest Doorbells are more affordable than the Nest Hello, but they are still a bit pricey compared to other doorbell cameras on the market.
- Nest Aware is required to access all features: On top of the cost of the device itself, we found ourselves paying a monthly fee to enjoy many of the doorbell’s features including event history and facial recognition, although the camera does include person detection.
- No local storage: In order to see our footage after the fact, we had to pay for a Nest Aware subscription, as the doorbell didn’t have a slot for a micro-SD card.
Bottom Line
Google Nest's take on the video doorbell is nothing short of top-notch. We were notified every time it detected a person, seeing and speaking to our visitor through the Nest app.Google almost always hits a home run with its Nest smart home and home security products. In my experience, that’s true for its video doorbells as well. Although Google has released fewer doorbell cameras than its closest competitor Ring — three compared to Ring’s eight — Google Nest video doorbells are popular among techy homeowners because of their advanced smart features and pixel-defying image quality.
This isn’t my first time testing a Nest camera. I took the battery-powered Nest Doorbell out for a spin when it dropped in 2021. This time around, I’m putting its battery-free cousin through the wringer, the 2nd-gen Nest Doorbell (wired).
Before we get into the features that make this premium video doorbell tick, here’s a quick overview of what the Nest gets just right and a few things to be aware of.
Pro Tip: Don’t have existing doorbell wiring? The Nest’s battery-powered doorbell is an option.
Overall Rating
- Oversized viewing screen for full picture
- Integrates with Google and Nest products
- Optional facial recognition technology
The Nest Doorbell Camera: Is it the Camera for Your Front Door?
Just by looking at it, you can tell the Nest Doorbell is no cheapo security device. The Nest is a beaut, and because this is Google, high quality video and smart home integrations are almost guaranteed. Specifically, the Nest shoots 960p HDR video at 30 fps, which might not sound like much, until you see it in action.
That said, at $180, Google’s flagship smart doorbell is a bit pricey. And you’ll need to pay a bit more than that if you want to unlock all its features.
The only other red flag is platform integration. Google is, above all else, a smart home brand with products that favor its own platform and OS. So if you happen to be a Google household, awesome. If your home is Alexa-powered — or God forbid, running on Siri — you might run into a few connectivity issues, at least for the time being.
If you’re looking for some more affordable home security options with better cross-platform support, check out these tried and true home security brands:
Did You Know: The reason our smart devices can’t communicate with each other is because they all speak different languages. Matter (capital M), the new open-source standard for smart technology, promises to change that by getting all devices, platforms, and OS speaking the same language.
How The Nest Doorbell Improved My Home Security
Looks and smarts aside, the main reason I wanted to test the latest wired Nest Doorbell was to find out how good it was at protecting my home. No surprises here. With a few exceptions, the Nest did a bang-up job.
Doorbell Ring Notifications
The main function of a video doorbell is to tell you when someone’s standing at your door, and that’s exactly what the Nest Doorbell did. Whenever I had a visitor, I got a push notification on my phone that included snapshots of the event viewable for up to three hours. That’s three hours of free storage. Great, right?
Not really. A three-hour window isn’t much. For instance, say I wanted to check out something that happened at midnight when I woke up the next morning. I’d be out of luck. Of course, there’s a decent solution: a Nest Aware subscription. Google’s cloud storage plans start at $8 per month — unless you’ve got an ADT home security plan, in which case you don’t pay a dime.
I can anticipate Ring and Wyze users shaking their heads at this point. Ring Protect storage plans start at just $3.99 per month. Wyze plans are even cheaper at $1.67. Here’s a closer look at Wyze’s budget cameras. But, actually, not so fast. Don’t forget that Google charges by the house, while Wyze charges by the device and Ring only offers unlimited devices with its premium $10 plan, so in balance the Google deal could easily end up saving you money.
Person Alerts
The Nest Doorbell doesn’t alert you whenever something happens at the front door. That would drive you crazy. The Nest is “contextually aware,” which you’d expect from a Google product. In other words, it knew that passing vehicles weren’t security concerns, but a person walking towards my door definitely could have been. My house happens to face a busy street, so this feature came in very handy — to a point.
While the Nest was good at telling cars from humans, and even packages, I couldn’t get mine to recognize faces. That turned out to be because “familiar face detection” was gated behind — you guessed it — a Nest Aware subscription.
>> Also check out: ADT Doorbell Review
Want Intelligent Alerts? Grab a Nest Aware Plan.
As I mentioned up top, Nest Aware is Google’s cloud storage service. The starter plan is $8 per month, the premium is $15. But Nest Aware plans also unlock some useful, AI-enhanced features like familiar face alerts and package tracking. Just how useful are the Nest’s gated features? Here’s my two cents.
Familiar Face Alerts
Familiar face alerts improved on person alerts by telling me whether the person at my door was someone I knew or a stranger. Predictably, Google is pretty good at this, and getting better. But it’s not perfect. In my case, my Nest had trouble distinguishing between my children in the beginning. And FYI, once the Nest identifies a face, it’s not exactly a piece of cake to reteach it. I basically had to go into my daughter’s history and delete the photos of my son it had erroneously matched. Once I’d given the Nest some pointers — tagging the hits, deleting the misses — we were off to the races.
Package tracking
The Nest Doorbell’s premium package tracking is a little different than its package detection feature, which doesn’t cost a dime. The smarter tracking feature let me know if a package had left my stoop, not arrived. You’ve probably heard of porch pirates. Well, this is one way to combat them, though you’d have to act pretty fast — like Flash on Red Bull fast — to actually intercept a thief in action.
Activity Zones
Finally, activity zones let me limit the detection range of the Nest Doorbell so that I only got alerts if the movement occurred in an area I deemed important — for instance, my front lawn, if you can call the patch of concrete in front of my house that. You don’t need a subscription to use this feature, fortunately. Fortunately because it turned out to be very useful. Once I’d set those zones, I stopped receiving alerts every time a jogger passed by on the street. But when a kid entered the “zone” to get his basketball, I got an alert.
Bottom line? If it’s video storage you need, a Nest Aware subscription may be worth it. Remember, Google charges by the house, not the camera. If it’s life-changing features you’re looking to unlock, on the other hand, I’m not sure the Nest Aware’s bells and whistles justify the $8-15 per month price tag.
FYI: The Nest Doorbell doesn’t come with a chime. You can either connect it to another Google device with a speaker like the Google Home Mini or wire it to your existing chime.
Live Streaming with the Home App
The Nest Doorbell was my virtual peephole, but I still needed a physical device to stream footage when I got a suspicious alert. In the past, with the Nest Hello, say, I’d have used the Nest app as my control center. But as of 2021, Google has migrated doorbell operations from the Nest app to the Home app. So to check my video I had two options: I could either open the Google Home on my phone or access video straight through my Nest Hub Max.
I’m not going to delve too deeply into the Home app. Google is good at making apps, and I’ve never had any problems with Google Home. That’s not to say everything ran like clockwork 100 percent of the time. The Nest was quick about sending alerts, for example, but sometimes, if one alert (unfamiliar face) followed too quickly on the heels of another alert (person detection), the Nest would spin its wheels for a minute or two before reconnecting to the Home app. Over time, I could see how this might get annoying.
Otherwise, the Home app was a lifeline, especially when I was out and about. When I was in the house, however, I found it much more convenient to use the family Nest Hub Max smart display. 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 more 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. You don’t even need to be in the house to use it. If a stranger shows up at the door, and you’ve got your phone in hand, you can see, hear, and talk to him — knock-knock thieves included.1
FYI: As the name suggests, a knock–knock thief is a lowlife that knocks at the front door first to test the waters. If no one answers, he’ll creep around back and try to break in.
Pre-Recorded Quick Response
Personally, having Google Assistant deliver robotic messages to the UPS man is not my cup of tea. But you may have different feelings about this. Nest’s pre-recorded responses might come in handy when you’re not around or aren’t in the mood to answer the door. You just record the message and Google Assistant delivers it for you: “Good afternoon. Please leave the package next to the ficus tree.”
The Nest Doorbell’s Video Quality
The Nest Doorbell has what I’ll call “mysteriously good” video quality for its pretty puny resolution on paper. Just why that is boils down to a few key image quality factors.
HD Video Quality
The Nest Doorbell’s resolution is 1.2 megapixels (MP), or 960p. That’s the number of pixels squeezed into its screen. As I said, in the grand scheme of things, 1.2 MP isn’t much. The Arlo Essential shoots at 2MP, for instance, which is just about double the Nest. Despite the lowish resolution, however, picture quality on the Nest Doorbell is exceptionally crisp and the 3:4 (portrait) aspect ratio gives a head-to-toe view of visitors.
Wide-Angle Field of View
The 145-degree diagonal field of view on the Nest Doorbell is kind of narrow. Remember, the Nest is giving you portrait, not landscape, video, so it isn’t going to make a good stand-in for a high-quality outdoor security camera that can keep watch over the whole yard. But the Nest did manage to cover our entire front stoop and then some, and without the fisheye effect that many wider-angle cameras produce. If you want more side-to-side, check out the Ring Pro 2.
High Dynamic Range
Cameras equipped with High Dynamic Range, or HDR, can adapt to outdoor lighting better, capturing faces clearly even when you’d expect them to disappear in the glare. The Nest Doorbell happens to be HDR-equipped, and I was happy with its handling of tricky lighting situations, though I will say that at night it worked better for me in night vision mode than it did when the porch lights were blasting at my face.
The Nest Doorbell In Action
I’ve been talking about the Nest Doorbell (wired) for a while now. Watch our video review to see its battery-powered cousin in action.
Smart Platform Integrations
The 2nd-gen Nest Doorbell is a solid stand-alone security device, but smart platform integrations can take it to the next level. As you’d expect, the Nest Doorbell works primarily with other Nest and Google products, including Nest cameras, smart displays, and smart speakers like the Google Nest Mini.
As I mentioned up top, once I connected my Nest Doorbell to my Nest Hub Max via the Google Home app, I could use my smart display to live stream video from my front door, which was a lot better than being glued to my phone. The hub pulled up my stream automatically and Google Assistant told me what kind of activity I had at the door: person, package, or pet. I didn’t have to do anything. Just be prepared for a barrage of notifications, or chimes, if you’ve got multiple speakers in the house because perplexingly you can’t tell Google to play on just one.
That’s just scratching the service with Google. But the Nest Doorbell also works with Alexa. With one caveat. Alexa-enabled devices have to have a screen, like the Fire TV or Amazon Echo Show, and smart automations are clunkier. The Echo doesn’t automatically pull up video, for instance. You’ve got to ask Alexa to do that for you.
Nest Aware: Cloud Storage For All Nest Cameras
The Nest Doorbell doesn’t have a local storage option, if you recall, only three measly hours of cloud storage. Anything more requires a Nest Aware plan, which comes in two flavors: the Nest Aware and the Nest Aware Plus.
Nest Aware Plus plans are pretty heavy-duty. They give you continuously recorded video for up to 10 days (a unique feature with the Nest), plus a 60-day event history. That’s plenty, maybe even overkill, for the average home.
Of course, uploading so much HD video to the cloud 24/7 could put a strain on your bandwidth, so if your internet service provider caps you, the $8 per month basic Nest Aware plan might be a better choice. It only records event clips, so its footprint is substantially less on your bandwidth.
Both plans cost money, however. If you what to cut this extra cost out entirely, consider Eufy security products. Eufy has a brand new 2K doorbell with local storage for about $250. A bit more expensive than the Nest, but you should earn it back in savings in about a year.
Did You Know: When viewing recorded videos with a Nest Aware Plus subscription, we found it a lot easier to check the list of recorded events rather than sift through the timeline. The timeline works best for watching continuous recordings.
The Nest Doorbell: Installation
Compared to outdoor wireless security cameras and battery-powered video doorbells, hardwired video doorbells like the wired Nest Doorbell typically require some rudimentary electrician’s skills. So if you’ve got more in common with Clark Griswold than Bob Villa, it might be better to call a pro.
That said, there are plenty of how-to videos online. And if you’re going to cut your teeth on a wired security device, a doorbell is a pretty good place to start because the wires from your original doorbell are likely already in place. As long as your wiring is low voltage, you’re good to go. But first things first.
Before I pulled out my screwdriver and drill, I had to open up my Home app and log in (you need a Google account for this). The rest was easy. I clicked “new device” and scanned my Q.
Once my Nest was online, I was ready to wire and mount it. Because I’ve done this before, it didn’t take more than 40 minutes to an hour, which is what most folks will need. I’m not going to get into chime installation, which can get quite complicated, because I use my Nest Hubs for my ringer.
If just thinking about wires is giving you butterflies in your stomach, and paying for a profession is one expense too many, I’d strongly recommend checking out the wire-free Nest Doorbell.
Pro Tip: If you’d rather have a pro install the Nest Doorbell for you, Nest partners with OnTech. Installations cost $99.99.
Find out if Nest can protect your home like other doorbells
It’s good to have options. See how Nest compares to these top doorbell picks.
The Nest Doorbell 2nd-Gen: Final Thoughts
The latest wired Nest Doorbell is smarter and a lot better-looking than its very popular predecessor, the Nest Hello, and video quality is weirdly great for the Nest’s pretty weak 960p. A Google product, the Nest was predictably easy to set up. Helming my stream was also mostly hitch-free from either the Google Home app or my Nest Hub. The connectivity snags I did run into were annoying more than anything else, not security hazards.
The biggest issue I anticipate for most folks who are on the fence about forking over $180 for this super stylish smart ringer is tying themselves down to yet another monthly subscription. You’ll need one if you want anything more than the three hours of video Google gives you gratis. If keeping those clips on file isn’t important, however, you’ll be just fine. Better than fine if you’re a Google household because the 2nd Nest Doorbell is a smart home dynamo.
Still not sure about the wired Nest Doorbell? Here’s a recap of its pros and cons.
The Nest Doorbell (wired) might be the right video doorbell for you if you want:
- A faster, more powerful wired connection
- Attractive design
- Smart features (activity zones, person, pet, and package detection, and familiar face alerts)
- Continuously recorded rolling videos for up to 10 days with Nest Aware
- Google smart home integrations
- An app that works
Consider other options if these things are deal-breakers to you:
- A monthly subscription to access key smart features
- 3 hours of cloud storage
- Google account required
- Chime not included
- Hardwired setup that involves wiring and drilling
ABC7. (2017). Officers across US warn communities about ‘knock-knock burglars;' 2 arrested in Park Ridge. abc7chicago.com/knock-knock-burglaries-texas-houston/1804014/
YouTube. (2022). How to Set Up and Install Your Google Nest Doorbell (Wired).
youtube.com/watch?v=c8MW2TsWKmk