Nest Cam IQ

BANDWIDTH HOG.

THE GOOGLE-OWNED NEST Cam IQ is undoubtedly one of the most full-featured smart security cameras on the market. As well as offering advanced features like continuous video recording, facial recognition (to tell family members apart from strangers) and activity zones, it’s also the only security camera to come with Google Assistant built-in.

But there are a few caveats to be aware of. First, it’s relatively expensive as an initial purchase, and you’ll need to plump for a ‘Nest Aware’ subscription (starting at $7 a month/$70 a year for a five-day video history) to access most of the advanced features. Without the subscription, you’re limited to viewing a three-hour snapshot history and receiving generic ‘person identified’ alerts when it detects a person.

Further, you may find that your home Internet connection isn’t quite up to snuff to support its voracious appetite. The Nest Cam IQ is designed to record video continuously, rather than only when it detects motion (although you can set it to turn on and off on a schedule or using geofencing), and this consumes a huge amount of bandwidth. Using the default video quality settings, it promises to use up ‘only’ 200GB per month. This usage doubles to 400GB at the highest video quality setting.

You’ll also need to have a pretty fast Internet connection. Nest advises a minimum 2Mbps upload speed, and because it’s uploading video continuously (unlike the other cameras), your network speed slows to a crawl, making it difficult for other devices to access the Internet simultaneously.