Thanks to a $200 credit for Nest or Google products earned by renewing my Verizon FIOS service, I recently acquired a Nest Hello Video Doorbell kit. If you're familiar with the Ring Video doorbell, then it's safe to say the Nest is very similar. There are differences, with the Nest reviewing better in general, but selection boils down to price and preference.

For those not familiar, it's another "internet of things" device that replaces your doorbell button with a larger one containing a camera that connects to "the cloud". It gives you the ability to see and interact with people who walk up and ring your doorbell, even if you're not home. It can also record video and store said video to the cloud for N days, giving you the ability to find out why your shipment of precious china looks like it was kicked up your driveway or which neighbor has been letting their dog leave presents on your lawn, or which hoodlum has been taking your packages.

It also provides a great deal of situational awareness as you can see what's going on at your front door without peering through windows or actually going to the door. This is important to us because we live in a 3-story townhouse that is entirely above ground (ie it's effing tall). The ground floor, which is also where the main entrance is located, is nothing but garage, foyer, and an unfinished "family room" we use as a "basement". Ergo, we're mainly on the 2nd floor (den, dining room, and kitchen) or 3rd floor (bedrooms). Peeping who is at the door from the 2nd floor windows is tough and virtually impossible from the 3rd floor due to angles. The Nest Hello gives us a view as if we were standing in the doorway, letting us decide if we want to go to the door or not. As I work from home, and on the 3rd floor, this keeps me from running downstairs whenever the doorbell rings. It also aids situational awareness as I can see the entire front yard and my neighbors' front yards.

Daytime video is fantastic. Nighttime is good too. While our front yard is never pitch black due to our front porch light and two streetlights within 100yds, the night vision capability is still impressive. I can clearly see as far out as I'd want to day or night.

The audio on this is good. Yesterday afternoon, my wife met Thing 2 and her friend at her bus stop. The three of them stopped at the end of our driveway (about 50' from the front door) to chat. From my upstairs vantage point, I could hear their conversation and see them clearly.

The basic hardware gives you live video and audio, but if you add the Nest Aware service (starting at $5/month or $50/year), you can get 5 days of stored video, zone alerts, facial recognition, etc. I have a free subscription to that for the first month. I will decide after Thanksgiving (our first trip away post-install) if I want to continue it, but I can see the value already. I've set up a zone near the front of the house to alert us if anyone walks up. I did have that zone set for motion and person recognition, but with the layout of our cul-de-sac, headlights from the street across from ours was setting off false alerts at night. I shrank the zone and set it to person alerts only.

Installation was easy. I had to upgrade my doorbell transformer as it only put out 12.5v (min required is 14.5), but that cost me $12 and 30min of my time. Otherwise, the physical install was mostly a straight up replacement of my existing doorbell button and adding a small module to the doorbell chime. Setting it up required a smartphone, but day-to-day use does not. Because my phone is so outdated, I can't use the app and instead keep browser windows open on my PC upstairs and the main PC in the living room showing the video feed (yay multiple monitors). My wife and daughter have the app on their phones.

I've had it up and running for right around 24hrs and I'm sold on the concept. I'm considering one of their outside cameras for backyard coverage.

Chris