If you choose to permanently power your camera, then you can upgrade to the more expensive Nest Aware subscription, which adds constant video recording into the mix, so everything is captured. These rugged smart home devices, which can withstand rain, snow, and extreme temperatures, typically connect to your home Wi-Fi network and allow you to view live video footage of activities occurring outside your home. They can also send an alert to your phone when someone or something is out there, record video of the event, and, depending on features, let you speak with whoever is on your property, all without requiring you to open your door (or even be inside your house). Finding footage in the Google Home app isn’t as easy as it was with the Nest app. With the Nest app, opening it up would show you a preview of the camera. Tap the preview and you’d get the live view and the timeline to scroll through, with filtering options to find events.

However, you can use any magnetic mount: outside, I had the old Nest Cam Outdoor, so just repurposed that mount instead, although Google has said that the smaller mount here may not be able to take the weight, so use the provided one instead. 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.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

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. 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. Cameras that capture 4K (Ultra HD) or 2K video are also available, but you need a strong network connection to stream such high-res video without choppiness or lag, plus lots of room to store recordings; that last requirement may add significantly to the cost for cloud storage fees. 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.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. 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. With this, you can choose to have your camera turn on and off automatically, or you can choose to only get notifications when you’re away from home. It’s a good tool but not as comprehensive as the competition. With Ring, if you have the Ring Alarm, you can adjust cameras based on the mode of the alarm: different settings for whether the alarm is set to on, at home or turned off.

We haven't seen any that run on the Matter platform yet, but that's surely going to happen at some point. 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.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. More 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.

Installation is now via the Google Home app, rather than the old Nest app. This is a clear sign that Google tends to remove the Nest app, as only older products, such as the still-available Nest Cam Outdoor, will use this. 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. 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. 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). 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.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. 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.