Nest Unveils Multiple New Smart Home Products

Nest has announced several new products at a live-streamed showcase today they dubbed the NestEvent in San Francisco.

The common theme amongst the Nest offerings is to create a more intelligent and secure home for you and your family, through security alerts, camera recognition or a virtual assistant.

The products were set up around a home so various reviewers and writers could see what they would look and feel like in a real-world setting. Everything from a dresser to a front door was set up to mimic a smart home fully decked out with Nest devices. Nest is a division of Alphabet, a conglomerate that owns other companies like Google, Verily and Waymo.

“Today, Nest is delivering on the next phase of our strategy to create the thoughtful home,” said Marwan Fawaz, Nest CEO.

“We’ve had quite a year so far, expanding into 11 more countries and growing our product portfolio, and today we’re disrupting yet another product industry: home security. By building product experiences our customers love, Nest has experienced more than 60% growth on devices shipped in recent years and continues to expand to millions of homes around the world.”

Take a look below for a recap of the products Nest shared with the world.

Nest Cam IQ Outdoor

Just like the name dictates, this camera is an outdoor version of the Nest Cam IQ launched earlier this year for indoors. The camera comes with facial recognition and wifi capabilities, and looks to be the first consumer-facing company to implement facial recognition monitoring in an effective way.

Each camera costs $349 and Nest boasts that it is the most weatherproof camera they have ever created. It has an IP 66 rating, which is an improvement over the company’s older outdoor camera which came in at IP 65. IP 66 essentially means the camera will not allow dust that could harm the device in and can survive “low-pressure water jets,” meaning a thunderstorm or accidental hose spray. It can also handle extreme temperatures and comes with a speaker that is 15 times as loud as before.

The Nest Outdoor Cam IQ
The Nest Outdoor Cam IQ

The cable for Nest Cam IQ Outdoor now threads through the mount and into a house, vastly lowering the chances of tampering and weather erosion. If the camera detects a person speaking or even a dog barking, alerts can be sent through the Nest app. You can then convey a message through the microphone, such as “hat are you doing in my yard?” or “do you want a treat little buddy?”

Technology is borrowed from sister company Google to determine if there is actually a person or just a car or something else outside your home. FaceNet is the Google tech that Nest uses, and if you want it (along with 10 days of video storage on the cloud) you have to pay an extra $10 a month on top of the purchase fee. FaceNet can then help you determine a “familiar face” and not trigger any alarms.

Also announced: The indoor Nest Cam IQ will receive a software update this winter that turns it into a mini Google Assistant. Once the software updates, the camera will function just like Google Home does, answering questions, writing notes and more. There are a couple limitations though—you can’t listen to your favourite song through the camera, as the speaker is too weak. You also cant control the camera itself with Google Assistant.

Nest Hello

Just as you may have guessed from the welcoming name, Hello is a smart doorbell the size of a remote that allows for video and audio streaming right to your devices. This device is one of the prime examples of Nest’s attempts to use amt devices help secure a home.

The camera has a 160-degree field of view, so you can see both your tall friend and their cute little puppy they brought along with them. This can be adjusted with a built-in wedge, and all the video is shot with HDR so it adjusts to poor lighting if need be. Hello is a part of the Nest camera family so it can send alerts when people are at your door, even if they don’t ring it. If you pay the $10 a month described above, you can also get alerts when people are talking at your door and hopefully use FaceNet to figure out if it is someone you know or not.

Hallo Nest
The Nest Hello smart doorbell.

The Quick Actions feature allows you to respond to visitors quickly. Think along the lines of “I’m cooking and will be right there!” or something else. Warm Welcome is another feature Nest is working on that will greet known visitors with a light to let them know they are being watched, while also doing the same thing to deter burglaries.

There is no price yet for Hello and it will ship in Q1 2018.

Nest Secure

Secure is an entirely new home security system. It comes with the small circular Nest Guard, which has a keypad on top of it and sits at your front door. It communicates with two smaller Nest Detects, to be placed around your home. The whole package is $499

If you enter your house and do not disarm Nest Guard, alarms trigger and sirens are blared at over 85 decibels. To turn the alarms off, you punch in a key code, go through your app, or swipe a fob called the Nest Tag. Tags can be controlled and given temporary access, say if a babysitter or dog walker is coming into your home. One Tag costs $25.

Nest Secure connects to your home via wifi and its whole family of products is controlled with the Nest app.

Nest Detect are small sensors that separate into two and are meant to be placed at the back door or on windows. They create a magnetic field between each other and if a door or person crosses that field, an alarm is triggered. They use batteries and connect with Nest’s mesh technology. There are two Detects in the basic Secure package, meaning you can guard your front and back doors and one window. You can buy more if need be at $59 each.

If you really value home security Nest is offering a home monitoring system through third-party Moni. If an alarm is triggered, local law enforcement will take it very seriously and address the concern right away. It’s unclear if this puts a priority over some alarms compared to others, but the package is there if a particularly cautious homeowner wants it.

If you are worried about power outages or other stoppages, you can spend $5 a month or $50 a year for T-Mobile cellular backup service. This means your Nest will always be on, no matter happens.