Nest announced its latest camera today; the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor. It packs the popular indoor camera’s features into a more rugged housing.
What is the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor
The Nest Cam IQ Outdoor is, according to the company, the “most powerful outdoor security camera on the market today.” Like its indoor camera, this hardened and weatherproof version also features the usual set of Nest’s smart features. It will tell you when somebody is in your driveway, for example, or when your family comes home. In addition, with its built-in speaker, the IQ Outdoor does, of course, allow you to talk directly to those random people on your driveway. it builds upon a lot of the same tech from the previous model. It has the same chipset, same improved Wi-Fi capabilities that the indoor camera has, including its facial recognition tech. facial recognition tech is a feature that promises to be the next big thing in home monitoring. On the other hand, it has brought up plenty of questions about privacy, security, and surveillance.
Of course, you might be wondering if the burglar can just switch it off. The answer to that is no. The camera plugs directly into your power supply and a tamper-resistant mount. This might make installing it a hassle for many homeowners.
Durability of the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor
The Nest Cam IQ Outdoor comes with an IP 66 rating for protection. The company says it’s the “most weatherproof camera” it has ever built. They further stated it is built to handle extreme temperatures, and that the speaker is 15 times more powerful. The new camera is leveraging software technology from Google — specifically FaceNet. This is Google’s artificial intelligence system for recognizing and identifying people in images. The previous outdoor camera from Nest notified you if there was activity outdoors, and was “smart” enough to know if it was a person. With the FaceNet technology, the camera will trigger “Familiar Face” alerts on the Nest mobile app. The camera itself, as mentioned earlier, is $349. But you’ll also have to pay $10 per month if you want 10 days of video storage plus the facial recognition feature, which happens in the cloud.
