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). You can manually turn the camera on and off using the Google Home app. If you want to automate it, then you need to enable the Home/Away routines in the app, which can use your phone (and those of other people in your household) to detect who’s at home to change mode automatically. 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.

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

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). 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.

Camera is weather-resistant. Some features, including mobile notifications, remote control, video streaming and video recording, require working Internet and Wi-Fi. As with the Cam Indoor, the Outdoor version has a microphone and speaker so that you can speak to anyone outside. It could be handy for talking to couriers or for warning off a would-be thief. A great IFTTT channel lets you integrate the camera with other smart devices – turning on lights when the camera detects movement, for example. Performance and Nest Aware If you’re running the camera on battery power, Google recommends that you don’t turn on all-motion recording, as this can reduce battery life. Still, what you get here is video footage that’s more than good enough for its intended purpose. Final thoughts

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. 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. Many outdoor cameras do more than just record video and send alerts; they also integrate with other smart devices. Many recent outdoor Wi-Fi cameras support IFTTT, an internet service that lets you create applets that link the camera with other IFTTT-enabled devices. For example, you can configure a smart plug to turn on a lamp indoors or activate an external siren when the camera detects motion.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. 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.

Monitoring the outside of your house makes a lot of sense – especially if there’s been a spate of break-ins in your area. The difficulty is that outdoor cameras have traditionally been a bit of a pain to set up and configure. The Nest Cam Outdoor hopes to change that, thanks to painless installation, smart monitoring and a design that makes the camera actually look good when it’s installed. Design and Build

You can also schedule the camera to turn on and off. I’ve got mine configured to record from roughly when it gets dark, until 9am in the morning. Nest’s scheduling is a little confusing to use at first, as the app displays bars that you naturally want to touch and slide but can’t. This is a minor complaint, though, and once your schedule is set correctly, you’re unlikely to need to touch this setting. If you prefer, you can use a tripod mount, using the screw thread underneath, or you can buy the optional stand for indoor use. Savings claim based on purchasing each of the items included with the bundle separately at their total current selling price.