Nest’s outdoor Cam IQ brings facial recognition to your backyard
Nest’s latest media event could be big news if you’re interested in spotting burglars before they break into your home. It’s introducing the Nest Cam IQ outdoor, a rugged take on the regular IQ that’s designed to watch over your yard. As you might guess, it applies the same facial recognition technology to a weather-resistant (IP66-rated) and tamper-resistant body that’s always plugged in. In theory, it won’t raise an alert if it sees your kids playing in the back, or a locked-out spouse frantically looking for a way in. The camera can automatically zoom in and follow people as well. And the speaker is 15 times louder than on the indoor model, so you can shout at trespassers if you catch them in the act.
You’re paying a slight premium over the already fairly expensive IQ: the outdoor variant will cost $350/£329 when it ships in November. That may be a tough sell given how imperfect Nest’s face detection has been, but few outdoor cameras offer facial recognition in the first place. It might be worth a shot just to produce fewer false alarms.
Also, we’d add that Nest is sweetening the pot a bit: its cameras will have Google Assistant integration, giving you sophisticated voice control over your security setup. You’ll get it as a free update to your camera sometime in the winter. This won’t necessarily settle your buying decision, but it’s arguably overdue given Nest’s parent company.
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