Nest Makes A Comeback With Its Smarter Cam IQ Priced At $299

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The home security cams presently in the market are certainly great, but not very smart. However, the latest Nest Cam IQ camera presents a unique combination of smart motion detection, alerts and high-fidelity video.

Nest makes a comeback

Nest, which is owned by Alphabet, last refreshed its entire product line in June 2015, when it released the fifth generation of the Nest App, the 3rd generation Nest Learning Thermostat and Nest Cam Outdoor. And, last week, we saw several reports about specs related to the company’s upcoming 4K camera, and now, the camera is official. The Cam IQ bears a similar styling and shape to Nest’s signature thermostat, notes The Verge.

The Nest Cam IQ is not just a tweaked version of the old camera; it introduces several new features to the company’s lineup, with the most noticeable being smarter software, sharper video and a higher price. It has a 4K image sensor, but it does not actually stream in 4K. Rather, the camera uses those extra pixels to provide super-clear 1080p zooming known as Supersight, notes AndroidPolice. Supersight can automatically zoom in, detect movement and follow objects as they move around.

“When designing Nest Cam IQ, we focused on what we’ve learned from our customers, which is that people don’t want more information, they want insights,” Nest co-founder Matt Rogers said in a recent press release.

Users can view their video feed from the Nest app with a full-HD picture-in-picture zoom window. The camera has HDR and supports up to 12x digital zoom. In addition, a wider image of the room is available in 1080p with a 130-degree field-of-view. Before being uploaded to the servers, all the videos are encrypted locally, notes AndroidPolice.

What makes the Cam IQ unique?

During the Google I/O conference, Maxime Veron, Nest’s director of product marketing, told The Verge that their aim is for the Cam IQ to be the “best in class security camera.” The camera is powered by a hexa-core Qualcomm CPU. In addition, there is a night vision mode provided by two infrared LEDs, which, according to Veron, operate at a 940nm wavelength. Veron proudly notes that this makes the LEDs nearly invisible to the human eye.

Nest is proudest of its advanced object recognition capability, which enables the camera to easily tell the difference between an object and a human. The Cam IQ can also generate a special live feed when people are detected. Basically, the Cam IQ is an advanced version of the current Nest Cams. Other Nest cameras can also detect people, but it is a paid feature.

The company is no doubt making a big return to the market with this “intelligent” indoor camera. The only demerit on the Nest Cam IQ is its expensive price tag: it costs $299 (or $498 for 2). This camera is not a replacement for the Cam Indoor; rather, it is a next-gen alternative with amazing features that come from its 4K sensor, notes Stuff.tv. The camera will start shipping by the end of June.

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