Baby Stepping My Way to a Smart Home with Nest Hello Video Doorbell

1. No More Answering the Door Without Knowing Who’s on the Other Side

I’ve always been the queen of doorbell dodging – I hate opening up the door not knowing who’s on the other side. It’s partially because of safety reasons and also because I hold strongly to the belief that you should live in your pajamas as much as humanly possible 🙂 On days that I don’t have somewhere to be first thing in the morning, I’ll knock out a few hours of work in my PJs before hitting the shower which is awesome except…. for when the doorbell rings. Then I panic. And hide. And try to find a way to peek out a window to see who’s out there without being outted. With my Nest Hello, it’s a whole different ballgame. Now when someone walks up to my house, I get an alert on my iPhone that someone has been spotted at the front door. So what looks like this from the outside:

Looks like this on my phone:

The large image at the top is a live video of what’s going on outside my door and then below it is a snapshot of the person taken right when they walked up to the door. And do you see how it says “Familiar face”? When you first start using the app, the Nest Hello stores snapshots of every new person who comes to the door and you can mark whether you know them or not. If you mark that you know them, then every time they come back to the door you’ll be notified that it’s a familiar face (it’s especially helpful if the person turns around while waiting at the door which a lot of people do at our house because that big ole “Christmas tree” in the front of our yard is pretty impressive to look at!). And it has night vision so you can see surprisingly clearly at night even if you don’t have your lights on outside.  

2. You Can Talk to Whoever’s At Your Door Through Your App

Along with being able to see everything that’s going on outside my door, I can hear it too! And I can talk to whoever is at my door through my Nest app. I actually used this feature the very first day that my Nest Hello was installed. I had been waiting ALL day for a delivery for our kitchen reno that I had to sign for and they said that they would call 30 minutes before arriving so I took off to run a ten minute errand and wouldn’t you know it… I was about three minutes away from my house when my app alerted me that someone was at my door ringing the bell.

I pulled over and saw from the video on my app that it was a delivery person and I was able to talk to them through my doorbell and let them know that I would turn around and be back there in just a few minutes to sign for my packages. Such a cool feature (and actually SO hysterical to watch on video when you start talking to the person at your door – they have no idea at first where the voice is coming from!). I can also see myself using it if someone I don’t recognize is at my door – whether I’m inside the house and want to know who it is before opening the door or I’m away from home and want to ward off any suspicious characters (burglars often knock or ring the doorbell first to make sure no one is home), it’s really nice to have.

3. You Know When Your Packages Arrive

I don’t know about the people who deliver packages to your home, but most of the time they don’t ring my doorbell. They just drop the packages at my door and run (even when it’s raining…). Since we often come and go through the garage, sometimes packages end up sitting at our front door overnight without us knowing they’re there since we can’t see our covered front porch area well from any window in our home. Now that I have Nest Hello, when there are packages at the front door like this,

I get a Nest alert on my phone that a person was seen outside my front door and one look at the live video feed on my phone app will show me that packages have been left for me:

And how amazing will that be when we’re gone on vacation?! In addition to the live front door video & sound along with the snapshots from when motion are detected (which are standard features of Nest Hello), Nest also offers the option of adding Nest Aware for $5/month or $50/year (I did the $50/year). It stores the past five days of your door’s video feed so you can scroll back at any time to look at the past video activity outside your door. If for example you were expecting a delivery that you never received and the delivery service claims that they left the package at your front door, you can scroll back several days in the app to see if the package was ever delivered and if so, who then took it. You can also see what time people come and go to your house (something I used a few weeks back in figuring out how long one of my kitchen contractors was here working). After trying out Nest Aware for my first month (Nest gives you a free one month trial of it when you buy Nest Hello), I decided that having the 5-day video history is well worth the small annual fee. 

4. You Can Keep Track of Your Kids Coming & Going

I’m a mom so I worry. And on days when I’m not going to be home when my teenage girls get off the bus, they know they’re supposed to text me that they got home safely but sometimes they forget and since their phones are still on silent mode from school, they don’t hear me calling to double check on them. Now I get iPhone alerts when they walk through the front door and I can also look at the video feed too. Total piece of mind for worrier moms (and dads)! And if you have older kids who stay out late on weekends, you no longer have to park yourself by the front door so that you’re sure to hear them come home because your Nest app will alert you whether you’re in bed reading a book or hanging out in the family room watching TV. 

While Nest Hello has several other features too, those are the four that have me hooked! And if you’re wondering about compatibility and installation like I was before I got it, Nest has an easy to follow guide {here} that will help you determine if your doorbell wiring is compatible with Nest Hello. And for installation, detailed instructions are included with the Nest Hello to make it easy to install on your own (they even supply you with the exact drill bit you’ll need) or you can go {here} to find a local pro installer. As you guys know, I’m normally a DIYer but I had also just bought a Nest camera for outside our garage that was going to be a tricky installation because of the location so I had a pro come and install both at the same time. He had my new Nest Hello installed in under 15 minutes – I watched each step and it seemed very easy and doable for the average DIYer. 

And I’m happy with the look of it too – it’s narrower than other video doorbells I’ve seen and has a more clean-lined design. If you’ve ever spied my ratty old doorbell in pics of my front porch, you know that my Nest Hello is a huge improvement from what was once there!