Amazon Ring takes on Google Nest in the battle for best floodlight cam

Speaker 1: Night is coming sooner now. So I have to protect this house from the dangers in the forest and beyond. So I'm gonna test the flood lights from nest and ring to see which one works the best Darkness await. Perhaps the lights can protect us and push it away if only for a moment or maybe the motion alerts can help or even the smart features. [00:00:30] So let's compare these two good options. The nest cam with floodlight and the ring floodlight cam wired pro we'll compare their spec and then see how quickly they deliver alerts. Next. We'll give them each a vision test and then turn out the lights and see how they fare in the dark. Let's meet the heroes of our story Speaker 1: Side by side. This dynamic duo has a lot of similarities, as you might expect. They both have [00:01:00] customizable motion alerts. You can pull up a live feed. The lights are nice and bright, plenty of differences in the details. And they both have a few unique odds and ends. Let's start with cost. Ring is 250 bucks with a $3 subscription needed for most functionality nests, two 80. The subscription starts at $6, but you do get a little bit more without paying that monthly fee ring has a 160 degree field of view. Nest is only [00:01:30] one 30 rings. Light is 2000 lumens, but nests is 2,400 both capture footage at 10 80 P the nest cam with floodlight includes three hours of event storage for free and can tell the difference between people, pets and vehicles. It processes a lot of info locally. It encrypts video while in transit. Speaker 1: And when it rests UN nest servers, you can customize alerts and the floodlight settings based on what it recognizes and when [00:02:00] with a paid subscription. And at the base level you get from million face detection, 30 days of storage, sound detection, like glass breaking, and the ability to call 9 1 1 from the app you need to pay for the high end sub to get 24 7 recording though. The ring floodlight cam wired pro has something called 3d motion detection. So it could tell how far away something is when it triggers an alert. The two way audio comes with improved noise reduction. It can't distinguish as much as nest in [00:02:30] those motion alerts and ring comes with all kinds of privacy baggage, but it does come with some super thorough encryption of your footage, fancy specs, a siren. And as you'd expect, since Amazon owns ring, it really well with Amazon's assistant and smart displays, but the make of a camera cannot be defined by shiny features and bold promises. Speaker 1: It is forged in the heat of the moment when everything is at stake. So let's put everything at stake. Since these [00:03:00] are security cameras, first and foremost, let's see how quickly they deliver pertinent information. Our new producer Hoby will pretend to be a car burglar looking to plunderer and pill. My Ford door sedan. I've left piles of definitely real money in the center console, the glove box and the safest place of all under the seat. He'll go for it in that order, and we'll see how many he can hit before I sound. The alarm rings, alert comes [00:03:30] nice and quick. It catches Hoy when he's at the door of the car and I can sound the alarm by the time Hoy gets to money pile, number two, he isn't even able to touch the third pile. A solid result. Nest keeps up here as well. Speaker 1: I get an alert as he hits the door. I scare him off as he reaches pile number two. The difference during the day comes from the siren. Wee woo wee, woo. While I'm obviously able to replicate a siren perfectly, you probably couldn't even tell the [00:04:00] it rings real siren, actually scares Hoby. So slight advantage to ring during the day with darkness upon us Hoby returns and this time he's really getting into it. And I've conveniently reset the money back to where it was to see how these alerts fair at night. This is how we pay new employees. Even at night rings, alert comes right away a hair faster than it did during the day. And it flips on the floodlight. As soon as he's entering the frame, it's nice and prompt and I can sound the siren [00:04:30] and annoy the neighbors by the time he's at pile number two and awesome showing for ring as it's just as fast without daylight nest was not merely as good notice. Speaker 1: The light turns on before he even enters the frame. But nest told me there was a moving vehicle, not a person. The alert itself was almost prompt, but then the cam glitched and I couldn't yell at OB allowing him to get away with it all and take a bow. Not great. So we [00:05:00] tried again and didn't get any alerts. Nest might have been having a glitchy night, but we double checked every setting. It was the same conditions as ring. This was a fail. The battle was close during the day, but ring wins handily. Thanks to being more reliable when we needed it to be at night, getting prompt alerts is one thing, but can you trust what you're seeing? Well, let's get to the bottom of that with a vision test, we have the patented [00:05:30] CNET eye chart. Nope. We have no patent on this eye chart and we're going to hold it at increasing distances to see what the cameras can make out at a close five foot distance ring is pretty sharp through row a and you can still almost make out row 10. Speaker 1: It's fine. But it pales in comparison to nest. Look at how sharp that is. You can make out a full extra row before things start getting fuzzy and side by side. The image just looks that much more clear. That difference holds as we move back [00:06:00] to 15 feet at a medium distance, you lose a lot of rows for ring. Row three is already starting to look blurry, but you can make it and row four out with a little work, but everything fades around row five and six with nest, you can clearly see row five and you can make out six with a little work. Seven is mostly just shapes and nothing beneath, but as you can see, side by side, you still get a couple of extra rows at a long 25 feet. Only [00:06:30] the top row is clearly visible on ring row two and three are blurry, but almost workable, but by four is it's all gone. Speaker 1: Nest makes it easier to make out the letters through row three. The fourth and fifth rows are almost there, but nothing below that. So neither fares particularly well at a distance, but nest was clear across the board in the daytime at night back to five feet. You can easily make out through row four with ring. It's much worse than during the day. But the part [00:07:00] you can see is still clear with some of the smaller letters blotted out due to the glare. Nest has the same problem though. Row five is nice and clear side by side. You'll see that you actually lose more letters entirely to glare with nest, which makes sense. It has the brighter flood light, but you can still read one extra row with clarity. Moving back to 15 feet ring has lost most letters, even at a medium distance. You can still make out the very top, but two through [00:07:30] four are there, but fuzzy and everything below that is just disappeared with nest. Speaker 1: The glares actually less of a problem at a meat, the distance. So you can actually see more letters than up close. One row is less clear, but you're still fine through row four. So much less of a drop off than ring at a distance ring only shows you the top at all. You lose almost everything else. I guess you can kind of tell row two, is there, there was a drop off for nest [00:08:00] as well here only row one is really readable. Two is blurry and you can at least see that there is something for rows three through five. So as far as comparing the two nest is still stronger. Nest was stronger at really every stage and is the clear winner of our vision test outside of the tests. Nest has the best software of the bunch. If you're willing to pay more, it also works the best with Google assistant, obviously. Speaker 1: So you can easily pull up a feed [00:08:30] on your nest hub, smart display, or your TV with Chromecast ring has a few cool high tech perks and fits in easily. If you already have Amazon echo stuff here, it is on the show complete with two way talk. If you want that, put it all together. And we're giving the win to the ring. Floodlight cam wired pro. Since these are security cameras, first and foremost, the notification test holds that much more weight. Obviously some of it will come down to preference. Nest did a great job [00:09:00] of the vision test and is better with Google assistant. While ring is better with Amazon, blah, blah, blah, blah, but we have to declare a winner baggage and all ring gets this one. Thanks for watching. Please hit that thumbs up button. If you enjoyed the video and subscribe, drive to C net's YouTube channel for more check out the links below, if you're ready to make a purchase. And we have links to CNET articles. If you wanna read more about the specific products and comment below to let me know how much money you think we spent on fake [00:09:30] money. And also, I guess, let me know which product you'd pick. Thanks again, like and subscribe. All right. Do we, did we get it? What do I have something on me? What's going on.