Google Nest Cam gets major update and fix for clearer night vision

Google has just given its outdoor Nest Cams a major update and a necessary fix to improve the quality and clarity of its camera footage. After reports that a recent firmware update caused problems with its night vision, the outdoor Nest Cam is finally being upgraded to ensure its camera can still capture important images and videos.

Compared to the likes of Ring and Blink, Google has a small selection of the best security cameras up for grabs, including battery and wired versions of the Google Nest Cam and the Google Nest Cam with Floodlight. Designed for both indoors and outdoors, the brand’s cameras are widely recognised and have become increasingly popular… that is until a recent update affected its night vision quality.

Google installed firmware version 1.69 for its Google Nest Cam products which resulted in some serious problems for users. Many users took to Reddit to complain that the night vision performance had been negatively affected, with the footage looking blurry and grainy. According to 9to5Google, one Nest Cam user had their car broken into and the footage barely showed the incident because of the blurriness and lack of detail.

Night vision is increasingly important for security cameras and video doorbells, so these issues were taken very seriously by the Google Nest team. The issues with the camera were traced back to the newer 1.69 firmware version which was rolled out in September this year. Reports also showed that the main products that were affected by this were the Nest Cam (battery) and the Nest Cam with Floodlight. 

Following these complaints, Google recently reported to 9to5Google that it's working to fix this issue. The brand is currently making these necessary changes to its battery-powered version of the Nest Cam and both the battery and wired models of the Nest Doorbell. 

In addition to these important fixes, Google has also started making progress to improve the user experience of its original Nest cameras. After adding the Nest Indoor to the Google Home app in August, Google is also migrating the first generation Nest Cam Outdoor to the Google Home app.

For Public Preview users, the Nest Cam Outdoor can now be moved to the app but not all users will be able to add it just yet. Google has stated that this migration may take a few weeks so not all users will be able to make the move just yet. Instead, Google will be sending users a prompt and once they do, they can manage the first generation of the Nest Cam Outdoor on the Google Home app.

Not only does this update make it easier for Google smart home users to have all its devices in one place, but it also expands and improves the usability of the Google Nest Cam Outdoor. With this moving process, Nest Cam Outdoor users can review videos in the app and switch between events and timeline list views.

These upgrades will vastly improve the user experience for the current Google Nest cameras and give us hope that future security cameras from Google will be more streamlined and effective.