Rlen

Review of Google

I bought a Nest Hello and spent a good 2 hours ins...

I bought a Nest Hello and spent a good 2 hours installing it and getting it to work right. I knew I would need a $50 - $300/year Nest Aware subscription for Familiar Face Alerts and 24/7 video recording. I was OK with that as I don't need these features.
Here's what Nest doesn't tell you in their advertising:

Without a subscription, you get NO video alerts at all. Not even the 10 seconds of video when someone approaches your door.

Instead, you get a single static image. It only captures a face about half the time.

Nest deletes the image forever only 3 hours after it's taken. So if you're on a plane, in a meeting, camping, sleeping and so on, you're just SOL.

There's a 30 minute non-adjustable "cool down" period after an alert during which you get no further alerts. So if the person steals your packages, breaks in to your home, etc, you get no alerts or images or anything about that activity. If they leave and someone else comes within 30 minutes, again you get no alerts.

This is outrageous to me. I've got a $230 security product that is heavily advertised as a security product, yet permanently deletes all security logs 3 hours after they happen and they don't mention a word of it in their marketing materials. Frankly, the advertising on this product is false and misleading.
I've historically been a fan of Nest. I have a dozen protects and two thermostats. However, this is obviously a blatant money grab for Nest Protect. I'm upset that I wasted my money supporting this first generation Nest product. Also, I can't even return it because they included a 30 day subscription to Aware and a 30 day return policy. So you don't know they're going to cripple your device until after the return policy has expired and you're stuck with it.