Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I wish I could get a refund. I have three Nest Cams, and these cameras constantly register false alarms to the point of me simply turning them off. They run burning hot, as well. I have numerous Nest protects and Nest thermostats, and they are great, but the Nest Cam is a horrible product crippled by Google Greed. Over two years, you can either have a single Nest camera+two years of Nest Aware subscriptions, or FIVE Arlo cameras, plus $40 left in your wallet. Are you better covered by one corded camera, or five cordless cameras that can be placed anywhere? I now have two Netgear Arlo units, as well. Zero false alarms (they have an actual heat-based motion sensor instead of the Nest ghetto-hack of using the camera sensor to detect motion, which is triggered by anything from falling leaves to birds casting shadows through windows as they fly.) Just as important, Arlo gives you a WEEK of streaming recording for FREE. Got motion triggered? You can look it up on the Arlo site, and you can even download the offending video if you need it later (or if it's a cute video of something you want to keep, which is more often the case). You can pay Google...er Alphabet more money (anywhere from $100 to $300 per year, forever) to get the ability to hopefully reduce false alarms and video storage, or they could just make their stuff suck less without bleeding all of us for more cash. If you don't pay their ransom, the cameras are essentially useless. You can't even see a still picture of what triggered the motion alert! Deviously, the free trial ends just as the return period ends, so you're stuck with this piece of crap. There's also the question of if you want Google/Alphabet to hear and see everything in your house. They claim that cameras turned off don't transmit anything, but they sure run hot for something that is just waiting for an online wakeup call. Given the high end of $300 Nest/Google wants per year for Nest Aware subscriptions, you should ask yourself if you would be safer and better covered by one Nest ($199 + $300) or THREE Arlo cameras ($159 + $150 + $150, all with 7 days of free motion recording). By year two of suffering through constant Nest false alarms, you could have bought two more Arlo cameras for the $300 Nest Aware subscription. There's of course the much better Arlo motion detection, as well, because staring at hours of motionless footage isn't especially useful. Over two years, then, you can either have one Nest camera+two years of Nest Aware subscriptions, or FIVE Arlo cameras, plus $40 left in your wallet. Do you really think one Nest Cam is going to cover you better than five Arlo cameras? Keep in mind that the Arlo cameras have no wires, are weatherproof for indoor/outdoor use, and don't get hot enough to fry an egg on. They can also be used with rechargeable batteries. If you have your wifi router and Arlo base on a battery backup (~$100), Arlo cams will keep recording even if the power is cut (vs putting every single Nest Cam on a separate UPS... add another ~$100 per Nest plus the ~$100 for your router). Arlos are definitely not perfect (they should add an external USB port and an SD card slot for offline recording, and they should have more settings available on their website), but they are a 4.5 out of 5 vs the Nest's 1 out of 5. iPhone and iPad users, you should also know that the Nest app is broken and doesn't stream video about 40% of the time. Instead, you get a lovely blue spinner when you're frantically trying to check what false alarm the Nest Cam is sending you. Is that a big surprise from the company that also owns Android? Nest reps, I'd be thrilled to send these three back to you for a refund.