Google nest doorbell (wired) review: A discreet and stylish smart doorbell thrumming with security features

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Smart doorbells effectively turn your phone into a virtual peephole, which you can peer through no matter where in the world you are (so long as you’ve got an internet connection). They let you chat with your postman from a beach in Marbella, or ask your takeaway guy to leave your food on the doormat when you can’t quite muster the energy to peel yourself off the sofa.

As well as keeping you on top of deliveries, smart doorbells also act as security cameras to help deter burglars and any other sketchy business unfolding on your doorstep. They can send notifications when they detect motion, can alert you when a package is delivered or collected, and even be trained to recognise familiar faces so that you get a heads up when your family and friends arrive.

Since acquiring Nest in 2014, Google has gradually folded the company into its ranks to bolster its growing smart home offering. And the Google nest doorbell comes in a wired (£229, Google.com) and battery-powered version (£179.99, Google.com), though the two products differ in ways besides simply how they’re powered. While the battery-powered model is newest device in the range, the wired model is a rebranded version of the older, original Nest Hello doorbell.

This means both doorbells offer slightly different features, but whichever you choose you can unlock extra functionality with a £5 or £10 per month Nest Aware subscription. This always-on, cloud-based service stores recordings online using your home’s wi-fi connection, so that even if somebody damages or destroys your doorbell to cover their tracks, the footage is safely locked away online in your Google account.

Google and Amazon both offer rival smart home gadgets, and they more or less refuse to play nicely with one another. While it’s possible to use a Google Nest doorbell with an Amazon Echo device, or a Ring doorbell with a Google Nest speaker, both companies have designed their smart doorbells to work best with their own tech. So, unfortunately, if you’ve already invested in Amazon-powered smart home, the decision of which doorbell to go for has effectively been made for you already.

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We installed the Google nest doorbell (wired) at our tester’s home and explored functionality with and without the premium features of Nest Aware. Our tester has some basic DIY skills – “I own a set of Allen keys and could probably put up a shelf,” they said – and managed to wire the doorbell into their old doorbell spot without any problems. During testing we took deliveries while out of the house, used the two-way audio to answer the door remotely, and even spotted a peculiar person wandering around somewhere they shouldn’t. Here’s what we make of the device overall.

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Google’s wired doorbell is a well-designed piece of home tech, sticking closely enough to traditional doorbell design so as to not bamboozle any hapless vistors. The neat, black lozenge shape is sleek and distinctive, and features a gentle white ring-light surrounding the button itself to make it abundantly obvious to guests which bit they’re supposed to press.

The camera is recessed into the device and sealed beneath the outer casing to keep it safe from the elements. This has the added effect of making the camera a little more discreet than another smart doorbells – something to take into consideration if you don’t want your front door to look like the entrance to Fort Knox.

That said, it’s still obvious enough to anyone standing in front of it – which is both a courtesy to your visitors, and a deterrent to any ne’er-do-wells. But overall the Google nest doorbell is muted and subtle enough to seamlessly blend in with the front of most homes.

The Google nest doorbell (wired) doesn’t have a battery and – just in case the name didn’t give it away – needs to be wired into your existing doorbell to work. This isn’t as tricky a DIY job as it might sound. If you own a drill and you can find your fusebox in the dark, you’ll be fine. The package comes with all the drill bit, screws, rawl plugs and wire extenders you need to install everything yourself, and the job takes less than 20 minutes.

A comprehensive step-by-step video guide walks you through the entire process, from turning off power at the fusebox and detaching your old doorbell, to wiring in the new one and rigging up a small device to your chime box in the hallway (you get to keep your existing ding-dong, if you like).

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The doorbell slots securely into a metal mount, which can be slightly angled using an optional wedge to ensure the camera is pointing in the right direction, and because the mount is affixed to the wall with a pair of deep screws it’s as firmly attached to your wall as your old doorbell was.

That said, removing the doorbell from its mount is as easy as pushing a paperclip into a small hole on the underside of the device, like removing a SIM card from a phone. As simple as it is to detach, the Google nest doorbell is unlikely to be a target for thieves. Not only is it literally a recording device, which backs up remotely to the cloud, but the doorbell is worthless without the matching chime box attachment inside the hallway. The doorbell is also tied to your Google or Nest account, so it can be bricked remotely if reported stolen.

Confusingly, whether Google will replace a stolen doorbell for free depends on if you’ve bought the wired or the battery-powered version. The wired doorbell is only freely replaced in the US and Canada, whereas the newer Google nest doorbell (battery) can be replaced for free in any country where the product is sold, which includes UK.

In summary, if you suspect your fancy new doorbell is at risk of being swiped by some particularly dim local thieves, the battery-powered version of the Google nest doorbell might be your better option.

As we’ve already mentioned, the Google nest doorbell (wired) connects to your home’s wi-fi network, allowing you to view a live feed of your doorstep from anywhere in the world so long as you have an internet connection. And yes, this is precisely as exciting as it sounds.

Read more: Blink vs Ring – which doorbell camera system is best?

Two-way audio lets you hear and reply to the person outside your door, which has a number of useful applications. Most obviously it’s a major security feature. If you’re away you can respond to anyone who rings your bell as though you’re at home, and while a modern burglar is probably savvy enough to know that you’re not actually too busy polishing your collection of antique baseball bats to get to the front door, simply knowing you’ve clocked them is an effective deterrent.

There are more mundane uses for two-way audio too, such as asking your postie to pop your ASOS delivery into a wheelie bin or leave a parcel with a neighbour. In our testing, we had a courier leave a package in a secure spot while we’d popped out to a corner shop. Voices aren’t terribly clear and there’s a significant delay when chatting, but its loud and audible enough to carry on a short conversation without having to repeat yourself.

Sounds and motion are picked up as “events” and stored for three hours as static images in the Nest app. If you opt for the £5 per month Nest Aware subscription, these events are saved as full video clips that you can rewatch for up to 30 days. If you upgrade to Nest Aware Plus for £10 per month, you get 10 days of 24/7 video history, so you can easily rewind time to see everything that went down in front of your door.

Helpfully, once the Google nest doorbell is installed, you can choose to keep your old chime. This means that pressing the button will make the doorbell ring just as it normally would (while still sending you notifications and live video feed over the internet) so that even if all of your various smart devices go offline in some catastrophic worldwide internet outage, you’ll still be able to tell that the Tesco delivery guy is at the door.

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There’s also a “quiet mode” feature, which disables your regular doorbell for a few hours, but still sends a notification to your phone and other Google Home devices around the house. Anyone who’s ever stuck a post-it note on the doorbell warning the Uber Eats guy to not wake up the baby will immediately know what this feature is for.

It has a high-definition HDR camera with a wide-angle 160-degree field-of-view and an automatic night-vision mode. That means you’re getting sharp pictures in both broad daylight as well as at night, even without a porch or security light. Faces are clearly visible, and if you opt for the paid subscription you can enable facial recognition to send you detailed alerts about familiar friends and family at the door.

If you have any Google nest hub devices with screens, they’ll all switch to a live feed from your front door as soon as the doorbell is pressed and present you with an option to speak to whoever’s there, just like an intercom. We found this useful for those frantic moments when you need a few seconds to pop a dressing gown on before you answer the door, but don’t want your delivery person to wander off.

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A Nest Aware subscription also unlocks “activity zones”. These let you select areas of the live feed you want to be alerted about when motion is detected. Google’s example is tracking a cookie jar on the kitchen counter, but on your doorstep you could create an activity zone right on the threshold of your porch so that you only receive alerts when somebody is within a certain distance of your door. This will be useful if you live on a busy street with pedestrians strolling past the camera all day. Though we sadly couldn’t test this feature in the real world, as moving our tester’s flat to the high street proved impractical.

The Google nest doorbell (wired) is an excellent smart doorbell for those who want slightly better image quality than the battery-powered version (£179.99, Google.com), as well as having the option of keeping hold of the last 10 days of footage from your doorstep with the paid subscription. The basic features (those you get without a monthly subcription to Nest Aware) are well-rounded and enable all of the essential functionality you really need in a doorbell: two-way conversations, motion alerts, and viewing a live video feed at any time.

However, if you don’t have an existing wired doorbell you can replace, or you want three hours of recordings without paying for a subscription, you might be better served by Google’s newer rechargable doorbell. The Google nest doorbell (battery) can be installed anywhere, only needs charging every couple of months, and can continue recording even during a powercut.

If your smart home setup skews more towards Amazon Echo devices, you’ll be better served by the similarly feature-rich Ring doorbell.