If you own a Nest Camera, you only get its most useful features by subscribing to Nest Aware. But you had to purchase a separate subscription for every camera, even the Nest Hello doorbell. That quickly added up, even on the cheapest $5 a month plan. Nest Aware's new pricing covers all your cameras in one subscription. But the most affordable plan loses 24/7 recording.
Old Versus New
What the old Nest Aware plan, your Nest Cameras recorded everything all day long, and not just event videos. How much you paid determined how far back you could go in your history. For $5 a month, you got five days of recordings. You could step up to $30 a month to see 30 days of store video. Anyway you went, you had access to 24/7 recordings.
But again, that pricing was per camera, including the Nest Hello doorbell. If you have just one Nest camera, that might seem fine. But if you own a Nest Hello, a Nest Indoor Camera, and a Nest Outdoor camera, that suddenly became a lot more expensive.
Now, Google's new Nest Aware subscription pricing covers you whole home. You have two choices, $6 a month or $12 a month. Either one covers every Nest camera you own, but the $6 plan doesn't include 24/7 recording.
Instead, you'll get 30 days of "event video history." That means you'll only see a video when an event, like a sound or person detection, triggers. If you want 24/7 recording, you'll need to step up to the $12 a month plan, which grants you 60 days of event video history and ten days of 24/7 history. That's less history than the old Nest Aware's most expensive plan, but it also costs less than half as much.
Grandfathered Plans
Still, there is good news if you're currently subscribing to a $5 a month option with 24/7 video storage (or any other previous Nest Aware plan). Google says you can stay on your plan (at least until the company changes its mind). However, you can't add any cameras to Nest Aware without first migrating to a Google account (if you haven't already) and switching to the new Nest Aware plans.
As long as your plan needs don't change, you're good. But as soon as you add another Nest camera to your mix, you have a decision to make. Sometimes making things simpler also makes them harder, and this is one of those cases.
Source: Google