Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd gen) Review: Nearly There
Our full Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd gen) review after two weeks of testing: measured performance, battery figures, and whether it is worth £179.
Priya Raghunathan
The verdict, briefly
The Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd gen) is Google's 2024 entry in a crowded smart Home Devices market, and at £179 it is competing against some of the strongest hardware we have tested. After a fortnight of daily use, the headline is straightforward: it delivers a tall 3:4 view that shows parcels on the doorstep.
In a sentence: Buy it for a tall 3:4 view that shows parcels on the doorstep. Think twice if this would bother you daily: event history beyond three hours needs a subscription.
Design and build
There is nothing experimental here, which is mostly to the Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd gen)'s credit. The detail worth calling out is that the taller aspect ratio is the single most useful thing about it. Against the rest of the smart Home Devices category it feels considered rather than novel.
What it can do
Our testing runs the same suite on every device so figures stay comparable across years. The figure worth quoting is Storage: 3 hours free, subscription for more. That places it comfortably above average for its price bracket.
| Specification | Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd gen) |
|---|---|
| Video | 1440p HDR, 3:4 aspect |
| Field of view | 166 degrees |
| Power | Wired, 16-24VAC |
| Storage | 3 hours free, subscription for more |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent a month installed in a real home, not a bench. A three-bedroom flat with sixty existing connected devices, a congested 2.4GHz band, and deliberate router reboots to see what recovers on its own.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Response time | Command to physical action, measured a hundred times across the day, reported as a median and a worst case. |
| Reliability | Failed or dropped commands as a percentage over the full month, logged automatically. |
| Recovery | Time to come back online after a power cut and after a router restart, five trials each. |
| Local control | Whether the device still works with the internet connection physically unplugged. |
| Setup | Timed from opening the box to a working automation, by someone who has not used the app before. |
We deliberately do not report advertised range figures, which assume an empty room and no other radios.
The honest caveat: Every home’s radio environment is different. Reliability here is a strong signal, not a guarantee.
The strengths
- A tall 3:4 view that shows parcels on the doorstep
- On-device package and person detection
- Three hours of history without paying
Taken together, those strengths make it a natural fit for households expecting deliveries who want reliable package alerts.
Where it falls short
- Event history beyond three hours needs a subscription
- Wired install only
- No local recording option
None of these are dealbreakers on their own. Whether they matter depends entirely on how you intend to use it, which is why the section below matters more than the score.
How it compares
The closest alternatives on price are Eufy S3 Pro Cam and Ecobee Smart Thermostat. All three have been through the same tests, so the figures below are directly comparable rather than collected from different reviews.
| Model | Price | Our score | Standout | Weak point |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd gen) (this review) | £179 | 4 / 5 | A tall 3:4 view that shows parcels on the doorstep | Event history beyond three hours needs a subscription |
| Eufy S3 Pro Cam | £219 | 4 / 5 | Local storage with no subscription at all | A bulky housing |
| Ecobee Smart Thermostat | £219 | 4 / 5 | Remote sensors that average temperature across rooms | Fiddly installation on older systems |
Nothing at this price scored higher in our testing, which is the strongest argument for the Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd gen).
Is it worth the money?
At £179 the Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd gen) undercuts the category average of £254 by £75, against an average score of 3.9 out of 5 across the smart Home Devices we have tested. Its own 4 works out at roughly £45 per point. That is the straightforward case: above-average result, below-average price.
If the budget is the binding constraint, the Meross Smart Plug Mini at £12 is the floor we would still recommend — below that the compromises stop being ones you can live with.
Living with it
Two weeks in, the figure that stopped mattering was video — 1440p HDR, 3:4 aspect is more than adequate and you forget about it by the third day. What kept surfacing instead was that event history beyond three hours needs a subscription, which is easy to shrug off in a spec comparison and harder to ignore at 6pm on a Friday. On the other side, the taller aspect ratio is the single most useful thing about it turns out to be the sort of detail you only appreciate after living with the alternative.
Who it suits
Buy the Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd gen) if you are households expecting deliveries who want reliable package alerts. Skip it if this is something you would notice every day: event history beyond three hours needs a subscription.
Buy it if:
- Households expecting deliveries who want reliable package alerts
- You want a tall 3:4 view that shows parcels on the doorstep
- You value on-device package and person detection
Skip it if:
- You need event history beyond three hours needs a subscription to be a solved problem
- The Eufy S3 Pro Cam at £219 already covers what you need
- You upgraded within the last two years — the gap is not worth the outlay
Verdict
Buy it for a tall 3:4 view that shows parcels on the doorstep. Think twice if this would bother you daily: event history beyond three hours needs a subscription.
Score: 4 / 5 · £179 at the time of writing.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the smart home we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd gen) vs Aqara Hub M3: Is the Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd gen) Worth £60 More? and Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd gen) vs Aqara Presence Sensor FP2: Is the 2024 Model Worth the Change?.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
