Google Nest cameras offer a number of different video quality options, allowing you to choose how much of your internet connection is used by them to stream video. It probably goes without saying but the higher quality settings use more bandwidth, while the lower quality settings use less.
Whatever option you pick, your Nest camera and the Nest app will automatically adjust their resolution to work with the available bandwidth.
By default, Nest cameras are set to the middle quality option but you can easily change this in the Nest app, whether that’s increasing the quality or decreasing it and it’s possible to change the quality for each Nest camera individually. Here’s how.
Nest camera video quality options and how much bandwidth they use
It depends on the Nest camera you have as to what your video quality options are. Most of the Nest cameras offer three video quality settings: Low, High and one in between. The Nest Hello video doorbell, Nest Hub Max and the standard Nest cameras all have three options.
You get four options on the Nest Cam IQ and Nest Cam Outdoor IQ though, with an extra option in between Low and High.
In terms of bandwidth, the lowest setting on the cameras with three options aims to use 30GB of bandwidth per month. The middle option aims to use 120GB per month and the highest aims to use 300GB per month.
For the cameras with four quality options, the lowest setting aims to use 100GB per month, while the highest setting aims for 400GB per month, with each setting in between jumping up 100GB per month.
How to increase or decrease the quality of your Google Nest cameras
You might want the highest quality video on your Nest Hello, but you might find one of the middle settings or lowest setting is more than adequate for the Nest Cam IQ in your living room, for example.
In order to increase or decrease the quality of video from your Google Nest cameras, you’ll need to follow the steps below for each individual camera.
- Open the Nest app
- Scroll down to the Cameras section
- Click on the camera you want to change the video quality of
- Scroll down to the Video section
- Click on ‘Quality and bandwidth’
- Move the slider to your desired position, or tap on the circle of the setting you want
- Repeat steps 3-6 for each of your Nest cameras
If you’re looking for more ways to help you get the most out of your Nest cameras, we’ve got plenty of other tips and tricks in our separate features.