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The first thing you notice about Google's Amazon Echo killer is how small it is. The second is that it actually looks pretty good. 

In fact, Google Home, which isn't much taller than the company's larger Pixel phone, looks better than most Bluetooth speakers and far better than Amazon's Echo. It's sleek and mostly white, though it comes with swappable bases. If it weren't for the LED lights that look like patterns for Google Assistant, you could easily forget it's a Google product. 

There is only one button on Google Home, a mute button on the back that stops its always-on listening. Everything else, however, is controlled via the touchpad on top of the speaker or through voice commands, which you initiate by saying "OK Google."

The speaker itself has a range of about 10 to 15 feet, according to Google, so its mics should be able to cover most medium-sized rooms, though I didn't get a chance to test it out at a distance. The touchpad on top controls the volume and music playback and you can also hold it down to say a command if you don't feel like saying "OK Google." 

The speaker gets surprisingly loud for its size. The demo space wasn't exactly quiet but the speaker didn't sound underpowered. I'm not an audiophile by any means but the music played through Google Home sounded at least as good (if not better) than the Amazon Echo.

Additionally, if you have a soundbar or other speaker setup you already like, you can connect it to Google Home via a Chromecast Audio (the speaker doesn't support Bluetooth). This could be a decent workaround for those who want the convenience of Google Home without giving up their existing speaker. 

The brains of the speaker are powered by Google Assistant, the same software baked into Google's new Pixel phones and its messaging app Allo. And you can use many of the same commands with Google Home as you can with the Assistant in other products. 

Google Home can provide calendar and flight info, news headlines, sports scores, translations, directions and answers to simple queries like "When is the sunrise?" or "How old is the president of the United States?" 

But Google stopped short of integrating all of its services into it. For example, it can scan your inbox for flight information but it can't read you your emails (at least, not yet). It can tell you about what's on your calendar but can't add a new event to it. Some of this will likely change over time but I could easily see how it could get frustrating to not have access to more of your Google services.

Home will also work with third-party services, though Google has only announced a handful so far, including Spotify, Pandora, IFTTT and Phillips. This too will likely ramp up in the coming months once the device goes on sale. 

But, at $129, Google Home looks to be a more than able Amazon Echo competitor. As good as the Echo is, it's far easier to make the case for having access to Google search and services in your home than Amazon shopping (as convenient as it is).

And, unlike Google's Pixel phones, it comes at a price that will be hard to beat.

Seeing is safety.

I live in a relatively safe neighborhood, but some years ago, my home was burglarized. The thieves broke in through the back door. Since then, we’ve been more vigilant about locked doors and windows and installed a Nest Dropcam indoors to keep an eye on our house. It does a great job of showing my open-floor-plan kitchen, dining room and den, but is of no use for the space outside my home.

Nest Cam Outdoor takes everything that’s good about Nest Cam — easy setup, anywhere-in-the-world access and cloud-based footage recording - and adds in weatherproofing. It is an excellent addition to the Nest family of smart home devices.

What you get

For all the ways it's similar to Nest Cam, Nest Cam Outdoor looks nothing like its indoor predecessor. The $199 device is a 2.8-in.-by-3.5-in. candy-drop-shaped, all-white device. On the relatively flat front, behind protective glass, are the 1080p camera and an array of 8 night-vision LEDs. There are some tiny holes on the device for the speaker and microphone. Near that is the a single, flat power cord. It ends in a USB jack that plugs into a round AC/DC adapter. The jack side features a special cover that slides over the jack and locks onto the adapter. On the other side of the adapter runs the remaining 25 feet of power cable, which ends in a standard three-prong plug.

Nest Cam Outdoors ships with the same kind of precise and helpful installation instructions found in all other Nest smart home products, which is important since without visible attachment holes and hooks on the Nest Cam Outdoors, it’s not immediately obvious how you’re supposed to attach it to your home.

Nest makes ample use of magnets to secure and adjust the Nest Cam Outdoor. The device itself is magnetic and it ships with a magnetic base that’s curved to perfectly marry to the Nest Cam Outdoor’s smooth backside. That base also attaches magnetically to the thin metal plate that’s used to secure the security cam to your home.

While the device comes with all the hardware necessary to attach not only the plate but all the wiring to your home, I was more than a little concerned about screwing anything into the plastic siding of my house. 

However, before I even got to the installation, Nest recommended that I plug in the device while it was still indoors and connect it to my network. This was easy, especially because I already own a few Nest devices (two thermostats, Nest Protect and the aforementioned Nest Dropcam) and simply added this one to my account by scanning in, through my iPhone’s camera and the Nest app, the QR code on the Nest Cam Outdoor. Within a few minutes, I could see what the Nest Cam Outdoor can see through the Nest mobile app.

Nest smartly advises homeowners to try the Nest Cam Outdoors in a number of spots before the full installation. This entailed me climbing a ladder repeatedly while holding the web cam and my phone and trying not to die. My goal was to get all of my small, 40-foot-wide backyard and the steps leading up to my back door into the frame. Nest Cam Outdoor has a 130-degree field of view, so this turned out to be quite easy.

Eventually, I found a spot just above and to the left of my screen door that fit the bill. This had the added benefit of allowing me to hide a good portion of the power cable behind the aluminum edging that runs around the screen door. (To be honest, I was trying to install Nest Cam Outdoor without fully installing it since it’s a review unit I have to return when I’m done.)

Once I settled on the right spot, I attached the metal plate to my house, put the magnetic cradle on top of that and then attached the Nest Cam Outdoor. These are incredibly powerful magnets. Nothing felt like it was going to move or fall off my house. In my tests, the security camera never moved. I also attached the AC/DC converter to my house and rolled up the excess power wire with the included Velcro strap. I had a lot of extra wire.

A watchful eye

Nest Cam Outdoor’s camera offers a clear, stutter-free video and surprisingly good audio. As soon as I started monitoring the backyard through the Nest app, I was startled by how clearly I could hear the birds and crickets. There’s also a speaker, which is useful if you get an alert someone is at the door and you want to talk to them or scare them away. The audio output is loud and very clear. In addition, the night vision offered a relatively sharp view of my entire backyard. 

The real power of the Nest Cam Outdoor system, though, is Nest’s cloud-based video storage and retrieval system and the software interface that lets you access it.

Instead of saving any video locally, Nest stores it all — instantly and securely — in the cloud. It marries that with a sensitive motion-detection system that can send you notifications and email alerts whenever it detects motion or a person (you do get different alerts for both, though Nest Cam Outdoor sometimes identified a cat as a person).

You can follow those alerts back to the app interface (or the effective Web-based interface), where you can scroll back through up to three hours of activity. Motion events are highlighted in the timeline with video thumbnails that you can click on and playback immediately. You can also simply scroll through the whole timeline and watch a sort of time-lapse playback of the day.

This video cache, though, is a rolling three hours. Everything older disappears, unless you pay $10 a month for Nest Aware (10-day history, $30 a month for 30-day video history access; everyone who buys a Nest Cam Outdoor gets a free 30-day Nest Aware trial). 

Nest Aware also adds a little more intelligence to your alerts, giving you the ability to set activity zones (you can only set this up through the Web Site Nest Home interface). Basically, this tells the system to pay special attention to certain areas. I chose a spot near my neighbor’s fence since I’m convinced he is secretly killing my Japanese Maple. Nest Aware also gives you the ability to save and share clips, though this too has to be done through the web site.

You can also set up location-aware recording (without Nest Aware). Nest Cam Outdoor will turn off when everyone who is attached to the account (family members with the app and access to the same account) is at home.

The cat's meow

After a week of watching my back yard, I learned that my neighborhood is pretty quiet day and night. I detected my wife when she stepped outside (she liked to turn around and wave to Nest Cam Outdoor) and I got an alert when the gardeners arrived in the backyard. No one unexpected approached my back door. I did learn, though, that a neighborhood calico cat is a frequent late night visitor. 

There is nothing to stop someone from cutting the power cable and ripping the Nest Cam Outdoor off my home. Of course, whatever happened in the moments leading up to that theft would already be in Nest’s cloud and I would probably already be looking at the alert.

There are other, wire-free options like the new $199 Canary Flex. It’s a slightly larger, 6-inch device with a smaller field of view (116-degrees of HD video), but that extra girth supports a lithium ion battery, which means truly wire-free operation. I hope to try that out in the future.

With Nest Cam Outdoor, Nest delivers another excellent piece of the smart home puzzle. It’s easy to set up and install (though I don’t know if they adequately accounted for the dead space behind typical vinyl siding), and offers high-quality, real-time video assurance that your home — at least what it can see of it — is secure. I do wish I had had it that day the burglars came.

Yes, I worry some about the wire and would love to see a wireless option, but then I would also have to remember to charge it on a regular basis. That’s an extra task I do not need.

If you already own a Nest product, Nest Cam Outdoor is a great addition. It’s also an equally good place to start adding some intelligence and security to your home.