Google Nest cameras offer a couple of different video quality options, allowing you to choose how much of your internet connection is used by them to stream video. As you might expect, 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, older Nest cameras using the Nest app are set to the middle quality option, while the newer Nest cameras set up using the Google Home app are set to the High quality option by default, not Max.

You can easily change the quality in the Nest app and Google Home 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. The older 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.

For the slightly newer Nest cameras, like the Nest Cam (battery), Nest Cam Indoor (wired) and Nest doorbell (battery), you get two options of High and Max.

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.

For the cameras with two quality options, the High setting aims to use between 70GB and 200GB per month, with the Max setting aiming for between 100GB and 300GB 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 or Nest Video Doorbell (Battery), but you might find the lower setting is more than adequate for the Nest Cam Indoor (wired) 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, depending on whether you have the older Nest cameras setup with the Nest app, or the newer Nest cameras set up with the Google Home app.

For Nest Cams using the Googe Home app

  1. Open the Google Home app
  2. Tap on the Cameras icon
  3. Tap on the feed of the camera you want to change the video quality of 
  4. Tap on the settings cog in the top right
  5. Tap on Video
  6. Select Max or High
  7. Repeat steps 3-6 for each Nest camera

For Nest Cams using the Nest app

  1. Open the Nest app
  2. Tap on the Settings cog in the top right corner
  3. Scroll down to the Cameras section 
  4. Click on the camera you want to change the video quality of
  5. Scroll down to the Video section
  6. Click on 'Quality and bandwidth'
  7. Move the slider to your desired position, or tap on the circle of the setting you want
  8. Repeat steps 3-7 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.