NEST OUTDOOR 2 PACK Google Nest Cam Outdoor 2-Pack - 1st

I've owned the Nest system for years. When it came out I purchased the doorbell camera and two outdoor cameras as well as two thermostats. I was very pleased with the system all the way around. Several years later Google purchased Nest and instituted their own log-in. The problems began there. The Google Log-in drops my connection after a few minutes which prevents me from monitoring the cameras in real-time or being able to respond to someone at my door. Google has never addressed this despite multiple service requests and thousands of complaints. Fast forward several years and I decided to add a couple of cameras and another thermostat. The thermostat and indoor camera installed just fine though you have to use the Google Home app now in order to install and use them. Next I went to add a camera to my front yard. This required a somewhat difficult installation on a ladder. Everything went fine until I mounted the camera and lost the signal. I had connected it to my wifi via the wrong SSID (from a network repeater in another part of the house) by accident. Under the Nest app this would be a 5 second fix. Just open the app, go to the camera, settings, wifi and change the network name. Boom, done. Google will not allow you to do this. Instead, I have to get the ladder back out and take the camera down. Complete a full factory reset on it. Then I can run the install process again, climb the ladder again and remount the camera. This is absurd. Less than 2 weeks later the camera is routinely dropping connection. Nothing in my network has changed. Within another few days the battery is dead. So I got the camera down and charged it overnight. The app confirmed that the battery was fully charges. I placed it back on my mount and it would not connect, at all. Fast forward several days and I have thoroughly tested the extender. It is working perfectly and has range far beyond where the camera is mounted. The camera still will not connect so I performed a factory reset. Everything worked as expected for an hour or so. The camera lost connection after that and I was unable to get it to reconnect despite repeated attempts. The extender is still broadcasting correctly and other devices can connect to it easily. Twelve hours later still no connection and the app wont even try to connect. It thinks the camera is conserving battery power or that the battery is dead. Tha camera "fell asleep" and there is no way to awaken it using the app. You have to remove it from its mount and then return it to the mount. I moved the extender a little further from the router and a little closer to the camera. The extender worked just fine for my phone and laptop. However, I was still unable to get the app to awaken the camera. It was sound asleep. I unmounted the camera and remounted it to wake it up. And this time it saw the extender and connected. It's about 4 feet away and though it does connect, it's very poor and keeps dropping the signal every few seconds. Meanwhile my phone and laptop maintain a strong connection and have fantastic wifi performance. Within 20 minutes the camera had dropped the connection completely and gone back to sleep with no signs of waking or trying to reconnect. Completely dead. Beware Google wifi products. This one sucks. Likes: Reasonable price. Reasonable resolution. Reasonable solution for recording and saving clips as needed. Dislikes: The Google Home App is awful. It's terribly convoluted and difficult to use. The Nest app was logical and well laid out so in comparison, the Home app really disappoints. What's worse is that in several years Google has not updated the app to correct the shortcomings. The mounting process is really, really poorly designed. You have to screw a baseplate to the wall. Then you have to mount another mount to it using a recessed bayonet mounting system. It's hard to connect them and there's no way to get a good grip on the second mount in order to twist-lock the mount in place. Connection is extremely unreliable. Battery life is short. All in all, very disappointing for something you need to rely on for your safety.