Enlarge / The indoor/outdoor, battery-powered (or wired) Google Nest Cam with battery.

Google's "Nest Aware" camera subscription is going through another round of price increases. This time it's for international users. There's no big announcement or anything, just a smattering of email screenshots from various countries on the Nest subreddit. 9to5Google was nice enough to hunt down a pile of the announcements .

Nest Aware is a monthly subscription fee for Google's Nest cameras. Nest cameras exclusively store all their video in the cloud, and without the subscription, you aren't allowed to record video 24/7. There are two sets of subscriptions to keep track of: the current generation subscription for modern cameras and the "first generation Nest Aware" subscription for older cameras. To give you an idea of what we're dealing with, in the US, the current free tier only gets you three hours of "event" video—meaning video triggered by motion detection. Even the basic $8-a-month subscription doesn't get you 24/7 recording—that's still only 30 days of event video. The "Nest Aware Plus" subscription, at $15 a month in the US, gets you 10 days of 24/7 video recording.

The "first-generation" Nest Aware subscription, which is tied to earlier cameras and isn't available for new customers anymore, is doubling in price in Canada. The basic tier of five days of 24/7 video is going from a yearly fee of CA$50 to CA$110 (the first-generation sub has 24/7 video on every tier). Ten days of video is jumping from CA$80 to CA$160, and 30 days is going from CA$110 to CA$220. These are the prices for a single camera; the first-generation subscription will have additional charges for additional cameras. The current Nest Aware subscription for modern cameras is getting jumps that look similar to the US, with Nest Aware Plus, the mid-tier, going from CA$16 to CA $20 per month, and presumably similar raises across the board.

Enlarge (credit: Alphabet)

Google's parent company, Alphabet, is launching a new company called " Renew Home ." The new company will pull in some other projects from Nest and the rest of Alphabet to become a supposed one-stop shop for power savings and clean energy usage. The core concept is partnering with power companies to obtain data about the current condition of the power grid and using that data to change consumer habits. The new company is bankrolled by Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP), an Alphabet venture capital firm.

The first existing service getting pulled into Renew Home is Nest Renew . This service for Nest Thermostats uses power company data to tell consumers how their electricity is being generated and what it costs. That data lets your thermostat do things like automatically shift heating and cooling to times of day when energy is cheaper or cleaner, and shows various reports about the cleanness of the energy you've been using. (Nest's feature that lets utility companies remotely take control of your thermostat, Rush Hour Rewards, does not seem to be part of Renew Home.)

Another Alphabet service being pulled into Renew Home is OhmConnect, which is the same basic idea as Nest's grid data-power thermostat adjustments but for more than just your thermostat. OhmConnect is compatible with a very small list of smart devices, like Nest-rival Ecobee and Honeywell thermostats, TL-Link's "Kasa" smart home system, and Tesla vehicles. The backbone of the service appears to be the in-house " OhmPlug " smart outlet, which can monitor the energy usage of anything that plugs into the wall. By seeing that you've turned these smart devices during peak usage times, OhmConnect offers people rewards like gift cards or cash for not using power when the grid is at capacity.

Enlarge / The Nest 2020 thermostat is getting Matter support, making it (theoretically) easier to control across multiple smart home platforms, including Apple's Home. (credit: Google)

A major piece of the smart home market now supports the Matter standard . The 2020 Nest Thermostat is the first smart thermostat to join in the slow-going wave and, in doing so, now works in an Apple Home system without additional bridges or hubs.

Take note that only the 2020 redesign of the Nest Thermostat will be updated with Matter support, starting today and rolling out "over the next few weeks," according to a Google Nest Community post . Google has said it is investigating Matter support for the more common Nest (3rd generation) Learning Thermostat and Nest Thermostat E (now mainly available in Europe). Let's hope it does, because the Learning Thermostat has the broadest compatibility across HVAC systems and is the one we see installed in most homes, at about a 100-to-zero rate versus the 2020 version.

If you have a newer Nest, your device will quietly absorb an over-the-air update at some point today or in the next few weeks. After that, you can control your Nest from multiple Matter-compliant systems. Nest already worked with Amazon's Alexa, Samsung's SmartThings, and, of course, Google's Home platform. But with Matter support, you can set it up to interact with other Matter-enabled devices, such as non-Nest temperature sensors or motion detectors.

Enlarge / A whole bunch of Google devices, including Android phones, can now control Matter devices. Those devices will be here at some point, perhaps soon. (credit: Google)

The promise of Matter —the future where smart-home devices easily nestle into your home, regardless of what other devices or speakers you use—just got a bit closer today. Google announced that Nest and Android devices are Matter-enabled, allowing them to set up and control other Matter devices—that mostly don't exist yet.

If your Android device runs version 8.1 or higher and has Google Play Service 22.48.14 or newer, you can use it to pair a Matter-compatible device with other Matter products and controllers. In these early post-launch Matter days , that means you can pair a few Eve devices that got their Matter firmware update three days ago. Or you can wait on a few Nanoleaf bulbs, some Level smart locks, or whatever else is to come. Nest devices that have quietly received their latest firmware updates can now be used to control that same (quite limited) set of devices.

The appeal of the moment is that you could, technically, use an Android phone to put an Eve device onto your Matter network, then use an iOS Home app, Samsung's SmartThings, or an Alexa speaker (when those are updated in early 2023) to actually control that device. Alternatively, devices you brought onto the network with an iOS device could be controlled from a Google Nest Hub or speaker or other Nest device.

Enlarge / The four Nest Wifi Pro colors you can buy for your bird's-egg-style connectivity. From left: Linen, Snow, Fog, Lemongrass. (credit: Google)

Google's Nest Wifi Pro system, previously seen at the Federal Communications Commission and in accidental retail listings , has been made official . The system expands the wireless powers of a Nest mesh system and adds Thread and Matter support, but it can't work with older Nest Wifi hardware.

The big upgrade in the Pro system is Wi-Fi 6E , which makes use of newer spectrum space in the 6–7 GHz band, along with the common 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. For those living in a crowded Wi-Fi environment, 6E could mean better, faster connections, though at reduced range and with less wall and floor penetration than 2.4 GHz. If you have very new devices that work with Wi-Fi 6E, you'll immediately see the change. For most of us, at the moment, 6E is more future-proofing than signal-boosting, though each device that uses the newer standard takes some load off the network.

Google says that Nest Wifi Pro's router unit ($199) can cover up to 2,200 square feet per piece, which is 200 questionable feet more than the Eero Pro 6E and has a theoretical top speed of 5.4Gbps. Notably, each Wifi Pro piece comes with two 1 Gbps Ethernet ports, not just the router, allowing for both wired backhaul between multiple units and for connecting select devices via Ethernet (likely with the addition of a network switch). That's an improvement over the prior Wi-Fi 5-based Nest Wifi, which was an otherwise all-around decent performer in our benchmark testing .

Enlarge / We can't show you Google's likely new Nest Wifi router because it's confidential. But "white" and "spherical" are pretty good bets. (credit: Google (video still) )

Google has a new device awaiting approval at the FCC, and all signs point to it being an updated Nest Wifi router that not only addresses the notable lack of Wi-Fi 6 on its last model but leapfrogs ahead to Wi-Fi 6E.

In FCC documents made available yesterday , Google asked the FCC to keep confidential its schematics and operational details, including an "Internal Proprietary Antenna Solution consisting of 6 antennas." As pointed out by Android Police , the fillings also show support for the 6 GHz frequencies of Wi-Fi 6E . There are also the standard 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, Bluetooth Low-Energy, and the 2.4 GHz frequencies that smart home connection standard Thread relies upon.

The model number—A4R-G6ZUC—is akin to other Nest products, and 9to5Google says it has confirmed that this is the number for the next Nest Wifi router.