The Local Security Camera
A Nest camera charges you around one hundred euros a year to watch your own footage.
Google's Nest Cam cannot save video anywhere except Google's cloud. To see anything older than the live view, you need a Nest Aware subscription. That plan reached ten euros a month in 2026. It cost five euros two years earlier. The price doubled while the camera on your wall stayed the same. You pay every month for as long as you want your recordings. Google alone sets the number.
A wired PoE security camera works the other way around. The Reolink RLC-810A sells for about ninety euros. It films in 4K. It records straight to a memory card or the home server you already own. There is no account and no monthly fee. One cable carries both the power and the video, so a single wall run keeps it going for years. When a part wears out you swap that part rather than the whole system.
Put the two paths side by side over ten years. The Nest route is a camera near one hundred euros. Then one hundred euros again every year to keep watching. That lands around eleven hundred euros. The footage vanishes from your reach the day you stop paying. The Reolink route is ninety euros for the camera and roughly thirty euros for a large memory card. That is one hundred and twenty euros, paid once. Everything it records sits at home on storage you control.
| Nest Cam + Nest Aware | Reolink PoE + card | |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware | ~€100 | ~€90 |
| Recording | €100 per year | €0, stored locally |
| Cost over 10 years | ~€1,100 | ~€120 |
| Where the footage lives | on Google's server | in your home |
The gap is close to a thousand euros. It widens with every price rise Google announces.
A subscription camera is a rental with a lens on the front. The company keeps your recordings and sets how long they survive. It lifts the fee whenever it chooses. Several brands have already put features their owners paid for behind a new paywall. A local camera answers to none of that. It carries on filming when the maker goes quiet or shuts the service down. A working Reolink or Hikvision unit still finds a buyer on Marktplaats years later. It comes with no account and no standing monthly bill. A cloud camera holds no such value, because a cloud camera without its subscription is a paperweight.
Buy the camera once. It is the only lens in the house that will never send you an invoice.
Own better.