Later this month, Nest will launch three new home security cameras and one video doorbell, refreshing its entire lineup. But while the devices themselves look great, with cleaner designs and more features than before, such as battery backup and local storage, what excited me most about Nest's announcement is that the company's video storage and subscription plans have changes.

Anyone who purchases a new camera or doorbell now has access to three hours of event recording, people, animal, vehicle, and luggage detection, and custom activity zones for free.

Previously, anyone wishing to store video from a Nest doorbell or security camera had to subscribe to the Nest Aware plan, which starts at $6 per month. Similarly, if additional features such as person or package detection were needed, additional fees would apply.

Such arrangements are not unheard of, and industry leaders Arlo, Blink, and Ring also require subscribers to a monthly plan if they want to store video. The exceptions are Canary and Wyze, which offer limited cloud storage for free; some of Eufy's cameras and video doorbells have local storage, but to store anything in the cloud requires a minimum $2.99/month subscription.

Admittedly, three hours of cloud storage isn't much, but it's better than what we had before. And the free person and package detection also makes the new Nest doorbell an even more attractive buy.

I see: subscription services are a recurring revenue stream, with companies generating revenue beyond the point of purchase. But between the best streaming services and cloud storage of photos, we are subscribed to death. So while it's not a lot of money, it's nice to get something back.

According to Nest, one of the reasons they were able to extend the free feature is that the camera has built-in local storage, enough for three hours for now. If you don't have to use your own cloud resources, you're not really losing anything.

Now that Nest is offering these features free to users and shaking up the best cloud storage plans for security cameras, it will be interesting to see if Arlo and Ring follow suit. Arlo used to offer 7 days of free video storage, but that ended with the Arlo Pro 2 camera. However, it is still available on the Arlo Baby monitor.

We don't expect companies to suddenly make everything free, but it's nice to see that consumers are at least getting something back.