Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Simplest setup I've ever experienced in over 25 years of wrestling with technology. 2 minutes to setup and you can view video on your smartphone from anywhere in the world. No messing with your router or port forwarding etc. No video recorder needed, just this little white egg. The phone app is good and the Windows client viewer is just ok. Took a little while to figure out that for the Windows client software, you need to enter the UID as "Search device in LAN" doesn't work for these cameras. But the smartphone setup, which is all that most people will use is wicked simple and fast. These are Peer 2 Peer cameras. That's what makes them so incredibly simple to setup and use. Unfortunately, there is a downside to P2P technology in that there are slight potential for security risks to your home network should a hacker gain access to your camera. The P2P setup punches a hole thru your firewall and opens a port which could potentially be exploited. Having a strong password for your camera goes a long way towards strong security but it isn't 100%. Two security risks exist. First, the obvious is that if someone hacks in, they can view what your camera sees. Depending on what you're monitoring, that may or may not be the worst thing in the world. Secondly however is the potential for a hacker to gain access to the code in your camera, reprogram it and turn it into a bot on your network to do great harm. That potential certainly exists for all P2P cameras. How vulnerable each system is will be completely unknown to us consumers. Not trying to scare anyone away from P2P cameras, just be informed and do a little research on how these things work. Many professionals who install cameras for a living absolutely recommend you do not use them due to the security risks and there have been cases of hijacked P2P cameras in sensitive installations. Of course their warnings need to be taken in the context of their business interests. All in all, picture quality is very good and you can select 1080p, 720p or a lower rez mode called 'fluent' which is still very functional for quick basic viewing and only uses about 200Kb per second of bandwidth which is great for weaker wifi signals, cameras far from the router or if you've been ratcheted down to 3G speeds. 135 degree lens gives you a wide viewing angle. Night vision is good. Camera stays off until you open the app on your smartphone at which point the camera will stay on for live viewing, snapshots or video grabs. When you turn your smartphone screen off, the camera turns off immediately in response. This is cool and excellent predictable behavior. You can set up motion detection sensitivity, low-mid-high and the amount of recording time once motion is detected. Recordings are stored on the micro sim card and can be pulled up at anytime. With the Windows client open, you can take snapshots or recordings and they are saved directly to your PC's hard drive. And the best for last.... NO WIRES. Seriously wireless. I have one in a flower bed right now and they are pretty waterproof with the rubber sleeve. Looks like you can easily get a month out of a full battery charge if there is not a lot of motion recording. I'll probably add the solar panel for some applications. It's not a perfect system, but if you are sick and tired of buying a new piece of technology, jacking around with it for hours or days, googling endlessly to figure out how to get the thing to work, becoming a short term expert on the thing only to forget almost everything you've learned in 6 months when the thing quits working and you need to troubleshoot it, this is the camera for you.