Review on 🏠 Secure Your Home with Wansview 1080P Outdoor Security Camera - Motion Detection, Night Vision, 2-Way Audio, WiFi, Alexa Compatible – Pack of 4 (White) by Brent Borseth

There's a lot to like about these cameras. The picture quality is excellent. The microphone is quite sensitive and the speakers can be easily dismantled. With a micro SD card (up to 128GB) you can record any activity on any schedule you set without a cloud service subscription. The settings for motion alerts and map storage are completely separate, giving you more flexibility when using this camera. I did all my testing without having a subscription to their cloud storage, so I can't comment on this service other than not needing to get a good return on investment from these cameras. The app works well with a phone connected to the same LAN via 5G (I used a smart steering router where both wireless connections have the same SSID). Initial camera setup is fairly easy, ESPECIALLY if you're starting with a phone connected to the same 2.4G Wi-Fi SSID that you plan to use for the cameras once they're set up. If you have multiple access points with different SSIDs, you should use the one closest to the camera's final location. For testing, I placed several of these cameras in my living room, where activity produces an almost constant recording of 8 hours at a time. Day. The daily cost of this takes up about 2.5 GB of storage space. This means that even in this demanding location, the 32G card will last a full week or more before filling up. With typical outdoor use, a 128G card will last LONG without being filled. Settings allow you to stop when the card is full or permanently overwrite the earliest files, and you can easily format the card from within the app. But it does bring with it one of this camera's minor annoyances - accessing the memory card to remove or replace it is NOT a simple process, so it's good that most things can be done without touching the camera. Any individual video clip, group of clips or still images can be easily downloaded from the memory card to your phone, but you cannot select more than 10 minutes at a time, so if you want to archive the entire contents of the card, access to the card will be a problem! But in normal operation I don't see that as a problem. When motion alerts are enabled for the camera, a 10-second clip is sent to the cloud server for each motion event, and the memory card in the camera can also record a video snapshot of the entire motion event (unlimited in time). You can set specific schedules for both card storage and notifications, and access two different sets of data through different parts of the app. Without a subscription, the 10 second alert clips are only available for two days, but if you go through the 'Replay' feature, the recorded video clips will remain available as long as they are on the card. If motion alerts are not enabled for a period of time, the 10-second clip or phone alert will not be received, but the camera will still record the motion event to the memory card when this schedule is enabled. For real-time surveillance, these cameras are almost ideal. , but real-world motion detection is a bit inconsistent. The actual distance for a successful traffic trigger is typically around 20 feet (human walking), but I've had traffic alerts for cars in my driveways starting at 60 feet or more. The motion trigger is also triggered every time the lighting changes, e.g. B. when a headlight or car headlights are turned on in a driveway (or even at dusk). The camera seems to pause for a second or two. So when an event occurs, it keeps a recording starting immediately BEFORE the trigger is fired, and nothing is skipped. The hypersensitivity of these cameras to any close movement of the beetle or the touch of objects. Lens is a problem. This is a particularly big problem when using the automatic night vision feature, which includes a ring of red LEDs around the lens. These LEDs stay on CONSTANTLY in low light, not just while driving, and these LEDs seem to attract moths, gnats and pretty much anything alive, creating a great deal of unwanted warning. After-dark motion alerts don't require automatic night vision, but without it (or another light source) the recorded motion event is just black. I've found that a simple motion-activated spotlight mounted next to the camera is a good solution: not only is the floodlight's motion sensor more robust and reliable than the in-camera sensor, but turning on the light triggers a motion event even when the camera does not recognize it! And as an added benefit, the lack of Auto Night Vision means the camera will record in full color with the headlights on and be able to see anything in the light with no distance limitations. I have not tested these cameras with any third party software or applications. The Wansview Android cloud app is functional but a little cumbersome to use, and it annoys me that you constantly have to ignore attempts to trick you into buying a subscription to their cloud service. It's also quite heavy on the phone's battery; My current Android phone easily lasts 4 days on a single charge, but leaving this app open and playing with it regularly for these tests drains the battery in a day. There's also a Wansview Cloud app for PC, but this software is COMPLETELY USEFUL for anything other than watching the camera in real time (and it doesn't even do that). Another complaint I have is that there is little to no documentation on setting up the camera or software. The printed material is only good for the initial setup of the camera, but after that you're completely on your own to research and test things through trial and error. The manufacturer informs me that they are working on updating this documentation. When I had strange issues with my camera, they were very quick to respond and immediately sent me a replacement. Finally, a full disclosure: I was asked to test and review these cameras after posting a somewhat positive review of their W4 camera. I believe I've done extensive testing and an honest review here, which should be helpful to any potential buyer.