Review on Petcube Interactive Monitoring App Enabled Security Cats by Charles Barney

I bought this to keep my cats busy when I was at work and to check on them from time to time. To start, I ordered rose gold and got it from Revain. After unpacking I wasn't able to set up the device. Something was wrong. I contacted Petcube support, they told me a few things and stated that the unit was defective and provided me with a replacement. Instead, I received a Silver Petcube, which I didn't originally order, even though I told customer service I had rose gold. I decided to keep it anyway and sent the rose gold camera back. After I set up the device, it worked very well. I was able to connect to the device while working. I received motion or video recording notifications. No problems in a short time. At some point, and I guess it was after a firmware update, things went downhill. Whenever I tried to access the Petcube, it was in "offline" mode and I couldn't connect. After a while I got frustrated, just took it off and didn't look at it for over a year. I even canceled my Petcube Care subscription. I wouldn't pay for something I can't use. One day I decided to try again to get the device working. I went through the setup again and this time it worked, but only for a few days and then went back to "offline" again. After several attempts with this thing I got frustrated, turned it off and put it away again for a few months. One day, during the 2020 Covid quarantine, I decided to give it another try because I had recently changed my router and set up my WiFi a little differently. Today Petcube works from time to time. Sometimes it's offline for hours and I have to unplug and plug the USB cable back in to get it working again. Autoplay no longer works. When I go into the device and manually turn on the laser to play with my cats, I also turn on the sound and after a few seconds the sound turns itself off. I've gone through all the troubleshooting steps. I uninstalled and reinstalled the app. I have removed and re-added the camera many times. I made sure the Petcube had access to my camera and microphone. I am very disappointed with this device at the moment. I was tempted to give them another chance and buy a new camera, but at $180 I expected more and was very hesitant to buy another one. That's a shame too, because when it worked, it was amazing. It's just more trouble than it's worth right now. I don't know if I would recommend it to others now.