The SmartCam HD Plus includes many of the same features of our favorite cameras such as Nest Cam and Simplicam, but without the added expense of a cloud subscription. A little experimenting got me oriented, but it’s a shame such a rich app isn’t more intuitive. Other icons-like Motion Zone Select’s, which resembles the walk signal at a pedestrian crossing-are just as baffling. The Resolution toggle is denoted by a checkerboard and beamed quarter-notes-which have become synonymous with iTunes-are used for the siren/alarm/dog-bark feature. While the breadth of controls the app provides is impressive, the icons used to identify them don’t always make sense. Presumably these are there to scare off an intruder you catch in the act, but I found the last also amused my dog when I was away. One unique feature is the ability to trigger the sound of an alarm, a police siren, or a dog barking. From here you can record a 30-second video clip to your phone, take a screenshot of the feed, toggle resolution (low, medium, and high), and more. When you open the live-streaming page, you’re presented with even more options on a horizontally scrolling toolbar across the bottom. This menu gives you quick access to the live feed, time-stamped activity logs and clips, and settings for everything from the camera to your network to the microSD card. Thanks to some odd icon choices, SmartCam app functions aren’t always intuitive.Įach camera you add to the SmartCam app has its own menu that you access via an icon next to its name. For convenience, I primarily used the the latter which, is loaded with features. The SmartCam HD Plus can can be accessed through the SmartCam web portal or app. Video streaming was also clean and responsive with no pixelation. The medium resolution (720p) seemed to be the sweet spot that would give the best quality while not quickly eating up storage space. Video was crisp and clear in both day and night mode and in all resolutions, though, not surprisingly, I got the most detail in 1080p. It gives you a little more flexibility in defining detection areas than the grid method used by some other cameras. This involves drawing a square with your finger around a portion of the camera image. I also used the Motion Zone Select feature when I was away, so the camera could monitor the front door without picking up our dog’s motion. A quick adjusting of the sensitivity settings in the SmartCam app stemmed the tide. Within moments of setting it up I was inundated with with motion and audio notifications. There was no question the SmartCam HD Plus was ready for duty, though. This can be frustrating when you’re trying to get a particular viewing angle. The tension this created in the cable made it hard to set the camera straight and sometimes would even cause it to teeter over. This requires you to thread the USB power cable through the two prongs of its stand. The power port is in front of the unit beneath the lens.
Getting the camera to stay put on a flat surface proved more challenging.
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It automagically recognizes your camera -no manually entering serial numbers or scanning troublesome QR codes-and I was looking at a panorama of my living room in about 5 minutes. The SmartCam app succinctly guides you through the process of connecting the camera to your wireless network. Setup and usageįor once, a security camera lives up to its “quick setup” promise. On the other, the absence of cloud storage eliminates a fail safe: Should an intruder steal or destroy your camera, or even just the microSD card, you'll have no forensic evidence of the break-in to give the police. On the one hand, it eliminates cloud storage subscription fees, which can run a few hundred dollars per year. The SmartCam HD Plus records up to 128GB of video locally to a microSD card (a 16GB card is included with the camera). The camera also lets you define detection areas to further reduce false alarms. This is essentially a learning algorithm that can distinguish between incidental events, such as leaves rustling outside your window, and a body entering the room. False alerts are a common nuisance with this feature, so Samsung mitigates them with its Advanced Motion & Audio Detection. If the power goes out or is cut by an industrious intruder and the camera can’t switch to battery power, it won’t be able to capture surveillance footage.Īs is de rigeur for the new breed of home security cameras, SmartCam HD Plus will push and email notifications to you when it detects sound or motion. This is an important consideration when choosing a home security camera. Like many cameras, The SmartCam HD Plus must be plugged into an outlet to operate and it doesn’t support battery backup. Samsung’s SmartCam HD Plus shares some design cues and key specs with Nest Cam.