Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 Wi-Fi Security Camera Review: Easy to use, works great!
The Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 is designed for your home. Through Wi-Fi connectivity and dedicated app, you can watch your video feed instantly. You can also adjust its camera angle so that you can keep an eye around the house. Apart from this, many features are available in it. We will talk about all those features here. So is this the lowest priced security camera currently available in the market? Let’s find out here.
Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 design and specifications
Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 is a direct competitor to Godrej Spotlight Pan-Tilt camera. It offers similar vision range and features. However, its design is quite different. The camera is housed in a ball-like module that allows the camera to look up and down. Its plastic case can rotate on its base.
The device has a microphone and a speaker which are present on its rear side. With its help, not only audio can be captured, but it can also do two-way communication. Additionally, it also plays alert music and an alarm when an unwanted person enters the house. There is an LED on its front which shows its power and connectivity status.
Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 has a fixed base, which is provided on a rubber surface to maintain its grip. The rest of the camera body can rotate on this plane. A socket given at its bottom helps in mounting it on a tripod. You can also apply it on a wall or ceiling. No kit or mounting bracket is provided with it, you will have to buy it separately. In the package, you get a wall adapter and a USB Type-A to Micro USB cable, which provides power to the camera.
At the base you get a microUSB port for power and a micro SD card slot, which supports cards up to 128GB. It has a 2 megapixel camera sensor with which Full HD video recording is supported. The camera has been given 350 degree horizontal rotation range and 65 degree vertical range. The field of view is 120 degrees horizontally and 95 degrees vertically. To increase visibility in the dark, it has been provided with 6 infrared LEDs. The camera connects to the internet with the help of 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. 5GHz band is not supported in it.
Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 app and features
Like other Wi-Fi home security cameras on the market, the Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 also works through an app. With its help, the user can monitor video, control the camera, view stored footage and much more. Kent CamEye app is available on both iOS and Android platforms. I checked its connectivity on the earlier platform. If you have multiple Kent CamEye cameras, they can all be controlled and monitored simultaneously.
After registering and creating an account on the app, you can link the security camera to it and connect it to your home Wi-Fi connection. After this, by tapping on the camera icon you reach the video feed. Here you can adjust the camera angle and settings, activate the speaker and microphone together or separately, and even take a snapshot to save on your smartphone.
The app is very easy to use. Its options and functions are given at convenient places. For example, you can easily activate two-way communication or take a snapshot with a single tap. The D-pad can also be accessed directly to adjust the camera angle. It typically only takes two to three seconds to activate the camera and display the video feed.
If you go deeper into the menu and settings, you get privacy mode. When activated, the camera does not activate automatically or record footage. You can view your saved recordings and photos and view any alerts issued by the camera. Its alert sensitivity can be customized. After turning on all its settings, when I placed it at the main door of the house, it issued dozens of alerts daily. In this way, it feels good to have the controls of its different functions at hand.
Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 footage can be uploaded to the company’s cloud platform. This is a premium feature, there is a charge for storage space. It is Rs 150 per month or Rs 1500 annually. You can also store video clips for a special event for up to 7 days. These clips are 12 seconds long. For this, a charge of Rs 400 per month is made or Rs 4 thousand has to be paid for a year in which video history of up to 30 days is stored.
For this review I used the one month plan. With its help, I was able to store videos on cloud storage and also view old video footage. Even after the plan expired, I was able to watch some videos in the app and download them on my smartphone.
According to the information given on Kent’s website, the paid subscription allows you to capture event triggered recordings, which are saved on the cloud. From here you can also watch them by playing them directly. However, all the other functions like, memory card recording and playback, live streaming of video feed in real time, two-way communication and privacy mode etc. are all available even without any paid subscription plan.
Using a skill, you can link the Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 to your Amazon Alexa account. With this, you can also access the video feed from inside the Alexa app. Or you can also access the video feed on an Alexa-enabled smart display like the Amazon Echo Show 10 (3rd Gen). This worked for me, but with the Alexa link I was not able to adjust the camera angle.
Performance of Kent CamEye HomeCam 360
An important feature of a home security camera is its reliability. It should work when you need it. For me the Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 worked fine on my 2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection. I was able to operate it smoothly and do whatever I wanted to do within seconds. The app is very well designed. Access to all the important features is quite easy.
The Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 can record FullHD video feeds. It shows full color feed during day time and monochrome feed during darkness. The camera automatically detects low-light conditions and turns on the infrared LED as needed. This worked well as I was able to see details and faces even though there was no color in the feed. There were times when the camera took a few seconds to adjust to light conditions and recalibrate the video feed, but it wasn’t much of a problem.
The camera’s FullHD footage was quite sharp and detailed but it showed some artefacts in fast-moving situations. There were no problems as there was a lot of detail visible in faces, clothes and small objects like boxes and packages etc.
You can also set its resolution to HD or SD, due to which the stream is recorded more stable and in detail in case of low internet speed. This also comes in handy if you want to store more footage on the SDcard. Although text on objects becomes difficult to read in SD, faces are still clearly visible.
There is a wide range to adjust its camera angle. Wherever the camera is placed, the area around it can be monitored with a 350 degree range. Its 65 degree tilt range combined with wide viewing angle provides great flexibility in viewing range. However, the camera took a second on command to adjust the angle from the app.
The speaker of Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 is quite loud. It makes a lot of noise and is loudest on siren mode. Its chimes are also quite loud and can be heard from different parts of the house. Standing near the camera, I was able to easily have two-way communication. The microphone captured a lot of ambient sound but when someone spoke while standing near the camera, it captured the spoken words very well. If needed, you can leave the speaker and activate only the microphone.
The camera captures the human activity well but it cannot track any object or person. The saved clips were quite clear and faces and objects were easily identified.
Verdict
A good Wi-Fi camera is an easy and effective way to monitor your home, and the Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 is a great option. However, it gets tough competition from Godrej Spotlight Pan-Tilt Camera and Mi Home Security Camera 360.
This is a good basic Wi-Fi security camera that comes with two-way communication, paid subscription cloud storage, and reliable performance. Its price is also quite reasonable and it can obviously be purchased as per your home security needs.
Price: Rs. 2,999
Rating: 8/10
Advantages:
Wide range of motion for wide coverage
MicroSD and optional cloud storage option for event triggered recordings
Works well in all lighting conditions
Best companion app
Loss:
No mounting kit available in the box
