Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 Wi-Fi Security Camera Review: Easy to use, works great!
Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 is designed for your home. With Wi-Fi connectivity and a dedicated app, you can quickly view your video feed. You can also adjust its camera angle so that you can keep an eye on all sides of the house. Apart from this, many features are available in it. We will talk about all those features here. So is this the cheapest security camera that is currently available in the market? Let’s find out here.
Design and Specifications of Kent CamEye HomeCam 360
The Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 is a direct competitor to the Godrej Spotlight Pan-Tilt camera. It offers the same 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 located on its back. With its help, not only audio is captured, but it is also able to do two-way communication. Along with this, it also plays alert music and an alarm in case of an unwanted person entering the house. There is an LED on its front which shows its power and connectivity status.
The Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 has a fixed base, which is provided with a rubberized surface for better grip. The rest of the camera body can rotate on this base. A socket provided at the bottom helps in mounting it on a tripod. You can also mount 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 powers the camera.
In 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 fullHD video recording is supported. The camera has a 350-degree horizontal rotation range and a 65-degree vertical range. The field of view is 120 degrees horizontally and 95 degrees vertically. It has 6 infrared LEDs to increase visibility in the dark. The camera connects to the Internet with the help of 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. It does not support the 5GHz band.
Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 app and features
Like other Wi-Fi home security cameras in the market, the Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 also works through an app. With its help, the user can monitor the video, control the camera, view the stored footage and do more. The Kent CamEye app is available on both iOS and Android platforms. I checked its connectivity on the former platform. If you have multiple Kent CamEye cameras, they can all be controlled and monitored simultaneously.
After registering on the app and creating an account, you can link the security camera to it and connect it to your home’s 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 also take a snapshot to save on the smartphone.
The app is very easy to use. Its options and functions are conveniently placed. For example, you can easily activate two-way communication or take a snapshot with a single tap. The D-pad is also directly accessible to adjust the camera angle. It normally takes only two to three seconds to activate the camera and display the video feed.
Delving deeper into the menus and settings, you find a privacy mode. Activating this mode prevents the camera from activating itself or recording footage. You can view your saved recordings and photos, and see all the alerts sent by the camera. The alert sensitivity can be customized. After turning on all the settings, when I placed it at the main door of my house, it sent dozens of alerts every day. It feels great to have control of all the functions in your hands.
Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 footage can be uploaded to the company’s cloud platform. This is a premium feature and storage space is chargeable at Rs 150 per month or Rs 1,500 per year. You can also store video clips for up to 7 days for a special event. These clips are 12 seconds long. This costs Rs 400 per month or Rs 4,000 for a year, which stores up to 30 days of video history.
For this review, I used the one-month plan. With its help, I was able to store videos on cloud storage and also watch old video footage. Even after the plan expired, I was able to watch some videos in the app and download them to my smartphone.
According to the information given on Kent’s website, with a paid subscription, you can capture event triggered recordings, which are saved on the cloud. You can also play them directly from there. However, all other functions like memory card recording and playback, live streaming of video feed in real time, two-way communication and privacy mode etc. are also available without any paid subscription plan.
You can link the Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 to your Amazon Alexa account using a skill. This allows you to access the video feed from within the Alexa app. Or you can access the video feed on an Alexa-enabled smart display like the Amazon Echo Show 10 (3rd Gen). This worked for me, but I was unable to adjust the camera angle with the Alexa link.
Performance of Kent CamEye HomeCam 360
An important feature for 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 easily and do whatever I wanted to do within seconds. The app is well designed. Accessing all the important features is quite easy.
The Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 can record a FullHD video feed. During the day, it shows a full colour feed and a monochrome feed in the dark. The camera automatically detects low-light conditions and turns on the infrared LEDs as needed. This worked well as I was able to see details and faces even when the feed was colourless. There were a few instances when the camera took a few seconds to change with the light conditions and recalibrate the video feed, but it wasn’t too frustrating.
The camera’s FullHD footage was quite sharp and detailed, but it did show some artefacts in fast motion. There were no issues as there was plenty of detail in faces, clothing and even small objects like boxes and packages.
You can also set its resolution to HD or SD, which makes the stream more stable and records in detail even when the internet speed is low. This is also useful if you want to store more footage on the SD card. Although the text on objects becomes difficult to read in SD, faces are still clearly visible.
There is a wide range to adjust the camera angle. Wherever the camera is placed, the area around it can be monitored with a range of 350 degrees. Its 65-degree tilt range combined with the wide viewing angle provides a lot of flexibility in the viewing range. However, the camera took a second to respond to the command to adjust the angle from the app.
The speaker of the Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 is quite loud. It makes a lot of noise and sounds loudest on siren mode. Its chimes are also quite loud and can be heard from different parts of the house. I was able to easily do two-way communication by standing near the camera. The microphone captured a lot of ambient sound but when someone stands near the camera and speaks, it captures the spoken words well. If needed, you can also activate only the microphone leaving the speaker.
The camera captured human movement well, but it could not 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 efficient way to monitor your home, and the Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 is a good option. However, it faces stiff competition from the Godrej Spotlight Pan-Tilt camera and the 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. It is also quite reasonably priced and is an obvious buy for your home security needs.
Price: Rs. 2,999
Rating: 8/10
Advantages:
Wide range of motion for wide coverage
MicroSD and optional cloud storage for event-triggered recordings
Works well in all lighting conditions
Excellent companion app
Loss:
Mounting kit not provided in the box
