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"but the sound quality both ways is awful night vision is pretty poor to unless something is within a metre of the camera and not in pitch black"

"i have no concerns with privacy issues and the firmware is regularly updated"

"my only issue is i can not turn the cameras off"

"for my purposes i only bought the camera because it was a cheap way to find out if i really needed a better and probably more expensive one"

"very basic need to add your address for some random reason very laggy didnt love the quality returned for refund although a nice "concept" if people can make use of it no good as a security camera though as if its monitored 24 7 there is lag which isnt good for security might be good for checking pets"

"no rtsp support that many other cheap cameras offer"

"it still records clips and you can play them back but you get an error message "unable to connect to camera" when you try to view in real time"

"the other minor issue is that the night vision mode is set to auto and occasionally it doesn't seem to reset to normal mode when it becomes day time"

"utterly useless"

"so you'll end up disabling motion tracking on those cameras due to the amount of false alarms"

"the main problem being is you don't realize you are not getting notifications until you haven't got any!"

"in general baby monitors have bad image quality poor sound and can be quite slow but you pay a premium as it’s a baby product"

"first the length is just under 2m so if your power source socket is further including traversing corners etc then you will need the specific power cable for this"

"have this in my living room now i know where all my cats sleep when i’ve gone to bed disappointed with the neos boost have paid for the subscription but it does not work"

"don't waste your money"

"i have lowered the rating on this camera due to the fact that a few weeks after installing it and buying another one the live stream stopped working"

"waste of money"

"absolute waste of money!"

"check the google play store and you'll see the poor ratings"

"frustratingly useless"

"total waste of time now having to return it and ask them to delete my account didn't setup correctly was poorly packaged and i was not comfortable giving them so much personal information and having no means to delete the information afterward"

"more than night vision stays on even the system is disabled and live view is not in use not echo fiendly waste of energy intrusive"

"shockingly poor piece of kit"

"the fact you can buy it directly from neos company for only £20 is extremely annoying that i paid £25 for it here"

"the camera seems ok but the app for it is genuinely the worst thing i've seen in ages"

"we wouldn’t be without this kit"

"ok i have extremely poor eyesight but still find it very difficult on a 10 inch tablet"

"tried several times again this evening and had a multitude of issues ranging from time outs "i'm sorry this is really embarrassing unable to generate a qr code unknown error" messages still not connected to alexa still not working"

"fed up of a blank white box appearing on screen some sort of missing error message and have to restart the app fed up with autoarm function takes ages to detect ive left home hours sometimes likewise takes forever to detect your return home"

"i thought this neosmart cam would be a great replacement but although the sound and picture is very good it does not automatically record except for extremely short clips triggered by either the sound or motion sensor"

"also there is no was to turn off the audio feed so if you are in the same room as your camera with the app operational on your phone you get the most awful feedback"

"so i have three useless cameras"

"this is useful for saving battery life on battery operated cameras but these cameras are mains wired so it just a useless feature that cannot be turned off"

"in general baby monitors have bad image quality poor sound and can be quite slow but you pay a premium as it’s a baby product"

"you have to log off then back on each time you want a different view between cameras also the time delay can be annoying from camera triggering"

"overall hugely disappointing and i certainly wouldn't recommend it"

"but the reality is the app is bloody terrible"

"the instructions are sparse and unable to find anything online"

"i also believe they use ‘‘tis a part of home insurance with arriva i would question the legality of any claim due to its failure to do as stated?"

"means me and wife have more time together rather than start stopping netflix everytime"

"like others i found its insistence on knowing your full address and the app having access to the phone's location services extremely worrying"

"i think she finds that quite confusing but it at least distracts her for a bit!"

"this unit fails on a regular basis to “self arm” when leaving home!"

"but seriously amazon should dis associate their alexa device 'deal' with this junk"

"i have a purpose outside camera with a huge wifi ariel that is terrible"

"well it recorded what happened before and after the gate opened so was absolutely useless to find out who entered my garden"

"but i've also found that the motion detection is useless outdoors with or without zones sensitivity or sound settings"

"the limited cloud storage is an annoyance"

"buggy ios app crashes freezes "

"always losing connectivity demanding me to reset the camera almost daily and even doing that i have no guarantee it will work"

"so annoyed i wasted money on this as finding one to work with my alexa"

"however in reality the software has significant bugs which when you chat to the developers via the app nice feature they tell you that they know it doesnt work but they are working on a fix but cant give you any idea of when the fix will be ready"

"i constantly get error notifications of armed then disarmed this can carry on alday"

"motion detection: i've given it a 5 i have it set to the lowest sensitivity which seems fine it does pick noise from a noisy motorbikes going past and the wind if it's a windy day"

"i'm often seeing error messages which say the camera cannot be accessed these go away after restarting the app"

"it will only record the few seconds the manufacturers allow and the footage is "locked down" by proprietary format not generally compatible with anything else"

"such a useless product very difficult to set up"

"and it just leaves a nasty taste in my mouth"

"i have no doubts at all that i will be buying another very soon to protect my man cave from unwelcome intruders"

"next morning at work checked the neos app error screen no live feed an error has occurred"

"however a small issue"

"basically a closed system with limited functionality that forces you to spend £30 a year to automate turning all your cameras off or on"

"dislikes: contrary to the advertised functionality the sd card actually records continuous 1 minute clips regardless of whether camera is armed disarmed and regardless of motion detection thus rendering the camera somewhat hamstrung if customers only want to record extended 'motion' events when out of the house for a couple of weeks"

"the software is well made and the features are great 👍 not like some of those crap chinese poorly made interfaces"

"i have 2 of these in my flat but for some reason they both at the same time randomly delete footage!"

"motion detection works as expected cons: sound is below adequate not great for live feeds"

"bin file in order to flash the camera so now i have a useless brick which is a shame because it seemed like a decent little camera while it worked"

"geofencing often fails motion detection triger huge number of fake alarms even on lowest setings and the noise does same is triggered by itself when night vision is comming on "

"i really don’t recommend this and i believe they had plenty of time to fix these ridiculous issues"

"my only gripe is that the free clips are too short"

"geofencing often fails motion detection triger huge number of fake alarms even on lowest setings and the noise does same is triggered by itself when night vision is comming on "

"there are colour aberrations on edges of objects and fine detail say text faces leaves are not clear indicative of a poor lens"

"if you have noisy neighbours who might set it off you can turn it off "

"all set up picture quality on the poor side of average worse in the dark could not connect to alexa"

"in response to the security concerns you are required to provide your address on signup although you could provide fake details but you do not need to provide access to your iphone's location unless you want to use the auto arm disarm feature"

"unfortunately you buy this camera as a package and this is where it all falls flat on its face"

"however in reality the software has significant bugs which when you chat to the developers via the app nice feature they tell you that they know it doesnt work but they are working on a fix but cant give you any idea of when the fix will be ready"

"the only reason why i don't return it its because i'm based in italy so amazon will let me pay for the return fees"

"it is not compatible with your alexa smart devices at all total false advertising at its best"

"customer support is outstanding and there are no cloud storage fees unlike some rather expensive big brand cameras"

"you require a ridiculous password for the phone app that can never be remembered"

"previous concerns around the app wanting too much information in another review seem unfounded as i was only asked for my address which was explained"

"this is a major issue which they promised to address somehow but it's unclear if this feature will be free or if this will come with a sub based system or similar"

"they set up quite easily then the app told me the firmware needed updating i tried for times and it failed each time so i cancelled that went back to look at the camera picture to find error 90 and no picture and it would not reconnect"

"bought to use as a nursery camera and it's been practically useless"

"this product poorly packaged and terribly constructed"

"and if it fails again back it will go"

"in summary it's an amazing kit of hardware shame that the software lets it down"

"anyone who knows that you have this camera could easily download the app and view inside your property delete videos totally defeating the purpose of having a cam"

"however the recording options are sadly very lacking"

"very poor quality built to snap images is rubbish and the app is even worse"

"it seems unsecure always under maintenance and often offline"

"main gripe is sound cannot be switched off and is very sensitive so my show repeats everything with slight delay that becomes very annoying if left on tried to cover mic hole but had little effect"

"the sdk is same as chinese products with more or less flaws retain same intrusive behaviour you can be watched at anytime"

"initially it runs in cut down form and provides you with a triggered 12 second recording which cannot be triggered again for a 5 minute “cooling off” period which is very inconvenient"

"we turned the camera on as we were leaving on a holiday and on day 4 it decided to disconnect and stop working completely leaving us very uneasy worrying and wondering about what is happening back at home"

"i can imagine what it is like from other cameras i've used overpriced cloud storage for fifteen second clips"

"equally frustrating is that you can only alarm all or none of your devices"

"the app keeps logging my wife out so the whole arm disarm when one of us is in the proximity doesn’t work"

"please be aware that the live stream can fall behind by several minutes after viewing for a few minutes"

"you can record out of a window but needs to be placed very close to avoid reflection at night"

"the problems seemed to be made worse when adding a 2nd user onto the account"

"also intrusive info regarding physical address of camera required at set up"

"saying " alexa show me kitchen " just didnt work"

"supposed to be indoors only but can record out windows but needs to be in intimate contact to avoid glare from night vision leds"

"absolute junk would not work from first installation tried installing again and again kept getting the same message "cannot find the specific network name" tried to contact customer services no reply"

"i’m struggling with the concept of a security camera that delivers 12 second motion detected clips then waits 5 minutes before it will do the same neos call this a cooling down time or something "

"annoying that didn’t work on 5ghz & had to switch phone to 2"

"this was probably the biggest issue i had with this product"

"it worked pretty well for 3 weeks but suddenly the live feed started to increasingly lag behind"

"it doesn't work properly at the mo apparently due to a software issue which they're investigating"

"the set up was very intrusive as reported by other reviewers and i was unhappy about providing exact address location"

"all of the above comments have been raised by disgruntled customers since product launch yet the neos developers can't seem to be able to release firmware updates to fix these basic oversights"

"the main issue i have had with this camera is that it decided to delete footage before the 14 day period"

"however as time has gone on the app and software have proven themselves to be an absolute nightmare and very unreliable"

"if you only ever want to use it for live view and the motion alerts it's fine but it is very badly restricted without the ability to playback your recorded videos from the app"

"had a slight issue with the firmware update timing out on installation of camera one"

"the only downside is that it appears to stream to neos and then back to my device which on a slow connection is a negative"

"firmware and integration with amazon echo show devices is very sketchy"

"fed up with the live feed delay when live feed actually loads neos keep repeating we fixed it in last update rubbish read the reviews "

"a very irrelevant answer that doesn’t help at all!"

"apparently a sd card will record all events but this is only useful after the robbery and assumes that the neos has not been stolen"

"the app crashes and closes down regularly"

"for a cheap camera this is kind of enough to stop me using it"

"setup behind door surround glass to prevent it's theft but then had to disable led's to prevent glare so night image not so good while in daylight it is superb"

"however this neos camera does not have the ability to define the motion trigger area but instead it reacts to any movement anywhere within its field of view so you constantly get false triggers and loads of video of random people walking by in the street outside and random cars driving by which makes the motion sensing pretty useless"

"the only problem i would say is the microphone isn't the greatest and the night vision is reasonably ok but apart from that i can't fault it!"

"hoping to catch the dog owner that keeps letting their dog poop on my property and doesn’t clean it up!"

"it seems unsecure always under maintenance and often offline"

"i can only presume they had been paid to promote it because it is utter crud"

"the second major fault is the motion detector"

"sometimes it failed immediately sometimes it froze halfway through sometimes it had a flickering message"

"i have given this only 4 stars as despite being tech savvy and computer literate i still needed their support which annoyed me"

"picture faultless talk back so grainy distorted scares the crap out of my daughter"

"very erratic operation either you get zero notifications then you are inundated with them"

"all of the above comments have been raised by disgruntled customers since product launch yet the neos developers can't seem to be able to release firmware updates to fix these basic oversights"

"the camera isnt being picked up"

"mixed feelings about this camera on the whole it's good for the price"

"i really wanted to like these but just wouldn't work"

"questionable security and use of sensitive data"

"tried to reconnect but kept failing"

"such a stupid camera i have never seen such a delay in any camera"

"cheapo chinesium for me now"

"i would give it zero stars if i could"

"ah well it's only £25 you've thrown away i've spent more on a tankful of petrol and with nothing to show for that!"

"tried several times again this evening and had a multitude of issues ranging from time outs "i'm sorry this is really embarrassing unable to generate a qr code unknown error" messages still not connected to alexa still not working"

"it has a confusing website that seems to be a houshold insurance website with minor links to this camera"

"alexa connection problem sorted and now working fine on both my cameras"

"while it's true this only for indoor use so is not as robust as a nest cam in pretty much every other respect this is equally good and comes for an almost "throw away" price"

"the issue i had with my previous camera is that the audio was terrible all you could hear was loud hissing"

"i may have been unlucky but im not risking paying out and having to return another again if it doesnt work"

"and the limited options to be able to record to sd card as the developer would like you to subscribe to their cloud however for me it is my house i do not want to share my privacy with the world"

"and i’ve researched many even my fussy husband loves them"

"this really is an indoor camera i face mine out the window at my cars so i get some glare from the glass but there are mounts for external available"

"i had some trouble setting it up as i inputted my address incorrectly i thought my internet wasn't connecting because the cause of set up failure wasn't clear happy i managed to figure it out"

"i can accept low quality but this just plain doesn't work"

"the live feed is constantly unavailable have had to re set up the camera on a regular basis involving reconnecting it to our wifi and to the app that comes with it which is a real inconvenience"

"one of the more useless features of the app is the "auto arming" which should arm the camera when you move out of your geographical area and disarm when you return home"

"it would also be good if it were possible to disable audio in the app as ours is mostly pointing outside through the window"

"however this neos camera does not have the ability to define the motion trigger area but instead it reacts to any movement anywhere within its field of view so you constantly get false triggers and loads of video of random people walking by in the street outside and random cars driving by which makes the motion sensing pretty useless"

"sound and motion sensitivity has to be dialled right back otherwise you will be inundated with emails from false alerts"

"very disappointed i wish i had bought a tp link camera instead have a couple of them for years and never had a single problem "

"our son has been seizure free for almost 2 years but in june they returned as focal seizures so we decided to install the camera as he likes to spend most of his time in his room playing video games so the motion sensor would alert us when it picked up move ment so we could respond accordingly and also as a watchful eye as he sleeps"

"constantly drops off the network most times loses settings"

"the primary issue that i identified in my initial review was rectified some time later"

"i dropped a star due to the constant requests to upgrade at a cost i think way to high for longer recordings which were free when i first had them"

"don't waste money if you have any latest samsung"

"the actual hardware software not in sync faulty"

"one of the more useless features of the app is the "auto arming" which should arm the camera when you move out of your geographical area and disarm when you return home"

"there is no support on this product you have to figure everything out for yourself using the rubbish instructions and poorly printed qr codes"

"the app is soooo intrusive!"

"addendum july 2020: i am amending my original review from 1 star to 4 in recognition of the fact that neos did make changes to their mobile application which addressed enough of my privacy concerns for me to not only begin using the camera i initially purchased but to go on to purchase an additional three other units"

"the boost payment doesn’t upgrade to ‘full’ recording and as below still has a cool off period of 1 minute itonly records 50% if the time pointless security if it doesn’t capture everything!"

"software lets it down alexa echo show sometimes won’t connect when via the app it does connect"

"takes ages to sync and the app continually freezes"

"it didn't work and i tried it on 2 separate wireless networks also after having to create an account and the device didn't work there was no option to close delete account so this is more time wasted trying to contact them to request the close my account"

"i've started the free trial for the 1 min recordings and they are all good quality"

"within 2 years we were on our 4th motorola baby monitor £150 and it kept becoming faulty"

"i got told that other people have had the same problem"

"for £30 which is about what my other two cameras mentioned earlier cost in comparison to those the live stream on this neos is rather poor"

"the only negative is that it doesn't work with google home hub at the moment"

"now they are charging for neos 'boost' a month optional subscription for 'extras' i think the priority should be working software!"

"someone only needs to fart within 200 metres of it and it drops connection"

"since a firmware update at the end of march this product has been unusable as the app hangs when trying to review clips"

"i often have trouble viewing the stream but the bandwidth at the property is low so that may be the reason that said i have little trouble viewing the feed from the nest doorbell"

"the complaints about privacy seem silly to me how can you expect notifications to be sent to your mobile if you aren't prepared to give the system your number?"

"how long does it take to fix this important glitch?"

"video delayed about 10 seconds then gets worse got to 20+ seconds"

"it's ok but needs improvement"

"i’ve found the app extremely unstable though"

"connectivity is a nightmare this might sometimes be due to bad wi fi or dodgy 4g but the feed constantly breaks down and leaves a blank screen"

"as i said previously they have got greedy and will not get any more money from me in subscriptions or cameras"

"this meant that footage of a burglary taking placing that i was suppose to be forwarding to the police so they could arrest the individuals no longer exists and the burglar walks free"

"they obviously know this is not very good because you can upgrade with a monthly subscription to get a longer recording with a lesser cool off time i therefore bought one from china that records motion until it stops which is what you would expect from a security camera!"

"it only records little snippets not continuous when it sees movement useless if you are using it for security"

"very erratic operation either you get zero notifications then you are inundated with them"

"very basic but at £20 what do you expect!"

"however there are a number of points for improvement: the supplied usb cable is too short to reach the level of power sockets if the camera is ceiling mounted the 10 second recording time is too short to be very usable the motion detection is overly sensitive it will often record passing car headlights and on one occasion even a moth in the room"

"customer support is outstanding and there are no cloud storage fees unlike some rather expensive big brand cameras"

"do not waste your money mine are all going back!"

"very poor struggled with low light and no real definition"

"it does take a sd card and also has an upgrade on the app that allows you small extras like 1 minute of recording instead of 12 seconds for something like £3"

"took about 24 hours for it to work after initially trying to set it up"

"the app is absolutely rubbish"

"it only records little snippets not continuous when it sees movement useless if you are using it for security"

"and being more skilled than the average techie i had a look at what the little blighter was passing back over the internet neos might be a british developed sofware planted on chinese hardware but i discovered these little blighters are sending api calls back to a server in china!"

"don't be tempted the hassle you have to go through to connect these little bundles of joy is just infuriating besides neos wanting to know everything about you and your house the set up i had to do was lengthy and ultimately pointless if you have a dual band router which is probably 95% of you you're gonna run into trouble these only connect to the lesser 2"

"my wifi is great so it's not the signal that is causing the poor picture the movement detection feature is a joke"

"this is great to prevent unwanted notifications"

"so if you need it for a cheap nanny cam it would do the job"

"i had just one camera set up for about 3 weeks with only 1 occurance of missing recordings"

"they tried to resolve it by sending me two replacement same issues"

"i have been using this camera for almost a year now and it's good for indoors but not recommended for outdoors night vision is perfect you can see very well as to who it is it records noises and detects a moving object and alerts you straight away on your phone reason why i'm giving it a 4 star is because"

"it would be useful if you could adjust the length of the clip captures as sometimes 12s isn't quite enough"

"has potential but not worth it yet"

"they replaced motorola focus 35 cameras which are getting tired"

"during the day it is good but at nighttime through a window it doesn't work and during the day if there is sunlight shining towards the glass it's not good"

"while the camera quality is really good and the system is easy to set up it's let down by near constant crashes"

"* motion detection is very good no false positives so far cons are all software and so hopefully sortable : * no ifttt support for the non technical this is a neat way to link home devices such as turn on the lights if motion detected * no ability to mask certain areas"

"no rtsp support that many other cheap cameras offer"

"no idea why this has less important functionality than the us version"

"very disappointed i wish i had bought a tp link camera instead have a couple of them for years and never had a single problem "

"unfortunately after only a couple of days the motion noise alerts stopped app keeps crashing and signing you out"

"the quality of the image is slighty blurry and lacks sharpness and that's in hd!"

"720 hd old school short clips unless you want to pay for longer if you put micro sd card in the software in camera won't let you watch it unless you remove sd card and connect to computer to watch"

"at least the app takes you to a website telling you they are having issues i guess that's a plus lol"

"the app itself is basic and has so many issues it’s difficult to list them"

"slight heart attack"

"in response to the security concerns you are required to provide your address on signup although you could provide fake details but you do not need to provide access to your iphone's location unless you want to use the auto arm disarm feature"

"i was a little skeptical about this from reading reviews of the app asking for too much info"

"when used with alexa the screen on any device disconnects after 30 mins"

"great if you want a cheap fun camera in your house but i wouldn’t really put it in the home security category and i’m surprised they sometimes bundle this camera with the echo show 5 given the limited alexa integration"

"sound quality form the tiny inbuilt speaker is awful very tinny and difficult to understand the speech"

"but the sound quality both ways is awful night vision is pretty poor to unless something is within a metre of the camera and not in pitch black"

"previous concerns around the app wanting too much information in another review seem unfounded as i was only asked for my address which was explained"

"the camera disconnects all the time!"

"easy to setup and good picture quality slight lag of live feed but not that long"

"negative points"

"i kept having network issues with it and it refused to connect giving me error code 90"

"my kit never actually contained a screw and wallplug as stated so i would say that if you are handy with a drill and countersink and you dont need extra usb cable then dont bother with the mount kit"

"give it a miss"

"it doesn’t take any stills when it detects motion it should so i don’t know if mine is faulty it did the first week set up was hit and miss it’s quite discrete i like that element"

"i am not sure if this is a widespread problem but be wary!"

"i already have a good cctv setup costing several hundred pounds but wanted additional areas covering to keep an eye on my cats and kittens who love to hide away in difficult to reach areas"

"this description needs to be changed it states with an sd card you can record for x amount of days and have the footage this is completely false"

"there are 2 massive holes in the feature set for this device: 1"

"hope this helps any of you having trouble connecting"

"updated december 2019 so neos still haven’t added sd card support through the app meaning the only way to view the sd card footage is to physically remove the card and plug it into a computer"

"this can't be used as a nanny cam anymore and according to a lengthy conversation with their support they have no intention of fixing this"

"i received my 1st neos smartcam today and have to admit that after reading all the comments i was ready for sending it back but as there where also quite some positive feedback i just had to try it myself"

"secondly the ‘boost’ premium payment is an awful business model even though they have dropped it to £2"

"i don’t want to have to have location settings draining my battery on all the time and i don’t always remember to manually switch the alerts in and off"

"i'm not sure why but it seemed to take a couple of days to "settle down" and react to whether my phone was in the house or not but since then has been working fine"

"it didn't work and i tried it on 2 separate wireless networks also after having to create an account and the device didn't work there was no option to close delete account so this is more time wasted trying to contact them to request the close my account"

"i have found that bug in the software means that it doesnt retain the settings so when it you do go out it does arm but then doesnt record or notify you rendering the camera totally useless"

"the instructions are pretty poor i suggest you need to look at this problem personally i would not buy the two together camera is fine on it's own"

"whilst the hardware produced by such firms may be ok i always have concerns about the robustness of their software and privacy issues"

"only issue i have is power cord should be white"

"1 extension if you need more length and these are no more expensive than usb cables"

"i have turned these to the lowest settings which work well but get the odd false alarm"

"the play back is very laggy and not easy to view back recorded footage very time consuming"

"iv had cheap cameras in the past which have concerned me for security reasons"

"it is ok but it won't except the memory card i have tried 2 different cards and i just get an error message saying there is a problem with the card the cards both work in my tablet"

"utterly useless"

"many false alarms"

"the main problem is when you try to view more than 1 camera you select a 4 camera window or swipe left it only shows 1 at a time"

"poor sound"

"the power cable is nice and long i have the camera mounted upside down at the top of the window the image can be flipped and the cable runs across the top of the window and all the way to the floor"

"i had purchased this to monitor outside through a window however this does not work"

"don’t waste your money"

"after initiation the update the camera turned off and stopped working"

"waste of money !"

"if you intend to get a cheap camera that supports pan and tilt for your home to monitor things you will not go wrong with the tapo c200"

"so the multiple view is a complete waste of time"

"poor nightvision the ir nightvision is not great!"

"completely waste of money"

"very disappointed"

"this is really annoying as without live streaming you cant keep recording nor is there snapshots or motion"

"have tried everything and every range of sim card yet there is a huge problem"

"crap camera and very noisy!"

"stay away dreadful product"

"here are my other cons glitchy app auto switches from hq to lq no way to stop it notifies with no apparent trigger detection is also over sensitive delays in notifications sometimes hours get 20 notifications from whole day in one go sound is terrible reboots required regular tech support is poor it admittedly is an amazing concept and if a little more effort was made could have been fantastic"

"tried hitting the "retry" button and it repeatedly failed far too quickly for it to have even attempted a substantive check"

"the other niggle was the sd card issue mentioned above"

"it’s almost misleading as during the night it only shows what is directly in front of the camera"

"if notifications are on be prepared to get bombarded but at a delayed rate"

"here are my other cons glitchy app auto switches from hq to lq no way to stop it notifies with no apparent trigger detection is also over sensitive delays in notifications sometimes hours get 20 notifications from whole day in one go sound is terrible reboots required regular tech support is poor it admittedly is an amazing concept and if a little more effort was made could have been fantastic"

"that way the device or memory cards being stolen will not mean the loss of footage"

"crap camera and very noisy!"

"i do not want to have to flag the exact location of the camera as i believe that represents a security issue if the server is compromised"

"reboot time is fixed at 3am"

"the camera can be left on auto day night mode or forced permanently into day or night mode"

"then another issue was the camera telling me that the memory card had a problem which turned out to mean it needed formatting first but i found an option in the software that means the camera can do this for you"

"still not operational and now too late as location is shut down due to virus outbreak"

"not sure if this is a coding issue or me being dim"

"the only bit which is let down would be the microphone listening to what's going on through the phone app is almost unintelligible you have to be very close to the camera to understand what someone is saying"

"i dropped the camera from approx 5’ onto concrete snapped one of the bracket lugs but camera itself not damaged and working fine"

"there have been no real issues maintaining a connection and any connectivity problems are solved by exiting the program and opening again this only happens when i switch wifi signals on my phone now and then"

"dont use the auto restart it can randomly completely screw up the setup when it goes wrong and it will use the manual option in the app"

"awesome little camera you are pretty limited and stuck within the tapo app but i’m sure updates will come ie there is no patrol mode just virtual and horizontal scan"

"again it "could only be controlled locally" and the check screen failed instantly on every retry"

"this rubbish is going back cant beleive this cr** is tp link branded"

"to prevent it or help it if it got stolen again i bought this lil camera"

"the box says the unit is a c200 but the app says a kc110 kc115 it is utter junk and i would not engage with tapo or tp link again"

"further in addition to remote access using the tp link camera ios or android app you can also stream live views to any alexa device that has a screen and similar kit from google"

"now have no picture assistance useless"

"the picture is fine not any better than the cheap chinese no brand its replacing"

"wasted my money with this it works on 2"

"it has two rtsp feeds one 1080p hd and another lesser quality"

"this cause problems at night due to the reflection off the night vision lights"

"i bought this camera after spent hours viewing other people feedbacks"

"it looses connection and freezes even with the app !"

"don’t know if that’s the app or 4g or wifi connection issues"

"may not be ideal as purely security camera unless well hidden"

"this is outrageous advice which would have all sorts of privacy implications which i am not prepared to contemplate"

"good points small cheap records to micro sd card app lets you watch remotely app does seem to work can review saved footage at up to 8x speed bad points motion detection is essentially useless it doesn't detect me walking down our drive but does detect random cars outside of the detection zone"

"another problem to add to the long list"

"this review is likely more about failings with the tapo app and or any underlying apis rather than the device itself which in itself "seemed" functional however since both need to operate seamlessly to effectively utilise the latter the problems described within render the camera virtually unusable"

"i'm using this with a 32gb sdhc card to record video so no ongoing cloud payments"

"i can see how this can be immensely valuable to people with animals that needs to be left on their own or with babies whose parents would like to interact with them without physically disturbing them!"

"i'm still learning with this little fella but whatni did find easier for me is to put it on the 'motion detection' setting for recording as opposed to continuous recording then i don't have to through hours of footage"

"some of the app features can not be used as the camera firmware is not supported which would seem a shame"

"forcing permanent day mode avoids this although it also keeps the camera in lower sensitivity colour recording mode so although better than night mode it still isn't ideal"

"no way to set duration for clips recorded after each trigger it carries on recording way too long"

"but having issues with the mic 🎤 and speaker 🔈 quality isn’t great"

"would have returned for refund but missed the return window"

"paid £25 and is good for that but made in china it’s ok for that price and all works great app is really easy to use shame it does not have a zoom just on the screen can go in more but then comes a mess mic speaker are poor a good starter camera"

"since it was purchased as a baby monitor to use via echo show the picture wasnt bright enough"

"good points small cheap records to micro sd card app lets you watch remotely app does seem to work can review saved footage at up to 8x speed bad points motion detection is essentially useless it doesn't detect me walking down our drive but does detect random cars outside of the detection zone"

"the troubleshooting is lacking instructions"

"4ghz wifi as camera and phone have to be on the same wifi for installation the camera is not 5ghz compatible"

"i can't do much with an item that's got the wrong plug"

"i have a 64gb memory card installed and the biggest benefit from recording video so far has been seeing how many cats use my garden as a thoroughfare"

"camera video stream can be viewed through a google nest hub limited view time only although any other configuration or playback of recordings must be done through the app"

"has anyone else has this problem?"

"motion detection at default level is erratic sometimes no detection even though you walk straight in front of the camera and other times detection with no obvious movement and often delayed"

"after that i’ve tried to reconnect the camera and got all kinds of errors possible it didn’t blink at all then it blinked but the app didn’t see the camera after few times resetting and powering off the app saw the camera but was unable to connect to wifi stating something is wrong with it i have other products by tapo and none of them ever complained about my wifi "

"update: it was just one of the cameras causing the issue"

"in the app it constantly shows the camera as offline or says no internet even though i could stream podcasts radio"

"motion detection at default level is erratic sometimes no detection even though you walk straight in front of the camera and other times detection with no obvious movement and often delayed"

"activity zone adjustment is a gimmick not functional if it sees it it will get recorded basically"

"privacy mode stops the camera recording video and sound"

"if however you have access points and or extenders then it might be a nightmare it will connect to your main router but not to extenders or access points in order to do that you have to disable ap on those devices and the enable it after you have set up the camera"

"i was off down the pub while he slaved away rigging this gadget up"

"having tried it i can see most facial characteristics well enough to be able to make people out in low light situations"

"doesn’t record on auto detect but does detect and sound sounder so fault in unit"

"during daylight this is a fabulous bit of kit but at night it is not much good"

"bad points when logging into the ios app after set up ios tries to use a new suggested password rather than the one already set up and saved in keychain"

"they tried it a couple of months later and it didn’t work and was unable to return as this was outside the return window"

"dose anyone how to keep it recording without the app being opened"

"cannot be beaten in price vs performance"

"zoom not too clever seems to distort the picture"

"i’m very disappointed in tapo!"

"after that i’ve tried to reconnect the camera and got all kinds of errors possible it didn’t blink at all then it blinked but the app didn’t see the camera after few times resetting and powering off the app saw the camera but was unable to connect to wifi stating something is wrong with it i have other products by tapo and none of them ever complained about my wifi "

"the skill app whilst easy to set up is full of bugs the latest one is that even if you turn off notifications it notifies you of every event"

"" this is incorrect privacy mode does not physically close the lens"

"like all similar products can't see through double glazing at night due to infared reflecting off the surface"

"unless our flat is somehow haunted without our knowing these alerts must be bogus"

"there is a strange lens flare possibly because the ir light is too close to the lens and light reflects directly back into the camera"

"i'm going to try one more configuration then if issues still exist i'll be returning both cameras as not fit for purpose"

"a well made camera with clear visuals however the screw down mounting plate is near impossible to disengage so make sure it is correctly aligned before fixing"

"this makes it evidentially useless as a security camera"

"the speaker is reasonably loud for when you want to two way call or alarm however the design choice to put it at the rear of the camera has obvious sound issues"

"the loop function allows it to record continuously so you don't need to worry about having to clear old files or change sd card when full"

"a well made camera with clear visuals however the screw down mounting plate is near impossible to disengage so make sure it is correctly aligned before fixing"

"for shooting through windows at night turn of the auto mode and set it day only this switches the night vision leds off but you will outdoor lighting to compensate"

"in summary i can recommend the tp cameras however please ensure you allow enough time beforehand for ample set up and troubleshooting to avoid future issues"

"i have been on their web site but it doesn't even show me which way round to put the sd card into the slot in the camera"

"much better than i was expecting it to be as i bought it as a visual deterrent due to its size but i’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quality of images captured"

"this is after the latest update that seems to have fixed a few other issues but without a permanent live view i can't give it more than one star as a baby monitor"

"" this is incorrect privacy mode does not physically close the lens"

"easy set up and i'm rubbish with instructions"

"item was faulty sound and mic didn't work"

"i wouldn’t recommend"

"after reducing the motion detection sensitivity to its lowest level and reducing the field of view used to detect motion the alerts are now less frequent but still occur for no apparent reason"

"getting into the "more" section works once every three tries and when there sometimes it fails to show you live feed so have to go out and back in again"

"forcing permanent day mode avoids this although it also keeps the camera in lower sensitivity colour recording mode so although better than night mode it still isn't ideal"

"once can even take a still photo if one wanted"

"i recently had the catalytic converters stolen off my prius and was very p*****off about it!"

"firstly can i say that i am surprised by some negative comments given the price of this camera and what it packs"

"only two minor issues 1"

"i do not want to have to flag the exact location of the camera as i believe that represents a security issue if the server is compromised"

"also when i try and retrieve the recording it shows a small picture icon of the recording but when i try and open it to watch it it opens a black screen with a play button which doesn't do anything"

"if i have one niggle is that if you're using this as a security camera the plug is so easy to undo maybe they should come up with some sort of screw connection with maybe an allen key to tighten so it cannot be easily pulled out apart from this the quality is good but it's a shame you cannot use it with with echo dots without having a fire tv it will be nice just to ask the dot to show the camera and to choose what device you wanted to show on i"

"i bought this camera to replace a baby kimcam and now that i've the tp link tapo i'm going to miss my old camera"

"secondly the live feed is not continuous on your phone evry few minutes it keeps asking permission if you want to continue absolutely horendous device no such issue with yi cameras"

"after that it seems to lose the connection or something went wrong again and i’ve got red light on the app says the camera is offline and the camera doesn’t reset or tries to do anything"

"most other cameras have standardized on micro usb for power but this has its own transformer and connector which i find an inconvenience"

"do not buy the sd suggested as they are defunct and not even the correct format for the camera"

"i note from other reviews that others had similar problems with the 128gb"

"5 allowing the app every permission still no luck"

"lead is not long enough for something like this you would want it up high or in a corner horrible black lead hanging down"

"it would be a 5 star from me if the recorded audio is better i find the audio very poor at a few feet away you cannot make out what i was saying"

"i appreciate that this is the budget end of tp link's range of cameras but even so i was not impressed with the picture quality when compared to similar priced cameras the camera was also jerky and noisy when rotating"

"streaming to google hub is almost impossible as it looses connection or freezes"

"in my kitchen i had a pest control plug attached which had a red light permanently on"

"the only way to record footage is to store it locally on an sd card which is not included"

"can't really recommend as a security camera as no cloud storage meaning a burglar could simply steal the camera and there would be no record"

"within a fornight had to send one back as it failed"

"but i'd rather have too sensitive than not enough"

"for most people i don't know if this would be a problem but it's worth bearing in mind that using something like zoneminder shinobi ispy etc"

"i ended up having to forcibly disconnect my phone from the wifi while the camera was trying to connect"

"when i reinstalled it as an “existing configuration” it failed every time at the end with a black pop up that reads “the network is unstable"

"no sd worked and you keep hearing the same sentence 'there is a problem with the sd card' and failed to format"

"however night vision is not great"

"i'm very impressed at the quality for such a low price"

"as expected the ir lights in night mode are no good as they bounce off the window blocking any image but day mode and some outdoor flood lights connected to a photocell fix my night viewing issue"

"however speaking through the app to the camera sounds a lot better"

"my only quibble is that it notifies you of every little movement"

"won't connect to alexa!"

"i wanted to stream it to a desktop pc & expected that to be a little difficult but if you download the free ispy software it's hardly a problem since the camera is compatible with rtsp & onvif"

"image quality is very good but sound is poor & garbled speech generally unintelligible"

"also able to access from 3rd party ip cam software but without camera positioning"

"the camera could not retain memory positions"

"i have put a memory card in it so there are no subscriptions either"

"from the app on your phone if you are away from home"

"however using the free software ispy i have imported the lower quality feeds for motion detection lower quality feeds have less weird video glitches if your camera has poor wifi connection and then i clone it so i have 2 smaller feeds one detecting the front yard another to detect the road"

"very cheap at £24"

"technically this is false"

"the audio recording sounds a bit poor"

"the other issue was that the camera appeared not to be recording clips on detecting motion"

"i would advise to ignore a 128gb and use a 32gb which gives a massive 4 5 24hour recording"

"this item may be sophisticated but when it fails the support instructions are misleading and the help desk are incompetent and do not know the product"

"lastly a few times the camera has been offline the app said it was powered of but i checked the plug and the wifi which had no issues and i had to restart the camera which in theory isn't great when if suddenly something happened or if i didn't check i wouldn't have known"

"the replacement is just a poor"

"at night turn off i fared less and use outdoor pir lights or as i do street lights!"

"the reason i give 1 star is because after 1 month of use the camera started rebooting by itself without any option activated to do so and its very annoying during the night when it does that allmoste eveey hour"

"the problem with this is if you wanted to quickly view all cameras you can't"

"the image looks cloudy and unfocused"

"it was hard choosing because some offer subscriptions or are quite expensive"

"full pan tilt zoom in 1080 hd for £25 tech is so good and cheap these days took me 2 mins to set it up and its great for wildlife watching as in here on the bird feeder or with night vision to see nocturnal ones later brill"

"no preview image of what triggered the cam could have been a cars headlight fox or an uninvited visitor fly tipping by your fence"

"also of forcing you to use an sd you can't even format the old sd you have forcing you to spend a large amount of money to try various brands of which at least with luck one will working"

"most cameras have a ring of at least 6 ir led's surrounding the lens this one only has a line of 4 relatively small leds which don't really give much illumination!"

"thankfully nothing ever did but i goes to show ensure you set up these cameras properly and maybe test them for a week in advance to iron out any kinks"

"i had bought this to use as a baby monitor but found in some houses we visited the wifi didn't stretch to the room and hence didn't work"

"so i bought 2 of these one for my dogs cage upstairs and the cage downstairs because my dog has had a major surgery where i need to see him tplo where he broke a ligament and these cameras have worked the charm they record when he is moving and when it hears sound and the night vision is brilliant i'm"

"if you plan on using it to monitor for an event like a take away delivery dont plan on doing it on an echo show or spot or firestick as it cuts off after about 5 mins its fine on the app though so again its down to low quality skill software"

"for the price it's not going to be beaten"

"the features of the camera are wonderful i wasn’t expecting much but now i have ended up buying a 2nd device"

"the only bit which is let down would be the microphone listening to what's going on through the phone app is almost unintelligible you have to be very close to the camera to understand what someone is saying"

"lastly a few times the camera has been offline the app said it was powered of but i checked the plug and the wifi which had no issues and i had to restart the camera which in theory isn't great when if suddenly something happened or if i didn't check i wouldn't have known"

"i have 2 and have both linked so i only need to swipe the picture on my phone to see the other camera"

"activity zones could be better but i will play with these a bit more before giving up completely"

"there is no option that your wifi is fine not the option that the camera is wrong"

"it is ok but it won't except the memory card i have tried 2 different cards and i just get an error message saying there is a problem with the card the cards both work in my tablet"

"when i reinstalled it as an “existing configuration” it failed every time at the end with a black pop up that reads “the network is unstable"

"however this also consistently failed after attempting to assign a location to the re added device as did every retry"

"also doesn’t connect to amazon echo dot 5 as stated"

"the app "feels" buggy unstable and immature certainly compared to it's kasa counterpart and in my humble opinion tp link would be better served by consolidating control of kasa and tapo products into their more mature kasa app and api and focusing on the kasa brand"

"it’s by far the worst i’ve seen it is so bad that it might as well not have the function"

"after that i’ve tried to reconnect the camera and got all kinds of errors possible it didn’t blink at all then it blinked but the app didn’t see the camera after few times resetting and powering off the app saw the camera but was unable to connect to wifi stating something is wrong with it i have other products by tapo and none of them ever complained about my wifi "

"and again the device eventually disappeared from the tapo app devices screen leaving me with no recourse but to reset re add it over and over again"

"as soon a it’s more than 6foot from the rooter it pretty much stops working we’ve a full mesh network with boosters and it’s terrible on this"

"i am trying to send it back but amazon only grants returns for a month before it makes you jump through hoops"

"can't really recommend as a security camera as no cloud storage meaning a burglar could simply steal the camera and there would be no record"

"i had problems setting up as could connect to camera as in guide but then kept failing part way through setup then i realised the following"

"that requires port forwarding on the router and this camera doesn't support that"

"even with the sd card installed the camera has a disgusting option that delete the entire motion notification log from the previous day"

"understand that as a security camera there can be a few issues with offline storage as the sd card can just be taken out of the camera can be smashed to bits along with the sd card but as this isn't the main reason for my purchase this doesn't bother me"

"there have been no real issues maintaining a connection and any connectivity problems are solved by exiting the program and opening again this only happens when i switch wifi signals on my phone now and then"

"would be alright for maybe 3 4 metres but anything more is terrible"

"if that's ok for you then really there's little to complain about"

"when motion detection is activated it makes a alarm noise to warn anyone that it is recording"

"so at the end you are stuck wasting a good hour each day going through clips recorded at various playback speeds to see what triggered the cam"

"i like that the sd card is hidden and not easily accessible if you don't know where to look for it"

"all the cheap other ones have issues with the software they use"

"playback for review is difficult as it captures so"

"poor show errors are confusing and contradictory"

"accessing recordings is good compared to others where i could never load recordings "

"i wanted to stream it to a desktop pc & expected that to be a little difficult but if you download the free ispy software it's hardly a problem since the camera is compatible with rtsp & onvif"

"this item may be sophisticated but when it fails the support instructions are misleading and the help desk are incompetent and do not know the product"

"both trigger separate high quality feeds to record and i make it so that if anyone steps on the front of our property the software beeps"

"the software tapo is very handy"

"this is not a first time to buy an indoor camera hopefully don’t broken after a year"

"not sure what i am going to do now?"

"for the price you really can't go wrong"

"however using the free software ispy i have imported the lower quality feeds for motion detection lower quality feeds have less weird video glitches if your camera has poor wifi connection and then i clone it so i have 2 smaller feeds one detecting the front yard another to detect the road"

"when i reinstalled it as an “existing configuration” it failed every time at the end with a black pop up that reads “the network is unstable"

"unfortunately the onvif profile it support doesn't not support ptz or rather pt since this camera has no zoom"

"pan and tilt work well no zoom capability"