The Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 is built for your home. With Wi-Fi connectivity and a dedicated app, you can quickly access your video feed. You can also adjust its camera angle so that you can keep an eye around the house. Apart from this, many features are also available in it. We will talk about all those features here. So is this the lowest priced security camera currently available in the market? Find out here.
Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 Design and Specifications
The Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 competes directly with the 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 see up and down. Its plastic case can rotate on its base.
The device has a microphone and a speaker which are present on its back side. With its help, not only audio is captured, but it is also able to do two-way communication. Also, alert music and sound an alarm when unwanted person enters the house. Its front has an LED, which shows its power and connectivity status.
The Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 has a fixed base, which is placed on a rubberized surface to maintain its grip. The rest of the camera body can rotate on this plane. A socket given at the bottom of it helps to mount it on a tripod. You can also mount it on any wall or ceiling. There is no kit or mounting bracket 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.
At the base, you get a microUSB port for power and a microSD 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 been given 350 degree horizontal rotation range and 65 degree vertical range. The field of view is 120 degrees in the horizontal and 95 degrees in the vertical. To increase the visibility in the dark, 6 infrared LEDs have been given in it. 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 & Features
Like other Wi-Fi home security cameras on the market, the Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 also works through an app. It allows the user to monitor video, control the camera, view stored footage, and more. Kent CamEye app is available on both iOS and Android platforms. I checked its connectivity on the previous platform. If you have multiple 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 Wi-Fi connection. After this, tapping on the camera icon takes you to the video feed. Here you can adjust the camera angle and settings, activate the speaker and microphone together or separately, take a snapshot to save on the 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 usually takes only two to three seconds to activate the camera and display the video feed.
If you go deeper into the menu and settings, you find the privacy mode. On activating it, the camera does not activate automatically or does not record footage. You can view your saved recordings and photos and see all alerts issued by the camera. Its alert sensitivity can be customized. After turning on all its settings, when I put it on the main door of the house, it issued dozens of alerts daily. In this way, it feels good to have control of its different functions in 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 per annum. You can also store video clips for up to 7 days for any special event. These clips are 12 seconds long. For this, a charge of Rs 400 per month is charged or Rs 4 thousand has to be paid for a year, in which video history is stored for 30 days.
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 on Kent’s website, with a paid subscription, you can capture event triggered recordings, which are saved on the cloud. From here you can also watch them by playing them directly. However, all other functions such as memory card recording and playback, live streaming of video feed in real time, two-way communication and privacy mode are all available 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 any Alexa enabled smart display like Amazon Echo Show 10 (3rd Gen). It worked for me, but with Alexa Link I was unable to adjust the camera angle.
Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 Performance
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 drive it smoothly and within seconds was able to do everything I wanted to do. The app is designed very well. All the essential features are easy to access.
The Kent CamEye HomeCam 360 can record a FullHD video feed. It shows full color feed during day time and monochrome fade in dark. The camera automatically detects low-light conditions and turns on the infrared LED as needed. It worked well as I was able to see details and faces even when there was no color in the feed. There were times when the camera took a few seconds to adjust with the light conditions and re-calibrated the video feed, but it didn’t cause much trouble.
The camera’s FullHD footage was sharp and detailed, but showed some artfaces in fast-moving conditions. There was no problem as a lot of detail was visible in the faces, clothes and small things like boxes and packages etc.
You can also set its resolution to HD or SD, which makes the stream more stable and recorded in detail in case of low internet speed. This also comes in handy if you want to store more footage on the SDcard. Although the text appearing on things in SD becomes difficult to read but faces are still clearly visible.
Wide range is available for adjusting its camera angle. Wherever the camera is placed, the space around it can be monitored with a 350 degree range. Its tilt range of 65 degrees is combined with a wide viewing angle, which provides a lot of flexibility in the viewing range. However, the camera took a second on 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 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 do two-way communication easily. The microphone captured the surrounding sound quite well but when one speaks while standing near the camera, it captures the spoken words quite well. You can also activate only the microphone, except for the speaker, if needed.
The camera captures the movement of man well but it cannot track any object or person. The clips saved were very clear and faces and objects were easily recognized.
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 choice. However, it gets strong competition from the Godrej Spotlight Pan-Tilt Camera and Mi Home Security Camera 360.
It 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 very reasonable and it can obviously be bought depending on the security needs of your home.
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
Harm:
Mounting kit is not available in the box