Customer Ratings & Reviews

This is a great camera all on its own, and works well with Ecobee's home security solution, but the big selling point for me is that it is compatible with Apple's HomeKit Secure Video. It frees me from having to pay for the Ecobee subscription and still get notifications including facial recognition and sounds like smoke alarms.

I truly have no hardware design issues with the ecobee's home monitoring line up (SmartSensors, SmartSensors for doors/windows) and this new SmartCamera is no exception. It’s a premium piece of hardware that has shown some capabilities that I’ve not seen on other wireless camera systems that share the store shelf with it. At the same time, I feel that the other brand offerings do show a lot more capability in terms of software and services. But it all depends on your desirements. To name some pros, the camera’s field of view is wide…...VERY wide. If centered in a room against a wall, you’ll be able to see almost 180 degrees east to west as well as about 60 degrees north to south. The camera doesn’t move mechanically, but “zooms” and “pans” the frame while maintaining a level of recording quality. You are able to control zoom and pan via the ecobee app. Also, SmartCamera will do this automatically when a person is in view and follow that person during recording. Which leads me to the Haven Service itself. Ecobee’s answer to “home monitoring” is for a consumer to pay a monthly service for Autopilot, 14 day cloud recording and…….entry alert notifications! If you’ve got SmartSensors, you won’t receive any activity notifications unless you sign up for Haven. Most other offerings provide basic sensor notifications as a free service. SmartCamera does offer basic notifications; enhanced with Haven. There, that’s that. Haven’s Autopilot is a pretty cool feature as it utilizes geofencing to arm and disarm your home. The caveat is that each person in your home will have to install ecobee on their phones and link to your account. This is how Haven recognizes friend from foe; there is no actual facial recognition. If everyone is away from home, it will arm and if at least one person is home, it will disarm. There is no central key panel to arm or disarm, although you can do this manually from the app, if you choose to. Pretty cool stuff. The big con I see with Haven is its reliance on….you. Haven doesn’t actually call anyone in the event of a break-in. It doesn’t even ring an alarm after a standard countdown. It will send you a push notification and ask you for a course of action, which is to either dismiss the trigger or sound the alarm (that comes from the SmartCamera). The idea here is to assess the situation and make a decision, which can eliminate any false alarms. What we don’t realize is that oftentimes we do not have our phones on our persons, or may even have them silenced. It isn’t until many minutes later that you see the notification and find that your house has been hit. C’mon, you can’t say I’m wrong about missing a notification every now and then. It would have been nice to have a fall-back. Going back to the SmartCamera, the cloud recordings can be triggered to run on any motion or set to only record when a person is in-frame. I have it set to person-triggered recording and most of my clips are at 2 minutes long. That should be ample time to see who has entered your house and then some. When the SmartCamera performs its person tracking, it will crop in and pan to follow that person, which is awesome. It did struggle to follow me at times, especially when I moved at a faster pace. With Essential Haven, you are given a 14 day recording cache for a single camera; Extended will allow an unlimited number of cameras for twice the cost of Essential, monthly.

This cam was easy to set up and use - did adjust the area to look in and motion sensitivity / thought the clown dog toy was a person I guess - wont leave thst out again - however was able to adjust it out of the range.

Was great at first, then you start to hear it moving the lens around which is a small annoyance, but then the whole front glass face of the camera just fell to the floor one night, it’s glue was still super tacky so I’m. It sure why this happened, but now the camera is ugly and never even touched by hands after the initial install! Fell apart on its in, or and the faceplate was glued to my floor in the kitchen for an hour or two after hitting the floor, but it still could not just stay together and work

This is a decent home security camera and for that purpose, I'd say it is a decent product. Right up front, please note that you need to pay the $5/month subscription fee to take advantage of reviewing recorded video, it is not included with the purchase, only live video is available without ecobee haven. You get 30 days free, then $5.00 per month. This service, ecobee haven, provides you with more than just recorded video, it gets into notifications and other features. For this, I am deducing one star because it only seems reasonable that this service in a basic format should come with the system for at least a short period of time to download and save clips for the last 24 hours, or something. Back to the camera review. You'll notice it is a well built and solid camera. There is no doubt about the quality build of this. As for clarity of images, it does not contain video adjustment controls like backlight compensation, contrast, brightness, etc. You get what you get. The settings provided and features it has makes it a decent and comparable home security camera. The notifications for motion detection are spot on....it never misses. Now, I will say that it takes a snapshot at the time it detects motion and while that would be okay, it often misses the subject. So to see what it was, you have to go back and watch the video clip. Those clips cut off in 2 minute increments, which is okay because they are manageable at 2 minutes. I wish they would stop recording 15 seconds after the activity stops but they all seem to be 2 minutes in length. I've looked for a setting for this and have not found one. In addition to being a security camera, you can add door/window sensors. These sensors work well to detect the opening of doors and windows (not glass breaking, just opening/closing). So, intruder kicks in your door and that will send you an alert. Motion detected in camera, you get an alert for that too. You can then go LIVE and see what is happening or with the ecobee haven service, you can review what was happening before/after the alert occurred. They also have a smart sensor that is like a motion detector that can be paired with this, but I do not recommend that product for the purpose of detecting an intruder. But they are available. The camera is easy to place and can also be wall mounted. While it is WIFI, you will still need to power the camera. It has no battery backup. This can add to the complication of where to place it, but you also won't have to change batteries every week. Note that this camera gets warm, not hot, but kind of warm, so don't be concerned something is wrong, it is normal. The app is the only way to interact with this, so you'll need your smartphone to view/change/etc. anything. The app is not buggy, it works really well. No matter how much I flooded it with video and live recording, it never crashed. There are some anomalies I noticed that are superficial and I emailed support about them for future fixes, but nothing that affects the performance of the app. The 2 minute clips are easy to view, download, and message to others. You can also use autopilot mode, which turns on and off the camera detection based on if you are home or not. Nice feature if you are not wanting to manually control it or are the forgetful type. Some things to consider is that if you are in your house and want it turned on, you need to do it manually anyway. And if you are home, you probably want this on, at least when you are sleeping. In manually turning on/off the detection parts of this while in the app, you can adjust what gets turned on for the "home" and "away" modes. So, if you want to have it ignore the camera motion detection, but have the doors and windows on, you can edit the staying home mode to do this. Or for away, if you want it all on, you can do that too. This is the only system I've seen offer this kind of flexibility knowing you might be staying home and leaving the system on so you would not want it going off each time you walked in front of the camera. The real value of this as a system comes from using the ecobee thermostat, camera, sensors, etc. as a complete system. Additional cameras on the ecobee haven push the monthly price to $10/month vs. $5.00 for a single camera, but this is comparable to other similar products. This is one of those VHS vs. Beta conversations, who has what and which will outlast the others. I think this one will be there for the long haul, they have taken great steps to feel the pulse of the consumer. I like what ecobee stands for, very environmentally friendly and conscious, which says a lot about them as a company and staff. They have been very successful at saving the environment from wasted energy at home by offering their smart thermostats. I like their back story and enjoyed reading about who they are. Very cool. Ecobee is also very sensitive about your privacy and data use. They have a mode that can turn off the camera when home and also mute the microphone with the app or touch of a switch on top of the camera. In summary, this is a good home security indoor camera system with the ability to get some burglary detection devices to augment your camera(s). While I'm more of a separate alarm and separate security camera kind of guy, I can see good uses for this system such as a small apartment or small home, or for those who don't want to spend the money or attempt to install separate systems. It makes it convenient to interact with your system vs. systems, so that is a big plus that it is all in one.

This camera was a pleasant surprise as it exceeded my initial expectations. This is my first camera with a 180 degree angle view that can pan around as I control it from the Ecobee app installed on my smartphone. If you want a user friendly, home security option, the Ecobee is definitely the “smart” option. Here are my personal Pros and Cons: PROS The action of the camera finds the person in motion and “follows” them as they move around the room. Pairs perfectly with Alexa snf really becomes another Alexa device. You can even play music or also just say “Alexa, turn my camera on" Autopilot feature automatically turns your system on and off according to the GPS of your smartphone device (you can turn this feature on and off as you please) -- Consistent clear audio — no dropouts or dead spots as of yet -- Two way walkie walkie feature where I can speak into the room where the camera is via my smartphone app and those in the room can speak back to me! I even talk to my dog when I'm gone and he recognizes my voice! CONS There are quite a few options that are only available with the paid subscription (taking snap shots, recording) The paired smart sensors were a bit difficult to figure out until I read the manual and found that they are supposed to work with the ecobee thermostat that I don't have and can't afford as it is a bit on the pricer end. All in all, I would highly recommend it but only if you satisfy two things: 1) Purchase the ecobee thermostat with the built in speaker ($249) 2) Pay for the full subscription and have access to everything to make your experience complete.

The ecobee SmartCamera is a really good camera that has a lot of great features to protect, monitor, and communicate around your home. This indoor camera allows you too see everything in a 180 degree angle inside your house. We chose to have it monitor our sliding glass door at the back of our house. According to the instructions, I could have installed it to monitor the outside from the inside as well. I might check that out at some point. When you first open the box, you are can see the instructions, the camera, a base, and a power cord. For now, I installed this as a standing camera, but I plan to mount it at some point. It's nice to know that you have options and the base is flexible for your needs. I will say that the mounting aspect brings up one flaw in my eyes...the power cord. You have to have this plugged in at all times. That makes it difficult to mount it at a higher point which is what I really would like to do. From a performance perspective, I was really impressed with ecobee SmartCamera. It has a great picture and you can even use on screen tools to pan and zoom. I think that is terrific. When you pair with ecobee Haven, you start getting alerts and you can look live to see what the camera detected. From there, you can a couple of things in app. You can watch as the motion detection follows the subject that it picked up on, sound the alarm to distract and deter then, or you can dismiss it and carry on. I was really amazed by the reaction time of the motion detection and the ability of the camera to keep up with a moving subject. Well done! Then there's also the history that it keeps for you so you can go back and check video footage. I do want to say that the viewing angles and crispness of the picture can be impacted by the ambient lighting of the area. I am still working to find the best place, but I am not seeing the best pictures for night vision or super bright days from time to time. It's not a deal breaker, but it would be nice to have that aided just a bit. Another interesting piece is that this has Alexa built in. Yes, that means that this camera has a mic and speaker. While not the greatest quality, you can use it to ask Alexa things or even play music. I don't see this being your main source for tunes, but the option is interesting. However, this does present the option of an intercom like system. You could use this to chat within the house or even drop-in on your pooch to talk to them. All in all, this a pretty good indoor camera that pairs well when you have other ecobee sensors and cameras. When putting them altogether, you have a solid security or monitoring system for your house. While it won't alert the authorities for you, you can still keep on eye on things and react when needed. For a $5-10 monthly cost, the ecobee SmartCamera and Haven could really compete for the business of those DIY home security guys. I never believed in the $20-30 per month solutions so this falls right in my alley.

I have a condo in a fairly safe area, but wanted an inexpensive, easy to use home monitoring system for when I go away. This Ecobee system is exactly what I needed. The along with door and room sensors could not be easier to set up. Download the Ecobee app, create an account, scan the QR code on the device label and bam, you're ready to go. I placed this on my bar between a couple of bottles, on the opposite end of the condo from my front door. I barely notice it's there, but I love that is. The security of the Ecobee system seems terrific with two factor authentication through text message. The Haven service that stores cloud activity is only $5 per month after the a first month trial which seems completely reasonable for the peace of mind it provides. The camera itself is fantastic. It automatically turns off when I'm home and when I leave I get a wonderful wide angle of my entire kitchen, living room, dining room and the 2 entrances into my home. The picture is crystal clear and I can even pan and zoom in if I want. Alexa is built in which I don't find useful since I have a Sonos setup with Alexa nearby. I do love the intercom feature, if I am away and schedule a pet sitter I can check in on them. It's fun to have some fun with the cats too. For my first foray with home security, I could not be happier with this camera and the rest of the Ecobee products.

There is something to be said for having smart products that work with each other, just like this ecobee SmartCamera with Voice Control ($179) that works with the other Ecobee products - thermostat, room sensors, door and window sensors. Ecobee SmartCamera with Voice Control is a powerful device with an expansive array of user-discoverable settings and capabilities. Ecobee SmartCamera with Voice Control can work with Apple’s HomeKit as a standalone product, with the simplicity of providing live, instant check-in of what the camera sees and hears. However, this makes no sense. All that can be done without ecobee’s Haven subscription alert is to view the live camera feed. What makes total sense is including this SmartCamera with two-way audio and digital camera controls in a Haven subscription! Smartly, two-factor authentication is required for online control of this product. You would NOT want the settings and security of this product to be compromised! As I have come to learn about my other ecobee products, starting with the ecobee SmartThermostat with Voice Control, setup was as easy as using the iOS or Android app, clicking the “+” at the top right of the window and choosing what is to be added, in this instance, the camera. Within a couple of minutes, the installation using my iPhone was complete. Image quality is excellent with 1080p color video! With three infrared LEDs, black-and-white night vision works remarkably well in darkness. Add to these capabilities auto as well as manual digital pan, tilt and zoom to track moving subjects it finds. Recording is available through the app and limited to two minutes per instance. SmartCamera can be wall-mounted with included hardware or placed on or in a piece of furniture and aimed at the front door, back, side or the door to an attached garage. With the addition of more cameras, more places can be simultaneously monitored. Next came the fine tuning, assuring the best placement is with the camera aimed towards my front door. This camera must be plugged in to power, so it has to be within reach of an extension cord or wall outlet. (I ALWAYS plug electronics into a high quality surge protected strip that comes with a lifetime guarantee and insurance in the event an attached device is taken out by an electrical surge.) And because this SmartCamera is equipped with a piercing alarm tone, test it to know its capability and reach. For example, can it be heard outside? Mine most certainly can be heard outside. Siren activation is not automatic. Activation is available with an intrusion alert through the app. Through the Two-Way Talk capability in the app, users can speak to and hear the “intruder” in addition to seeing the visitor, invited or not. Note that Haven is self-contained. It does NOT connect to a central station to summon law enforcement. It ONLY send alerts to the user. Other settings include Autopilot to automatically arm the system when leaving and disarm upon returning. An available Window mode can be useful for monitoring what’s happening on the outside of a front, side or rear window. Or choose to get notifications without arming. With its Alexa integration, it can also act as an additional device to play content and respond to Alexa queries. Amazon’s ESP, Echo Spatial Perception, is built-in so only the closest Amazon speaker will respond. This feature also worked perfectly. SmartCamera (and ecobee SmartThermostat) is also compatible with Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri, though I have not tested these capabilities. Ecobee SmartCamera is part of the growing ecobee ecosystem of Alexa-controlled devices and comes with the standard ecobee three-year warranty.

The camera is pretty top notch in terms of functionality and size. It's relatively small (golf ball for comparison) and pretty compact in size. I have this nestled on one of my book cases. Should anyone try to enter my residence, the camera is pretty hard to spot. The picture quality is pretty good. When using the Ecobee smartphone app, using the live view for the camera is pretty quick. I have a Ring camera and the time to launch the live view on that is considerably longer. The voice quality from the camera is pretty clear as well. If you need to chat with whoever is home, the sound quality is clear and not muffled or riddled with background noises like my other camera does. Also, the night vision on the camera is quite good as well. Like with most other cameras, whenever it activates, there is a clicking noise when the camera turns on. This Ecobee camera is a bit louder than others I've used. Not a huge issue for home monitoring but should an intruder enter your house, they'll definitely be able to hear the camera clicking on. The camera is a tilt and pan camera which is nice. However, I've noticed when trying to move the camera around on the smartphone app, it's a bit laggy. Definitely not as smooth as I would like so that's really the only downside I can find with this camera. To get the full range of features with this camera, you'll want to sign up for the service. It's not much however it really enables a lot of the good features you'll need/want for this camera.

Ill start off by saying be careful. This is an awesome camera, and I don’t want you to make the same mistake I did. I had this camera setup on my sub woofer to watch my dog at night after his surgery. I accidentally knocked it off of the sub woofer and chipped the glass corner. The entire front face of this camera is glass so be cautious as it is fragile. That being said, I appreciate the quality that went in to this camera. The base design, the glass front, and the look of the camera itself is spot on. Ecobee did a wonderful job on the design of this camera. The camera is very simple to setup and add to your existing Ecobee environment. You basically plug the camera in, wait for the amber lights, fire up the app and click on the + at the top right, select camera, and follow the prompts. That’s one of the things I love about Ecobee, is the fact that they make it so easy. Easy to setup, easy to view, easy to control. I've noticed that’s the same with all of the Ecobee products. They really put a lot of thought in to making it easy for their customers to setup and use their products. I recommend Ecobee to the “not-to-tech savvy” friends of mine and they love it as well. This camera has excellent video quality. Hands down, my favorite feature of this camera is the fact you can pan with the lens to quite a great degree. You can also zoom in pretty far with very little loss of quality. The lens on this camera is absolutely amazing. The two way audio also works very well. In the app, you have options to take a snapshot, record video, talk, and pan/zoom. Again the app makes it very easy to control this camera. Combined with Ecobee Haven and a couple of door/window sensors from Ecobee and you have yourself a pretty versatile security system. Ecobee Haven is most likely what I will be switching to as it is very easy to use, very accurate, and very simplistic. Its also not obnoxiously annoying like some of the other security solutions if tested. Case in point, the alarm on the camera is not super loud. If that’s something you are desiring, the Ecobee has it. The alerts and notifications are enough for me with a security system and I don’t need flashy lights and loud alarms to let me know something is wrong. The app will tell you. With smart watches and smart phones these days, all I need is an alert. The Ecobee Haven service also gives you 14 days of video history which is nice. I would highly recommend this camera as the features and quality of the product and the Ecobee Haven service are amazing. You cant go wrong with this one.

I wanted to use this camera because it worked with AppleHomekit. It paired into the Apple system with a quick setup barcode scan and worked instantly with all my devices. I bought this device on sale at a reasonable price. I can't say how it works with the ecobee only system as I did not try it. Have not tried the motion detection feature or face recognition features yet. Has expected recording options as well as activity zones and control of status and night vision lights. Would recommend

The Ecobee SmartCamera is the brains and hub behind the Ecobee Home Security Ecosystem, along with your smart phones or tablets, which is why it is by far the most expensive device in the ecosystem. Hardware-wise the Camera and accessories are definitely slick and designed to look good, almost like art or something out of RH catalog. The camera has a sleek mid century modern look with a metal base and can also be mounted with that base on a wall. Unfortunately, that is where the praises end and things start to drop-off in terms of user experience and functionality. The unfortunate part of this system is that most of the best functionality is reserved for the Haven subscription. Ecobee has a few things working against them in this regard. Some of these features are included for free by competitors, and they are competing against the big fish like Google/Nest, Amazon/Ring, or even smaller competitors like SimpliSafe that have a full ecosystem of products even though they aren’t fully affiliated. People are not going to spend on multiple security/monitoring subscriptions and they aren’t going to go all-in on a small time bit player with nice hardware. They need to find a way to get a piece of the pie if they affiliate with the big players. Here are some of the functionality you only get after you subscribe: -Push notifications -Geo Location notifications for home/away based on your smart device -Security Statuses (Home/Away/Disarm) All you get are basic Live feeds and status of Open/Close on doors, no notifications or alerts without the subscription. Competing products offer this for free, all they charge for is for recorded coverage. In addition, some more frustrations I experienced with this product: -I couldn’t pair this Camera to my phone and get past Verify Camera until I chose the Apple Home Kit option and scanned the QR code’s. I tried from both my iPhone X and from an iPad Air3. -When trying to pair to my home network, it forced me to type in my SSID instead of just picking it from those available. My SSID is not private, what year is this? -2 Factor from an app is great and all, but maybe a push notification or better yet, Face ID or auto-populate from the challenge screen? Tedious!!! Full disclosure, I am heavily invested in the Ring ecosystem with 2 flood light cams, 1 doorbell, 1 stick-up cam purchased with my own money and the $10 unlimited plan. There is no way I am going to pay another $5 or $10 a month for Ecobee, a small unproven player while Ring has Amazon backing it. Likewise, Nest/Google Home have Google backing them. These small bit players need to not only integrate with these bigger ecosystems, but find a way to get some money out of a shared subscription service or they simply will not survive. I will most likely end up just getting the Ring interior security equipment since it won’t cost me anything in terms of subscription, just the hardware since I am already invested. Great hardware, good luck in this marketplace trying to charge your own subscription Ecobee, especially for basic features that cost you nothing (no cloud storage, no central server notification, just my Wi-Fi and network).

I really like the small camera. It does have a wide panoramic 140 degree view, 1080p, night vision, and a long power cord. You can mount this on the wall or use the small silver stand. It does make a small clicking noise when it goes from daytime/well-lit view to nighttime mode. I do recommend getting the eco Haven subscription so you can save your videos, but can also watch live on the ecobee app.

These cameras are fantastic, especially if you’re wanting to incorporate them into your Apple HomeKit smart home. I’m currently replacing my Arlo cameras with these as they go on sale. I’m hoping for an exterior camera next.

I'm only giving this 4 stars because of night vision quality. I like the quick set up and integration with my ecobee system. The extra wide view is nice.

Fully apple home compatible. No hoobs or 3rd party integration required. Pairs up quickly just like the Logitech cameras that Apple sells and records footage to my cloud just like the others. Comparable image quality at 1/3 the cost of the ones Apple sells.

Great picture and works very well with Alexa and Apple. Recommended

This indoor ecobee camera is a good choice i made. The set-up was easy and am really enjoying it.

Can’t turn on event detection unless you are also getting notifications. So you either don’t record anything or you get constant notifications. Want to zoom in? It slowly zooms as if it has a telescopic lens, which it doesn’t it’s just a digital so it’s either a really weird hardware limitation or a really stupid and annoying “feature” Overall I’m really disappointed with it