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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 3 out of 5 stars

  Gorgeous camera, hideous storage plan

  • Tech Insider Network Member
  • Top 50 Contributor

  It is truly a shame to have a camera here that is so incredibly nice to set up and is built with such robust quality, but that requires a SUBSCRIPTION to get any real utility out of in the long run. I am coming right out and mentioning this because security cameras, particularly ones of this caliber and price, are an investment. If you are going to invest in a Philips Hue camera set up, you need to know the truth. To get storage of your recorded video clips, you must buy a Secure plan, either Basic or Plus. Basic is $39.99/year PER CAMERA and you only get 30 days of stored recordings. Meaning, if you have two cameras, you will need to pay for each camera at that yearly rate. The Plus plan is $99.99/Year and offers the most features including 60 days of stored recordings and covers all cameras in your Philips Hue setup. The free plan is abysmal, only offering live streaming, light and sound alarms, and instant motion notifications without the ability to store your recordings after a motion alert. That means if you had someone come do a porch dash theft of a package, all you would have evidence wise is the notification and time and snapshot but not the full recording to give to the authorities. That sucks. The fact that a camera this expensive has no option for local storage like a micro-SD card is just terrible in my opinion. Now that I have gotten this out of the way, I will discuss some of the other nice features and annoyances of this camera. The build quality and 1080p HD camera image this camera boasts are incredible. But honestly, it dang well better be amazing at this price tag. I have found the night vision to be excellent with great span and coverage and it lacks the fuzziness of other security cameras I have reviewed, particularly on the extremes of the image borders at distance. This could be all the difference between whether you actually capture the details of a license plate, perpetrators facial features, etc. The camera is built with robust build quality and is one of the easiest cameras I have ever set up via a smartphone app. It was super intuitive, and the instructions were great. One of the small nuisances of this camera I find though is the proprietary charging cable, port, and short cord length. The including power cord is only 6 feet long or so which precludes it from having any real utility in a high roof or door frame set up if you are seeking constant power delivery to the camera. I really think this camera should have used a USB-C charging port for ultimate flexibility and utility in a variety of circumstances, particularly when considering the low power draw of the camera and how easily a USB charging set up would have accomplished the power needs of this device. Altogether, I will not be recommending this camera to my friends unless they are already deeply invested in the Philips Hue product ecosystem and really want to enhance their security set up. You need to be prepared to accept that the subscription plan on this camera is the only way you are going to maximize its utility as a security product. Thanks for reading and I hope this review has been honestly helpful!

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  Posted 1 year ago by Bren

• Rated 3 out of 5 stars

  Solid if you’re into Philips Smart Home System

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  If you’re into the Philips smart home system, then this may be the security camera system for you as it easily integrates with your Philips smart home solution. If you’re not, the good news is this camera does not require having the smart home bridge in order to work and gives you most of its features. If you have the bridge, you can make use of the automation features. The overall build quality is great, and I like the sleek design. The white color actually mimics camera products by competing brand. Setting up the camera is easy enough; it only requires you to install the Philips Hue app and the rest will be taken care by the app. Charging the camera to full capacity takes between several hours to whole night. Installation is easy and you got multiple options. The easiest one is to mount the camera by sticking it to ferromagnetic metal. The other option would be to use the provided long screw and the fischer plug and fix them to the wood or a wall. The camera feeds 1080P video and the quality is good. The video is clear even in night vision mode, and the resolution is sharp enough to provide necessary details when observing the live feed. If you subscribe to the secure plan, you will get access to video clip history and advanced function such as alarm. I’m not really interested to subscribe to another security camera plans, however, the free plan feels really basic. Philips give you a free trial of the secure plan, however, it’s not working perfect as I can’t seem to trigger an alarm from the app. That or maybe because I don’t have the Philips smart home bridge installed. Even without the plan, however, the camera supposedly encrypts the video and audio end-to-end. The only time I was able to trigger the alarm was when setting up the camera and it did not sound too loud. It’s maybe effective enough to attract neighbor’s attention provided they are outside but if they’re inside I don’t believe they would hear the alarm. Also, the camera has built in speaker so you can talk through the camera, but the audio is pretty weak for an outdoor camera. I’m not sure about battery life. In my test, the battery seems to drain a bit faster that I would expect. Of course, to take full advantage of the camera system you will need to subscribe to a plan. If you have multiple cameras, subscribing to the top tier of the annual plan would make sense. The price, however, is not the cheapest out there and surely not the most expensive. Since subscription cost would be one of the key factors in choosing a camera system aside of the hardware cost and system integration, Philips sit somewhere in the middle amidst all the smart security camera options out there. Here’s what I like: Easy to setup Magnetic installation Solid build quality Good image quality End-to-end encryption for video and audio What I don’t like: Not the cheapest subscription to access video clip history Weak speaker Weak alarm sound Battery life seems to be not as long lasting Requires smart home bridge for full functionality including automation features All in all, this security camera system is still a good choice if you’re into the Philips smart home system. If you’re not into the Philips ecosystem, well there are a number of options out there to consider in terms of hardware performance and subscription cost.

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  Posted 1 year ago by Fudgear

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Great if you have other Philips Hue products.

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  I didn't expect Philips to jump into the security camera arena but it wasn't a bad jump. Once I took it out the box, there's a QR code that must be scanned to connect the camera to the Hue app. (I have a Philips Hue hub that's used to connect up to 50 Philips Hue products. I have mostly light bulbs) Once loaded into the Hue app, everything from that point on is guided inside the app so there's no guessing game of what to do going on. This is where you will connect the camera to your wifi and a few other things. Once it's added to the Hue app, you can test the camera to make sure video is showing on your phone and to make sure you can hear audio, and also speak through the camera. Once this is done you can decide whether you will mount the camera inside or outside. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I thought that you can only operate this camera by it being plugged in to an electrical socket. I didn't realize until unplugged it that it is battery operated and there's no need for a cord or the headache of placing it near an outlet. You are able to place this camera anywhere within the range of your wifi router. This steps up the game for me. I was able to place the camera on the side of my house in a great spot. Just one screw is all it takes to mount this camera and with the powerful magnetic attachment, it will not move at all. It took me maybe 5 minutes to mount. The video is very clear and it has night vision (please do not buy a security camera without night vision). If you have Philips Hue light bulbs in your home or a floodlight, etc, there's a feature in the camera app that will allow you to turn on all of your lights at the same time to give the appearance of someone being in the home. This is very beneficial while away from home. You can also set it up to automatically do this whenever there is motion detected. What a cool feature. I've had it up for about a week and haven't had to charge it yet. So far so good on battery life. But I can just remove the camera and charge it whenever it's needed. Philips gives you a free trial of a security plan which allows you to have extra features like 30 days of video history, video clips and other alerts. The trial lasts 30 days but if you would like to keep it after the trial ends then you'll have to fork over $40 a year per camera. Not too bad. $3.99 per month if you don't want to pay for the full year. I think this is a great buy if you have other Philips Hue products and you plan on buying more cameras. This way it would be beneficial to purchase the security plan.

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  Posted 1 year ago by bwashd33