Dropcam - Pro High-Definition Wi-Fi Video Monitoring Camera

DropCam's are dead solid simple cameras to setup and install. They are what the name says. I was so excited with my first one, I went and bought 3 more! I had been putting off getting security cameras and bought the first one because we were suspicious of things disappearing from our bathroom (suspecting housekeeper or teenage kid - it was the kid!) Here's the good: Easy to setup. Great picture. Intuitive software and alerting makes it easy to find events and activity. Now the bad: You pay extra for cloud based recording of your camera. For me 4 cams = $20 a month! They use a lot of bandwidth. I have a capped program with my provider (300 GB per month) and then pay extra so I monitor bandwidth by device. When I was recording a HD pic 24/7, each camera was using around 15-20 GB per month. Times 4 that was 60-80 GB on a 300GB plan. Now, you can turn HD recording off and limit when it records but be aware. Net is if you want one of two cameras to capture an event or tell when your kids get home from school, they're awesome! If yo want a multi-camera security solution with historical recording, there are much better options for the money (both up front and recurring money). (Attached bandwidth image shows distribution. Red and orange pie chart pieces represent one of my dropcams. You can see they win for upload and total bandwidth.)

Dropcam Pro has is very well built and has solid camera lens, but the problem I have with is that after the initial 14 day trial, the minimum subscription price for a 7 day cloud recording is $99 per year. Dropcam doesn't give you an option to record locally, which ruins it for me. I returned it and got the Samsung Smartcam HD Pro, and the quality is just as good as the dropcam, and without the subscription fee. The samsung one allows me to record it on a micro sd card and bypass the hefty fee dropcam force down on me.

I'm pleased with my Dropcam Pro because it's a cross-platform and an affordable video security surveillance solution for our family home. Initially, I placed it at our (2nd floor) bedroom side window and we were able to monitor the front side of our house property. Later, we decided to install it on the front entrance door (back side of the front door) and pointed the Dropcam Pro through the door peep hole (window). This gave us two monitoring security services. 1. The ability to monitor the front property of our house. 2. The ability to monitor our main house entrance. This was an excellent solution for my family because when our front doorbell rings we can easily and quickly identify our visitor by using their app (Dropcam: WIndows/iOS/Mac OS X/Android). We installed the Dropcam app in our family laptops, tablets and mobile phones. Save time. Easy setup. Solid camera. HD/720p is fine. Made and supported by Google/NEST.

I purchased this camera expecting average results, but was pleasantly surprised. The video quality is excellent and the recording service is well worth the price. You can check up on the camera remotely and zoom in on a certain area and the sound quality is excellent!. I would love to have an outdoor version. Great product!

This is my second DropCam Pro that I own now and I'll be buying more. Needless to say, the set up for these are super easy. I'm more than confident that my mom, unassisted, could set this up without frustration or support. Requires only a single power cable (micro-usb, provided) and wireless internet connection to allow control and upload of video streams. The quality of the video recorded is greater than all others I've reviewed. The ability to quickly, easily view not only live video, but recorded video on both your smart device and PC browser qualifies this as a fantastic alternative to traditional alarm/security cameras and monitoring services. Although there is a recommend recording subscription to which you can enroll and save either a week or a months worth of recordings, it's not required. Depending on your usage scenario, it may not ever be! Though it is rather cheap ($10/mo for a week) and I enjoy being able to go back to an earlier part of the day to see what trouble my cats have made! Overall, great camera. I'll be adding more to my home and office.

DropCam has 1080p video w/ 130 degree viewing angle, mic for sound pickup, and speaker for sound output... not a bad set of features overall. For me the daylight image was great, dusk/dawn image was ok, night vision was decent. The image wasn't as sharp as I expected, but good enough for what I wanted. Motion detection happens at the CVR not the camera. Without going into the weeds, on camera motion detection would be better... but in the end, video based motion detection has its weaknesses. Expect false positives if you are trying to detect motion in areas where light transitions can be sudden (like car headlights), or outside motion through windows is visible. The mic is fairly sensitive, I could hear the AC kick on. And the speaker is good enough that my pets could recognize and understand me. The only thing I don't like is the lack of option to record to another location other than the subscription based CVR (Cloud-based Video Recorder). This is mainly for several reasons. 1. It is something else I need to spend money on every month 2. it is not available if you don't pay... as in yesterday's video isn't available if you didn't renew today 3. my primary use would be in a house... keeping this PG I am a single adult and things happen and you are not thinking if you are in view of the security camera dumping video out to the cloud and for that matter I don't necessarily want a visual inventory of my house out there. With all of the data breaches going on, you have to question the security of your information. My individual house and next generation firewall is less of a target than the big DropCam CVR service hosted in AWS. Overall... great home or small business security camera. If you are good with a CVR... this is probably the cam for you.

I purchased two Drop Cams, one for my main home and one for our cottage on a lake. They both installed easily and I can now look in on one home while I am at the other, all from my Android Phone. The night vision works great. I also have a light come on automatically each night so the picture is perfect. My wife put a LED candle on a table and the camera picks up that flickering at night. I have not connected to Cloud recording but that seems like a great option. I am very pleased with the quality of the picture, day or night. It also provides a wide view of a room. At my cottage, I can see from the sliding doors and the deck on the left all the way to the fireplace wall on the right. I also installed NEST wireless thermostats and feel very secure in going from one home to the other. When I was in Mexico for a week, I could keep an eye on both home from my smart phone.

This is a great camera. I use it to monitor my kids room. Color and clarity are great. Loads extremely fast on my secured wifi. The night vision is really clear as well. The onboard microphone works well. The iPhone app is very easy to use and all the features are easily found. The only reason I'm not giving this a 5 star rating is that it is too expensive. The camera price should include some cloud storage. But it doesn't. You have to spend $100 more per year for basic video storage. I knew this before I purchased, but it still is disappointing.