Philips - Hue Security Wired Camera - Black

If you're already invested in Hue lights, you might want to consider adding the Philips Hue Secure Wired Security Camera to your setup. I was looking for a second brand to add to my Google Home centric security system and was eager to try a Hue camera out. Design: The camera looks premium and reminds you of another camera that starts with “N”. It's got an IP65 rating, so you can stick it outside without worrying about the rain or snow. The magnetic mount makes it easy to adjust the angle. There's a desktop stand, but it’s not included in this package. In the pack, you get a screw and anchor that can affix the magnetic mount to a wall or fixture that is not magnetic. There aren’t any instructions on how to do this, however, but if you’re handy you’ll see on inspection that you need to TURN the bottom part of the magnetic mount counterclockwise to unlock the inner portion which has a plate that can be drilled into. You only get one, so make sure you get it right. Video: The camera captures 1080p HD video, which is pretty standard for cameras. The focus is infinite and you can zoom in digitally. The wide field of view seems to be around 140 degrees, so you can keep an eye on a decent-sized area. It handles mixed lighting conditions and movement pretty well, and the night vision is clear and black and white. When it detects motion, you'll get a notification on your phone with a still frame from the video if you have a subscription. Integration with Hue: This camera really comes alive when you pair it with your Philips Hue lights. You can set up the camera to trigger lights when it detects motion, which is super useful. Plus, you can customize the armed behaviors for when you're home or away. It's a great way to create a cohesive security system that's easy to manage. It’s what we all hoped you could do with Nest Secure until Google killed it. Let’s hope that you can wrap this all up with Matter in the future. I couldn’t get the direct video to work with Google Home, and I guess there’s supposed to be a hook to Home in the future, but as of today, I couldn’t get it to work. Subscription and Cloud Storage: To get the most out of this camera, you'll need to pony up for a subscription. There are three plans: a basic one for one camera, one for two cameras, and a plus plan for “All your cameras.” With the basic plan you get 30 days recording, with the plus you get 60 days recording. Both plans give you cloud storage, activity zones, and AI-powered detection that can identify people, animals, packages, and vehicles. If you're already a Hue fan, the Philips Hue Secure Wired Security Camera is a solid choice with caveats. This is especially if you aren’t using multiple brands of cameras. If you’re using several brands of cameras and are trying to tie everything in using Google Home, Alexa, or HomeKit, it’s currently not working except for the most basic sensor reporting, but it integrates seamlessly with your Hue lights and offers some great features with the Hue App with or without a subscription.

Quick Overview ================================= There are a lot of security camera options out there, from wired (network or power) to wireless (network or battery) and there are ecosystems built around each one. Philips Hue, known for their lighting solutions, also has security cameras and this Secure Wired Camera gives you the best of both: Wired power so you never need batteries and wireless connectivity for flexible placement. Overall build ================================= The Philips Hue Secure Wired Camera looks nice in white and the plastic housing feels durable (and it is with an IP65 rating for outdoors). The rounded base of the camera is perfectly shaped to meld with the magnetic mount inside of the mounting base. The cord that comes with it is nearly 10 feet and has a special rubber-sealed plug around the end that inserts into the base of the camera for weatherproof power delivery. This Philips Hue Secure Wired Camera comes with a 1080p sensor and a wide field of view (141 degrees) to capture more area. Inside the box you'll get a mounting screw and drywall anchor along with a sticker and card with the QR code needed to set it up. Performance ================================== First of all, this is a fast and responsive camera with a clear picture day or night. But let's also talk about the setup. I ran into a hurdle here that I hope I can help you avoid. If you had a Hue account previously with a Bridge that you no longer own (we donated our setup when we moved), then your account may have trouble setting up the camera. I couldn't get past the setup even though support said I didn't need a Bridge. The problem was my account was tied to the old Bridge, so I had to create an all new Hue account. Once I created a new account, setup was as easy as you'd expect. Install the app, login, scan the QR code after it asks you what device you're setting up, and that's it! Now, wait for some updates and then you'll name your location and the camera. The camera supports 2.4 and 5 Ghz (and Zigbee) unlike some older models. Now I had a "Front Porch" camera set up and ready to test! Starting up the camera is very quick - maybe quicker than my other popular cloud-based camera system I have. The picture was super-clear during the day especially compared to my older 720p cameras. My other 1080p cameras looked similar, but I might give a slight edge to the Philips (perhaps a newer sensor and less compression). Importantly, your video is encrypted end-to-end to protect your data. You can talk and listen through the app and even set off a siren. I felt like the two-way audio was much more responsive than my current system which always had a bit of lag, making it harder to have a nice conversation when needed. With other Hue components, you can trigger useful automations similar to a motion sensor: When a person or movement is detected, turn on the lights. After they leave the field of view, turn off the lights. Note, this would mean you have other Hue-compatible lights and a Bridge. The camera is hefty (in a good way) and I was worried that the mount might not hold it properly, but it's fine in a sturdy piece of wood. I didn't need to use a drywall anchor. One thing I don't love is that it's easy to take this camera down or knock it off since it's on a magnetic base that can swivel. A long stick or possibly very strong storms/winds could change the angle or knock it off from the magnetic base and disconnect the power cord. Most other outdoor security cameras have sturdier mounts that seem more permanent. You'll definitely want to mount this one out of the reach of a possible intruder. Conclusion ================================= To get the most out of this system (or any of the competitors) means you need more products in the ecosystem. For Philips Hue, that means more lights, a Bridge, and a paid subscription to store recordings and unlock more features like AI-powered people or animal detection, and more. You can pay monthly or annually (for a discount) with a Basic or Plus plan being your options along with how many cameras you'll want to include. Having said that, this is a great camera but I'm in the wrong ecosystem currently. Since I don't want to switch everything over, I'd recommend this for users that are already in the Philips Hue ecosystem for lighting controls. This camera (and their other ones) integrates perfectly, letting you do some neat automations and routines. I definitely enjoyed the high-quality video feed, responsive two-way audio, and the overall appearance of the camera.

I've used security cameras from tons of brands in the smart home and traditional security camera space over the last few years. The Philips Hue Secure Wired Indoor Camera is my first camera from Hue and honestly I was pretty excited to use this camera as I love my Hue products. Unfortunately, the Hue Secure camera is plagued by some questionable design choices and ludicrous pricing both for the camera and the monitoring plan. I think Signify/Hue need to go back to the drawing board unless they want to severely limit the market they are targeting with this product. #TLDR: Who is this for?# This is a 1080p camera with basic "AI" detection for people, animals, vehicles, and packages which includes a Zigbee motion sensor for use as a trigger for Hue lights. I think it's a good fit for someone whose only "smart home" devices are Hue lights and thus have no desire to use any other smart home apps. For anyone else, this product and service are really expensive and just kind of weird as cameras go. #First impressions# The Hue Secure Indoor is a wired camera with a pretty cool magnetic mount that allows a significant amount of adjustability when mounted on a wall. Unfortunately, for some reason that I'm sure made a lot of sense to someone at Hue, the camera uses a proprietary power cable that happens to plug on the bottom of the camera square in the middle of the magnetic area that you'd need to attach the mount if you want it to be able to point slightly down or even perpendicular to the angle of the mount. If you are mounting to the ceiling, for example, you can easily tilt the camera down as the magnetic mount will be on the top of the camera. If you're mounting to a wall and want to point the camera nearly straight down, or you are mounting to a shelf and want to point it down just slightly to cover a particular space--- you are stuck with around 15 degrees less tilt. I'll try to illustrate in photos, but it's really frustrating. It wouldn't even be a big deal if you could rotate the FOV like you can in nearly any other security camera app, but that feature doesn't exist in the Hue app. Also, if you want to purchase a desktop mount so you can just sit it on a shelf you need to pay $50 for an accessory that should be included in the box. #Setup and usage# Initial setup was super easy in the Hue app. I already have a Hue Bridge, the app, and a bunch of lights so I was used to their process and honestly this was maybe even easier than setting up a Hue lightbulb. Once you add at least one camera you are granted an extra "Security" section in your Hue app above the lighting controls. After initial setup I had to add it as a motion sensor to the Hue Bridge, which was also fairly easy. The app adds it to the Bridge using Zigbee and does all the pairing automatically. I REALLY liked the attention to detail regarding encryption with the Hue Secure setup. You are prompted to save your encryption key string (a series of random words) and it even allows you to automatically export this as a file to a cloud storage account. Hue includes a little "ownership card" where you can write the words down and then lock it in your safe. Really cool especially with some vendors in this space having to admit they handled privacy badly in the last few years. I was a little confused after I set this up that I wasn't getting any kind of notifications or alerts despite it sitting next to my desk where it should have been blowing me up. That's when I discovered that it only sends notfications when it is "Armed". You have to put it in Armed - Home or Armed - Away mode to get any notifications or store any recording at all with this camera. There is no option to record to local storage (as it doesn't have local storage). The clip based recording is available with the subscription fee of $4/month or $40/year for only ONE camera and only records 60 second clips. A 60 second limitation might make sense with a wireless/battery camera, but for a wired camera, this is absurd. The camera should have some option to store video on an SD card or push to a NAS or computer on your network like nearly every other camera I've ever used or reviewed. The overall quality of the video is very good, however, so top marks for Hue in that regard. It also does a fairly good job in low light with the "night vision" (aka black and white + IR lighting) turned off, and "Night Vision" itself is very good quality with low noise even in a very dark space. However, the only options for Night Vision are Auto or Off. If you set it to Auto, the amount of light required for it to switch back to normal/color mode must be incredibly high. In my room with a bright overhead light plus 4 Hue lamps and a Hue Gradient strip at my desk, having every light cranked up to full white is not enough for the camera to come out of black and white "Night Vision" mode. I ended up just turning night vision off completely, which leads to a very dark but still usable frame at night with the overhead light off but the Hue lights operating in Tokyo or Tyrell scenes. You can use the Hue Secure camera to automatically trigger lighting scenes in your home based on motion events, which is pretty cool in that it means you get an extra motion sensor included in the cost. This is where I think Hue have an excellent opportunity to justify the cost of their subscription plan but they unfortunately fall short. I would consider the camera and service plan to be a great value if the AI detection was capable of differentiating people by face and activating certain lights based on this info. I've used a few NVRs which can differentiate based on face in this way, but aren't able to tie into my smart home to do anything cool. Unfortunately, the Hue Secure plan cannot help with this as the camera only does basic sorting into the "Person", "Animal", "Vehicle", or "Other" buckets using machine learning. #Final thoughts# Usually I do a "negatives" section here but this whole review is coming off pretty negative. The fact is, I was really interested in seeing how Hue could disrupt the security space as I love so many things about the Hue platform. I'm just terribly disappointed. However, I know several people who are not fully embedded in the "smart home" life yet have a Hue bridge and bulbs throughout their home, and if one of them wanted to add a single camera to watch a back door or a pet or something, I think this could be a better fit than having to get another smart home app and set up yet another account with a vendor that may or may not take their security seriously. For anyone but locked-in Hue families, this camera needs a few things to become a 4 or 5 star product - the camera cost needs to drop by at least 25%, the desk stand needs to be included, the security plan needs to be half the price with the current feature set or at least include multiple cameras at the current price, it should use USB-C for power, and the AI features need to be improved to differentiate between people.