Zmodo - EZCam Wireless High-Definition Video Monitoring Camera - Ivory

I wanted to write a review in order to give more details about what this camera actually does. The details provided by Best Buy and the manufacturer are minimal, so I wasn't really sure what I was getting when I ordered it. I surprised that the manufacture does not provide more details about this camera. I ordered it out of curiosity. A smart phone (iPhone or Android) is required to use this camera. It does not have a built-in screen and does not work with just a computer. I'm using it with an Android phone and the Zsight app. Setup and connection to my wifi was easy. The camera is the dark circle in my picture. The white is just the stand. You can separate the two if you want. It comes with a USB cable and power adapter to power the camera. The USB cable is about 9 feet long. There is what looks like a small button on the back of the camera, but I didn't see anything indicating what it is for. It looks like maybe a reset button. It comes with a micro SD card which holds 3 days of recording. Once setup, the camera records continuously onto the SD card, and you can go back up to 3 days to see video. Once the SD card fills up, it just removes the oldest video from the card and continues recording. This is automatic and no user input is required for this. It records in color when there is enough light. Otherwise, it will turn on some IR lights and the recorded video will be in black & white. Note the picture where my camera shows 8 IR lights. The blue center light is always visible when the camera is operating. Trying to record outside activity at night from inside may be problematic as the IR lights can create a reflection on the window that the camera will focus on. The device records audio and will broadcast your voice from the app on your smart phone to a speaker on the camera, but I have not tested these features yet. The camera does get quite warm, but I have not seen any indication that this is a problem for it. There is a sticker on the side of the camera saying that it is a hot surface. I have not removed the included micro SD card to see what types of files are written to it. You control the camera with your smart phone and the Zsight app. While this app is functional, it could use some additional features and quality control. When playing back recorded video, the app will freeze on my phone if I change the starting time that I want it to replay too many times. Going out and back into the app gets it working again. The Android app has the following features: . Access to multiple cameras (if you own more than one). . Notifications (alerts) when the camera notices movement. I don't know how significant the movement needs to be to register, and I don't know how long it takes to reset before an additional notification will be sent. By seeing the time stamp of the notification (alert) in the app, you can play back recorded video from that time period. . Watch live or recorded video & audio stream from the camera from anywhere in the world where you have a data connection to your phone. . While watching live video, you can change the quality of the picture. This was the only place I could see where you can change the quality. I was not able to get it to record to the on-device SD card at different qualities. . While watching live video, you can broadcast audio to a speaker on the camera. I've not tested this feature, so I don't know how well it works. . From the live view, you can capture a picture and/or video directly to your phone for storage and replay at a later time. . While watching recorded video, you can capture a picture directly to your phone for view at a later time. . The playback feature allows you to choose the date and time of recorded video that you want to watch (stream to your phone). I would prefer that the time used a chooser similar to the date as it can be difficult to slide the time precisely. This is where the app has frozen on me - when trying to select the precise time for playback. . Push Alerts and Microphone (audio) recording can be enabled or disabled in the app settings. . You can share access to the camera with other people (as long as they install the app on their smart phone). . You can choose between a software or hardware decoder for playback on your phone. I was unable to get playback to work when I had the hardware decoder selected (Samsung Galaxy Note 3). That's all I can think of now. I'm quite happy with the camera and find it very functional. I have not tried other devices that may operate similarly.

I was invited to test this camera by Zmodo for 9 days. Over those 9 days I put the camera in my front window. since the camera is small enough it was in a spot where people who walked in front of my house couldnt see it, as it blended in with my christmas tree. From testing zmodo's EZCam I found it useful, I had packages being delivered to my house and was able to to ensure that it was delivered by watching the video live or by playing it back in time to see the mailman deliver it. This camera also has amazing range. the front of my house is about 70 yards away from the road and I can see the road and hear cars going by clearly. Although, my window is quite dirty, you can still see pretty clearly through it. The night vision also works pretty great on the camera, as it got darker the camera switched over towards different shades of night, and I could still see a decent distance. Overall I thought this camera worked really well, and I'm thinking about getting a few for my home after testing it.

This camera was good while it worked, unfortunately the first one I had broke down after a few months. Seems like part of the lens broke down which resulted in over half of the view being obscured. Contacted zmodo as was given a replacement (I had to pay to ship the defective one back) which broke down in less than a month. This one started to lose color and now everything has a purple tint. Tried power cycling and deleting/adding camera back, but neither fixed the issue. I'm debating whether to request another RMA because I will have spent half the amount I paid for this camera on shipping defective units back!

I bought 2 of this camera to monitor the front and back of the house. I just had a Zsight update today that I hope fixes the issue of false alarms. I kept on getting snapshots yet there were no movements on both cams. The cam does get a bit hot monitoring 24/7 even though I have restricted recording only when movement is detected. Since the cam is located inside facing a window to the outside, it does have issues at night when the night vision kicks in and it reflects the light back to the camera. You may get some issues with wireless connection if the cam is located quite a distance from your router. There were times when my connection would drop but would re-connect. To be fair though, the cam has good daytime resolution and you can access it virtually from anywhere. The Zsight application has limitations but recently have been updated to add the functionality of Camera Schedule and Notification settings which were previously only available on the Zviewer pc application (Great update). I hope the bugs are out and developers keep on improving it.

I bought this camera for a friend who was worried about the concierge staff in her apartment building entering her home while she was out. Several things were missing or broken. Two days after setting up the camera, the culprit entered and started watching television. My friend recieved the alert on her cell phone and called the police. Needless to say, mystery and case solved.

The camera itself works well and was easy to setup. My only caveat and reason for return was that it got ridiculously hot to the point where you could not hold the center piece in your hands for an extended period. If you plan to run this 24/7 like I did, I would not recommend this camera due to the heat. Similiar reviews on other sites also indicate an abnormal level of heat that will probably lead to distorted video and eventually video failure.

Camera works well for a small area and setup at the location to be used. I did a preview setup at another location and when I tried to change location (another address) I could not get it to work. However, in the original setup location I worked very well.

I got a few of these so I could find out who this "Nobody" is that lives with us and does things to get our innocent children in trouble. The night vision is sweet! The image quality is awesome. The size is just about right, but the app to use these is lacking badly. I have the motion detect on, and that works... I think. I do not get notifications or alerts by any means and when I go to see what image was captured when the motion detect was triggered, it just says the image timed out and shows nothing. I really wanted to record video when motion was detected, but that's not an option. You can in fact watch the camera in live mode and tell it to record video or simply take a picture. They have a mic and speaker on each camera so you can two way communicate with these which is handy to tell the kids to get the light off and go to sleep. They were easy to connect and set up, although I do have a dual band internet modem and it only detected the 2.4 ghz network. There has been several times I open the app to see what's going on in a room and it tells me my internet is too slow and I close it out and try again. Has only happened a few times and either closing it out and reopening has worked or I gave up wondering what that noise was. All in all, I got these to record video, or even just take pictures every two or three seconds when motion was detected so I could finally unmask the notorious "Nobody" and collect rent. But now I find these only useful for live monitoring what's going on at the moment. I hope the app gets improved asap. I would only recommend these to people that only need the live stream and don't want an expensive camera.