wansview Outdoor Security Camera, 1080P Wireless WiFi Home Surveillance Waterproof Camera with Night Vision, Motion Detection, Remote Access, Compatible with Alexa-W4, White

This product is fantastic for the price I give it five stars! It is reliable and fairly easy to use, very easy to install! We were just on vacation and saw people in our yard and called our NYPD precinct. Although the cops refused to do or check anything without us there in person (ugh), it was good that we got the footage and now can see where we need to secure better! Overall though, there are a couple of downsides. The footage stops in motion detection often slightly before people are done moving within the area. This made it hard to tell whether the trespassers in our yard actually made it up our stairs and broke our glass or not, which was nerve wracking. Luckily it seems they hopped the fence instead, but because the footage stopped short, it made for a very anxious ride home from vacation. The motion alerts are great and night time vision is excellent.We have this installed inside to see through a window, and it sees through the window outside to our backyard SO well!You can set the level of motion detection you want which is nice. The size of the span of the camera is also great, we have two of these and one of them doesn't look like it's pointed in the direction to see things on the side, but it is! Pretty easy to set up and only $7/month to get 7 day rolling footage for up to four cameras. The app is super simple and will drain your battery if you watch for long periods of time of course, but for $30 you really can't beat it especially if you're like us trying to save money in a home that is not in quite as safe of a neighborhood or is going downhill with more crime in pandemic times.I wouldn't say it's super high def for people in the distance (we have ours covering up to a roughly 25x20 ft area), but good enough to see faces very decently and very well up close, and downloading footage is pretty easy as long as you have motion alerts set up. Both of us are able to view it on our phones too. Totally worth buying this and saving all that cash for very few downsides, really no need to spend $200 on a Ring or something plus their monthly fees unless you've just got that extra cash to burn--and even if you do...still buy this camera and put the rest towards a worthy cause like helping theatre artists and other hard hit industries get through this pandemic! ;)

I've had a number of different brands of surveillance cameras but had never tried Wansview. They looked interesting so I thought I’d try a couple to see how they would work.The camera consists of the camera itself, a screw-on WiFi antenna, the plug-in power supply and mounting hardware. There is a single cable that comes out of the mounting base that splits into 3 separate cables: one for power; one for an Ethernet (RJ-45) cable, and one for a reset button. The Ethernet cable also has a separate has 2 small status LED’s, one green and one yellow. They indicate everything from power, connection status and firmware upgrading. That makes it very easy to know what’s going on if any connection issues arise. These cameras do not operate on batteries. The quality of the construction appears to be a very sturdy metal case and made for harsh weather usage, and are rated for a spec called IP66.The next step was to was to set up an account on my cell phone using the Wansview app. The app is easy to use and seems well thought out. There is a Quick Installation Guide as well as a User Manual. To make sure that one of the cameras would connect to WiFi, I decided to temporarily mount one in place first to make sure that it would work properly where I wanted it to be located. I really wanted to hard wire the camera to the internet since there is a jack for it, but there was no way I could do that, so I had to settle for a WiFi connection.The next step was to add the W4 camera to the account once the camera was powered up and the antenna was installed. Make sure your cell phone WiFi is set for 2.4GHz, as the camera only works on 2.4GHz. Follow the directions in the Quick Installation Guide. It will involve identifying your 2.4GHz SSID (which is the network name you have given to your 2.4GHz WiFi on your router) and holding the QR code shown on the cell phone app to the lens of the W4 camera. When you connect, the camera will announce that you have paired to your router and you can start using the camera. It’s just that simple. The status LED’s will also indicate success when it turns steady green. I also decided to see what happens if you disconnect power from the camera and then a few minutes later reconnect power. The camera goes thru a re-connection process by itself, and will pair to WiFi on its own and reconnect. That was good to see. Once finding out how easy it was to connect, I proceeded to mount the camera on the wall of my wrap-around porch and connected it to an electrical outlet. The WiFi antenna is adjustable such that it can be positioned most any way, once it’s screwed on to the camera.The other camera I was going to mount under my detached garage roof eave. The app allows me to flip the image 180 degrees for just such a mounting. After I checked out the WiFi signal going to that camera, I found that I had a very weak signal because of the distance from my router in the house to the back of my garage. So, I decided to install a very inexpensive WiFi extender, and WOW, what a difference that made! The camera worked perfect. I then decided to mount the camera to the back wall of the garage by drilling a hole in the wall and the camera cable went through it connecting it to an electrical outlet in the garage now that the WiFi signal was perfect. I recommend anyone with a weak WiFi signal to consider using an extender, it too is totally wireless.The image quality of both cameras is outstanding, truly, high definition. Sharp as can be as well as the videos. I couldn’t be happier. The lens is a bit of what is called a “fish eye”, a wide angle 105 degree lens, and covers a very large and wide area. The closer anyone comes to the cameras the larger they get in the view, very similar to doorbell cameras so common these days, with incredible detail, and videos can be triggered by motion detection, at reasonable distances as well. An excellent combination. Another feature is a 4X digital zoom when viewing the camera’s images on your cell phone. Very nice and easy to do. This camera does not utilize a micro SD card for local storage, but videos and alerts can be downloaded to your cell phone. Alert messages can also be sent to you to check out what set it off. Night vision switches to black and white as most all surveillance cameras do, and does throw a reasonable amount of light, said to be about 20 meters or 65 feet. This camera is waterproof, and amazingly, it works with Alexa as well. It really does!I think for all of its capability, it’s a great value for an outdoor camera that not only works, but takes great pictures and videos to in full HD to boot. The camera tends to be somewhat invisible as the white color blends it into the background where mounted. Of course, that can be dependent on many things, so YMMV as they say. I think it’s an excellent value for what it does after looking at its competition.