Neos SmartCam Review

You may have heard of Neos before, they offer home insurance, the smart way, with the use of smart tech to monitor your home against intruders or leaks etc. Well they have now produced a new smart WiFi camera, packed full of features and available to everyone, no insurance required! It’s fresh out the factory and we’ve been fortunate enough to get sent one to try out.

Features & Spec include:
– 1080p HD video capture inc night vision & 8x digital zoom
– Motion & noise detection inc 2-way audio
– Auto arming – automatically switch on the camera when you leave the home via geo fencing
– Cloud recording or local SD card
– Download clips directly onto your smart device

Design & Contents

The camera itself is very small, fits in the palm of your hand small. It’s constructed from plastic, square in shape and includes an adjustable stand/arm, that swivels and moves up & down. On the back of the camera, you have the power & USB ports, a reset button, plus a perforated area for the speaker. On the bottom of the camera, you have a single button, plus the micro SD card slot. The camera comes complete with instructions and a 2m long power cable & plug adapter. Overall a very minimalist, modern design that’s very practical and should’nt stand out within your home.

Set Up

Setting up the camera was very simple, it was just a case of downloading the free Neos app, registering an account with them and then following the on screens steps. It’s a case of listening out for voice prompts from the camera and showing a QR code on your smart device, to the camera too. It will connect to your home WiFi network and then be fully accessible on your network or remotely.

Using The App

At the point of writing this, I had to use a beta version of the app, but I didn’t come across any issues. When in the app, you can view & select which camera you want to view, yes you can have multiple cameras, and once you’ve clicked on that camera, you will see the live stream. From this screen, you can view a small stream vertically with options, or tilt your device horizontally to go full screen. Three buttons appear on this screen, with options for 2-way audio, taking a snapshot or start recording footage. Below that, you can also see previous recordings from either motion or noise triggers.

Taking a deeper look into the settings, you are given options for night vision, image quality, image rotation of 180deg (if you want to hang it from the ceiling) and also recording settings. In these recording settings, you can select if motion and/or noise detection is on/off and the sensitivity of those settings. I should add this in an internal camera only, so it’s not water proof and I’m unsure how well it will hold up outside. That being said, you could mount at the top of a window and point it outwards.

Key Features

Two keys features included with the camera is its geo-fencing ability. You can set your home location and when your smart device (you), with the app on, leaves the property, it knows that and will automatically arm the camera. This saves on storage and also gives some privacy back to you while you are at home. This feature doesn’t need to be used and you can manually arm or disarm the camera when you want. The second feature is the cloud storage, whereby Neos let your store unlimited 12-second recordings on their secure server (Amazon Web Services), for 14 days. If that isn’t enough, you can record all your footage a micro SD card. You can also choose to receive notifications or not, to your smart device upon detection.

Performance

The video quality is very good, for the money, which we’ll get onto later. On my iPhone, the video is detailed and bright, until you pinch & zoom in. As expected, when you do zoom in on the image, the pixels become more defined and the details get lost. That being said, if you zoom in all the way, you can still make out items and even faces. The camera has a wide lens, so you there is a good field of view, but you also get that fish eye effect towards the edges, similar to a traditional action cam.

It’s unclear what the fps is on this but it’s higher than I expected, during both the live stream and recordings, the footage is very smooth. One thing that I like, which some may find irritating, is the camera shows on-screen where the movement is, via a green box, which gets larger or smaller and follows the moving subject, which I quite like.

Other points worth raising, the night vision works reasonably well, you can see subjects in the dark, upto about 5 meters. As for audio, it’s ok, it works and I could pick up conversations that were about 3 meters away. IF for some unfortunate reason someone did break into your home, saw the camera and took it with them, footage will still remain on the cloud.

Verdict

The best part about this camera? It costs just £19.99 to purchase. At that price point, with the features and quality of the footage, it’s a must-have. I know there are cheap cameras available on the market, but they don’t come anywhere near the quality of the SmartCam. Neo’s have made quality, smart wireless camera, affordable enough for everyone to start protecting their homes.

The camera is available to pre order now, with the first batch of orders being sent out on the 28th January. To purchase, hit the link below: