List Price: $449.99
Sale Price: $199.99
Today's Bonus: 56% Off
My husband and I live on a 16 acre paradise. Because we are so "remote", we felt we needed a security camera system around our house. After reading up on different systems, we settled for this one. Reasons: it is wireless, records motion, has night vision, and has its own portable monitor. We thought it would suffice, but in fact, we sent it back to Amazon within a week.
Let's be clear: we are sure this system is perfect for others, it just wasn't for us. Here is a summation of our reasons:
Our drive is about 24ft from the house. Although it still sees cars at that distance, the motion sensor only works up to 20 feet for any visitors on foot. Meaning that only if they are (un)kind enough to walk on the grass instead of the drive, the camera would detect them. Moving the camera closer to the drive was not option, so any pedestrians can easily pass the house undetected.
The clarity of the system was certainly not sufficient for our use. Beyond 10, 15ft, simply nothing is recognizable. My husband saw me walk by and did not even know me!
The colors are so washed out and/or distorted, that it is impossible to determine what color an object is. Green grass looks like it covered in snow, and you can't tell the color of people's clothing or cars.
The field of view is rather poor, compared with the system we recently purchased. Our new system can view up to 130 degrees per camera, and the Defender cameras only around 64 or so. We'd need three cameras just to monitor the front of the house, while now we can use 2 cameras to cover the full front and part of one side.
The recording is so slow to kick in, that a car driving by at 30km/h is already 3/4 past the camera before it is recorded. Our new system has some sort of buffer that back-records from the moment the motion starts... thus catching the full motion from start to finish.
Although I mention this last, in fact this is almost our biggest concern. Living in the Rockies, we have frequent power outages. To our dismay, the system does not come back after an outage, it says off until you manually push the power button. When we are away, any glitch in the power means our system is useless until we get back.
We are not putting down the product, it was just not sufficient for our needs. The advertising images were graphically rather misleading and the motion detection range is not mentioned anywhere, otherwise we would never have considered this system. We can certainly see how it may be suitable for people who make use of it as an intercom system, such as in an apartment building or office.
However, if one is looking for high definition, long distance outdoor usage, we would strongly recommend the Logitech Alert system. It is extremely easy to set up, does not require additional cable setups, allows for remote monitoring over the Internet (and thus all your computers and mobile devices). It has flexible and excellent motion detection. The image quality and colors are superb. The system appears to be more pricey, especially with additional cameras, but in our opinion, it is more than worth the difference.
As long term customers this is the first time that we returned a product. We were hoping to order the Logitech system instead, but sadly Amazon Canada does not stock the product and Amazon USA does not ship to Canada, so we purchased it from another company.
0 comments:
Post a Comment