At a look
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Dual lenses cowl wide-angle and zoomed-in views
- Smooth pan-and-tilt motion
- Very reasonably priced worth
Cons
- Conspicuous industrial design
- Dependent on a wired energy provide
- Built-in power-surge safety
- Generic third-party app with pushy upsells
Our Verdict
The Annke WCD600 gives spectacular protection and sturdiness, making it a sensible selection for broad outside monitoring, offered you’re snug with its wired energy requirement and a less-than-polished app expertise.
Price When Reviewed
This worth will present the geolocated pricing textual content for product undefined
Best Pricing Today
Price When Reviewed
39.99
Best Prices Today: Annke WCD600
The Annke WCD600 is a dual-lens outside safety digicam constructed for individuals who need to cowl a whole lot of floor with out cluttering their area. Each lens captures a three-megapixel view—one wide-angle, one telephoto—serving to cut back blind spots throughout driveways, yards, and aspect tons.
This digicam connects to your 2.4GHz Wi-Fi community (i.e., it’s not a dual-band digicam), is weatherproof, and prices far lower than most cameras that provide related protection.
The Annke WCD600’s dual-lens setup offers you two complementary views quite than one stitched panorama.
Design and options
The WCD600 isn’t designed to mix into the background. With its two uncovered antennas, bulbous decrease housing, and rings of LED lights round every lens, it’s one thing intruders will discover instantly, and a few individuals will think about that a part of its attraction. The white-and-black shell feels strong, weather-sealed, and constructed to deal with the weather. It carries an IP66 score for cover from the weather, which means it’s dustproof and might stand up to highly effective jets of water, corresponding to from a strain washer, from any route. (Read our IP code guide to be taught extra about that subject.)
An uncommon function that can be of curiosity to owners residing in areas with frequent lightning storms is the digicam’s built-in surge safety (as much as 2kV).
The WCD600’s dual-lens setup offers you two complementary views quite than one stitched panorama. The high 3MP lens delivers a static wide-angle view of your total scene, whereas the decrease 3MP lens is mounted to a pan/tilt motor to observe motion. The decrease digicam pans 300 levels horizontally and tilts 90 levels vertically. Together they supply context and close-up element concurrently, so that you see each the large image and what triggered an alert.
At night time, the WCD600 switches to its dual-light system: a pair of infrared LEDs for discreet video seize in low mild. It additionally has red-and-blue strobe lights and a built-in siren that set off on movement. Those deterrents may be set to run robotically or manually from the app, supplying you with the choice to scare off trespassers or simply mild up the driveway whenever you step exterior.
The WCD600’s two lenses seize huge and telephoto views for contextual protection.
Annke
The digicam can detect each basic movement and human exercise. When it identifies an individual, the decrease lens robotically pans and tilts to observe them, maintaining the topic centered as they transfer. You’ll get an immediate notification by way of the iCSee app, and tapping it opens a stay view so you’ll be able to see what’s taking place in actual time.
Video may be saved domestically to a microSD card as much as 128GB, letting you retailer footage instantly on the digicam and not using a subscription. The digicam additionally helps cloud backup by way of the iCSee app, with subscription plans that begin with 7- or 30 days of storage at a price of $3.99 or $6.99 a month respectively. The digicam additionally integrates with Alexa and Google Home, permitting you to drag up stay video on a sensible show or management fundamental capabilities with voice instructions.
Setup and efficiency
Everything you should get began is within the field, together with a mounting bracket and screws and an influence provide. Because the digicam attracts energy from a 12-volt adapter, you’ll want an outlet close by or a weatherproof extension twine.
The WCD600 makes use of the iCSee cell app for setup, stay viewing, and storage administration. iCSee isn’t unique to Annke—it’s a third-party platform utilized by a number of price range and midrange digicam makers. Once you create and account and begin the pairing course of, the digicam’s booming voice prompts information you thru the steps to attach the digicam to your community.
The app shows each digicam views without delay, stacked vertically in portrait mode or aspect by aspect whenever you flip your cellphone horizontally. The daytime picture high quality is superb, and the dual lenses seize a broad, balanced view with out seen distortion. The digicam robotically switches between day and night time modes based mostly on ambient mild, or you’ll be able to regulate it manually within the app. Night Mode prompts the infrared LEDs for clear black-and-white video, whereas Day Mode disables mild enhancement completely.
The third-party ICSee app makes it simple to manage the digicam and handle its settings, but it surely feels generic in comparison with Annke’s personal software program.
Michael Ansaldo/Foundry
Human detection labored effectively in my testing. The digicam reliably distinguishes individuals from transferring timber or passing vehicles, and movement monitoring retains topics centered with out extreme motor noise. You can configure the app to border individuals with a yellow field for simpler visibility on playback, and there are a number of choices for taming notifications together with interval settings and detection sensitivity.
The iCSee app handles every little thing from pairing to stay viewing, video playback, notifications, and the digicam’s many settings. But it additionally doubles as a storefront for iCSee’s “value-add” providers. Once you open it, you’ll see outstanding prompts to activate “AI” capabilities and cloud storage, together with a countdown timer on any free trial. It’s useful and responsive, however the upselling can really feel a bit aggressive—particularly in the event you simply need to use the digicam’s native recording options.
Should you purchase the Annke WCD600?
The Annke WCD600 usually lists for $79.99, however as of this writing Annke has discounted it to $39.99. That low worth makes it a simple gamble. My fundamental reservation is the third-party iCSee app. It’s useful and responsive, but it surely pushes add-on providers too aggressively for my style, and the interface lacks the polish of Annke’s personal software program.
Still, this digicam delivers robust efficiency and suppleness for the worth, making it a sensible, reasonably priced choice in order for you broad outside protection with out overcomplicating your setup.
This assessment is a part of TechHive’s in-depth protection of the best home security cameras.