EZVIZ has constantly delivered house safety cameras with tried-and-true options and seamless efficiency. Their newest, the C3X out of doors digicam, is notable for a few causes: It consists of shade night time imaginative and prescient, nonetheless a relative novelty for client cameras, and it’s the primary EZVIZ digicam that I’ve skilled a reasonably important concern throughout testing—a whole incapacity to entry motion-triggered video saved within the cloud by way of the corporate’s subscription storage plan. That’s a disappointing flaw on this in any other case nice digicam.
Design
The C3X appears to be like just like the mannequin C3WN we reviewed previously, a tennis-ball sized unit with twin antennas. It could be angled on its supporting arm, which is hooked up to a metallic mounting plate. A 15-inch tail is hardwired to the again of the mount and splits into an influence jack and an ethernet connector in case you’d want to make use of a wired connection to your router reasonably than Wi-Fi (however there isn’t a help for energy over ethernet). The digicam has a powerful IP67 weatherproof rating, that means it’s dustproof and in a position to stand up to immersion in as much as one meter of water for 30 minutes. (You can read more about IP ratings in this story.)
The digicam achieves shade night time imaginative and prescient with a dual-lens setup that makes use of one lens to document the scene’s ambient brightness and the opposite to seize shade info. The two photographs are then merged utilizing EZVIZ’s proprietary algorithm to create an in depth picture with wealthy, practical shade. The digicam captures 1080p video and has a 106-degree area of view. In addition to viewing video in your cellphone, you’ll be able to stream it to Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant sensible shows such because the Echo Show or Google Nest Hub.
This assessment is a part of TechHive’s protection of the best home security cameras, the place you’ll discover critiques of competing merchandise, plus a purchaser’s information to the options it is best to think about when buying.
The C3X is dustproof and might survive submersion in as much as one meter of water.
You can talk with supply folks, company, and anybody else inside neighborhood of the digicam utilizing its onboard microphone and speaker. You can even scare off extra malicious guests with the 100dB siren.
The C3X can detect movement and can document video and push an alert to your cellphone when it does. You can choose to have it concern an audio warning, as effectively. With the Intensive setting enabled, a prerecorded voice warns “secure area, please leave as soon as possible.” A Soft setting points a mild beep, and Custom setting permits you to document a message in your individual voice.
EZVIZ affords each native and cloud storage. You’ll want to produce your individual media for the primary within the type of a microSD card (as much as 256GB) or the EZVIZ NVR (network video recorder). For the second, you’ll want an EZVIZ CloudPlay subscription. The Standard providing prices $6 per 30 days or $60 yearly for a 7-day video historical past for one digicam, or $11 per 30 days or $110 yearly for a 30-day historical past. There can be a pair of house plans for customers with as much as 4 EZVIZ cameras. The 7-day play is $9 per 30 days/$90 per 12 months and the $30-day plan is $16 a month/$160 per 12 months.
The digicam can determine a shifting object as a human or a car.
Setup and efficiency
Setting up the C3X could be very simple. I wanted solely to obtain the EZVIZ companion app and comply with the on-screen prompts. The app acknowledged my digicam as quickly as I scanned its QR code, then discovered my Wi-Fi and had me log in. A voice immediate verified the profitable connection.
Installing the digicam is extra sophisticated. Though the digicam itself is weatherproof, the ability wire is just not, so even when you’ve got entry to an out of doors outlet, you’re most likely nonetheless going to need to thread the ability wire—and the ethernet cable, when you’re utilizing it—by means of a gap into your private home. That often means drilling a gap by means of a wall. Depending on the gap from the digicam to the indoor outlet, you may also want an extension for the 5-foot-ish energy wire.
Once you will have that sorted out, you simply have to mount the digicam. EZVIZ provides the screws and anchors and a mounting template to make this simpler.
When you launch the app, the house display shows a screenshot of the C3X’s present area of view. Under this are buttons to entry movement detection and notification settings and normal digicam settings. Above the screenshot, are buttons to activate “at home mode” and “leaving home mode,” which disable and allow alarm notifications respectively.
Tapping the screenshot opens the C3X’s dwell feed. Directly beneath the feed are buttons to cease the video stream, mute the speaker, change the decision, and toggle to a split-screen view that helps as much as 4 digicam feeds. Under this are buttons to set off the siren, activate two-way discuss, and document video or take a screenshot of the feed. At the very backside is a horizontal timeline of all of the video clips saved on-line or to your native media.
The digicam’s picture high quality is excellent. In daytime mode, the image is tack sharp with balanced lighting and correct colours. Night imaginative and prescient, which makes use of a pair of infrared LEDs for illumination, is simply as sharp. The colours don’t pop as they do in regular mild, however they show effectively sufficient to determine simply, which could be essential for forensic proof. I used to be in a position to stream my feed to an Echo Show utilizing voice instructions after I didn’t have my cellphone helpful.
While we might entry domestically saved video clips with out a drawback, we couldn’t connect with these saved on-line by way of EZVIZ’s CloudPlay subscription plan.
When detecting movement, the digicam can determine human and car shapes. You can choose to be notified of 1 or the opposite or each within the detection settings. These have been usually correct in my testing. By default, you’ll obtain detection notifications across the clock. You can change this by setting a notification schedule; you simply select a block of time throughout which you need to obtain alerts then assign it to whichever days of the week you’d like.
You can handle alerts additional by merely modify within the sensitivity of the movement sensor or by setting movement detection areas. The latter methodology requires you to masks in areas on a grid over the digicam’s area of view, after which you’ll solely be alerted to motion inside them.
While movement detection labored flawlessly, enjoying again the video clips they triggered didn’t. I had no bother accessing video saved domestically to microSD, however I couldn’t view any of the movies saved by way of my trial CloudPlay subscription. Every one in all dozens of movies saved to the cloud did not load and gave me a “Video playback failed” error message. I hoped a firmware replace I obtained throughout testing would repair the issue, however there was no change.
Verdict
On stability, the C3X is an effective digicam. It’s stocked with helpful safety features, virtually all of which labored very effectively. The CloudPlay playback concern is irritating although, particularly contemplating the extra value the subscription provides to the value of the digicam. EZVIZ will undoubtedly treatment the difficulty sooner or later, I do counsel shopping for a microSD card and storing your video domestically till it does.