The EZVIZ C6CN Internet PT Camera is an indoor pan-and-tilt safety digicam that may lock on to an intruder and comply with their actions, doubtlessly capturing extra full footage of a criminal offense. The 1080p digicam delivers improbable video high quality with complete room protection at a pretty value, however its most notable characteristic feels a bit of too shaky to belief utterly within the occasion of an precise break-in. Its bounty of different security measures, nevertheless, are rock stable.
Design
The C6CN’s physique is barely larger than a baseball and rotates 340 levels on its base. The digicam itself tilts inside this enclosure 120 levels. You can management its pan-and-tilt characteristic from the app or set it to routinely monitor movement. That, paired with the digicam’s 94-degree viewing angle, ought to present full protection with out blind spots in nearly any room.
This overview is a part of TechHive’s protection of the best home security cameras, the place you’ll discover opinions of competing merchandise, plus a purchaser’s information to the options it is best to contemplate when procuring.
The digicam supplies important security measures together with movement detection alerts and night time imaginative and prescient. Although it doesn’t detect audio occasions, you possibly can pay attention to the surroundings and have interaction in two-way conversations with the assistance of an onboard mic within the entrance of the unit and a speaker in again. When you’re dwelling, you possibly can activate a privateness shutter to cowl the lens.
The C6CN can monitor shifting objects for extra full video proof.
The EZVIZ C6CN provides a number of storage choices for captured video: You can save clips regionally to a microSD card (as much as 256GB, however you’ll want to supply the cardboard), or to the EZVIZ NVR (community video recorder, offered individually for $230). Encrypted cloud storage can be accessible: A seven-day storage plan prices $6 per thirty days or $60 yearly, whereas 30 days of storage prices $11 per thirty days or $110 yearly. Other plans can be found if you wish to support more than one EZVIZ camera (as much as 4).
Setup and utilization
The digicam’s base lets it sit freely on any flat floor, however {hardware} and a mounting template are additionally included if you wish to connect it to a wall or ceiling. Once you’ve positioned the digicam and plugged it in, the majority of the setup takes place within the EZVIZ app. After scanning a QR code on the digicam, the app has you login to your Wi-Fi community and a voice assistant confirms every step of the connection course of. (The digicam additionally has an ethernet port for those who’d want to wire it to your router.)
The digicam related to my Wi-Fi with none hiccups and inside just a few moments, a screenshot of my lounge appeared on the app’s gadget web page. Tapping the picture opened the C6CN’s dwell stream. The format right here mirrors that for different EZVIZ cameras, with primary digicam controls, a video-history timeline, and deeper settings all simply accessible.
Michael Ansaldo/IDGYou can manually pan-and-tilt the digicam with an in-app directional pad.
The first time I tapped the pan-and-tilt management it took a 360-degree image of the room. Moving just a few levels at a time, it stitched collectively a succession of nonetheless photographs and offered me with a panoramic photograph that I might scroll by for an entire view.
Aside from revealing how messy the room was on the time, it additionally offered a fast option to see the entire scene in context, which could be extremely useful for those who’re attempting to seize proof of a criminal offense. You can retake the 360-degree image on demand by clicking the suitable tab on the backside of the display.
You management the pan-and-tilt characteristic utilizing an in-app directional pad. The digicam strikes easily and pretty quietly, although there’s some delay between if you cease urgent the pad and when the digicam stops shifting. The latency is pretty minimal, although, and the digicam stopped within the basic place I used to be attempting to get it to.
Motion monitoring, which you should allow, will lock onto a shifting object and comply with it. The forensic advantages are fairly clear—an intruder can’t evade being recorded by merely shifting out of body. Though the digicam’s actions on this mode are rather more halting, the C6CN shadowed me fairly faithfully. There have been a few variables that might journey it up although.
One was the quantity of sunshine within the room. As lengthy as there was sufficient illumination, even when it solely got here from the digicam’s glorious night time imaginative and prescient, movement monitoring was flawless. But when the sunshine diverse, resembling one morning when my lounge was well-lit by daylight, however the adjoining kitchen was in heavy shadow, the digicam would lose monitor of me as quickly as I stepped into the darker space. It would then decide me up once more solely once I returned to the brighter room. I’ve used different motion-tracking cameras, together with EZVIZ’s personal CTQ6C pan-and-tilt camera, in related lighting situations and haven’t encountered this subject.
Less surprisingly, the opposite state of affairs through which movement monitoring had bother was a number of shifting our bodies. If considered one of my pets and I have been each within the room, the digicam would lock on to whichever was closest to it and ignore the opposite one. That made for some herky-jerky video as we each moved across the room, so it’s straightforward to think about the havoc it could trigger for those who have been unlucky sufficient to be visited by two intruders on the similar time.
Michael Ansaldo/IDGWhether or not I used to be utilizing movement monitoring, the digicam’s movement detection alerts have been all the time correct and delivered with a snapshot of the triggering particular person or pet. The app provides a number of methods to change the frequency of notifications, together with scheduling—you possibly can set as much as 4 time blocks per day when movement detection and recording is lively—detection sensitivity adjustment, and customizable movement detection areas.
This final characteristic, which helps you to masks within the areas you need monitored for motion, can’t be used with movement monitoring because it requires a set digicam angle to work.
The C6CN is fleshed out with just a few smart-home capabilities. If you’ve an Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant sensible show, you should utilize voice instructions to show the digicam’s dwell feed on that gadget. You may also activate just a few IFTTT applets, accessible within the app, that can allow automations resembling placing the digicam into privateness mode if you arrive dwelling and turning in your WeMo swap when the digicam detects movement.
Motion monitoring is a reasonably premium safety characteristic, so the truth that you will get it at such an inexpensive value makes the EZIVZ C6CN value contemplating. It just isn’t, nevertheless, the one budget-friendly possibility on the market. The Blurams Dome Pro is a pan-and-tilt digicam that additionally options movement monitoring—plus human detection and facial recognition—for a comparable value.
And although the older EZVIZ CTQ6C has been faraway from the corporate’s web site, that digicam was nonetheless available on Amazon at press time for about the identical value It provides nearly the identical set of options, however I its movement monitoring labored higher for me. It’s value investigating all three earlier than making a ultimate resolution.