Kasa Indoor Pan/Tilt Smart Home Camera

To clarify, this is NOT a bad camera. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. I have the same camera, just the slightly "cheaper" version. When I say, "cheaper" I don't mean cheap. I just mean it costs less. I would not classify either version as cheap. If this review were for the "basic" model, it would have five stars. The reason for this model receiving just 3 of 5 possible stars is because there is an option for the camera to pan and tilt. It has motion detection and will automatically patrol if you choose it to do so. These functionalities all work fine and as expected. The motion sensing is actually pretty great and from an upstairs window it will catch people walking all the way across the street, which is much farther than the advertised 30 foot distance. The night vision works, but not through a window. I've never had any connection problems after having gotten it initially setup. That was kind of a pain, in all honesty. You wouldn't think it, but manually scrolling the camera to point upwards just to reach the reset button or to access the SD card is a poor design choice, in my opinion. The fact that's where the reset connection button is also makes it annoying, because you press and hold the button for it to begin doing its thing, searching for networks and devices and whatnot. Sometimes it will find the network and everything you're looking for right away, but other times it gives you the most confusing run around until you've disconnected and restarted the camera about a dozen times. That being said, once you get the camera connected to your network and through the app, it works pretty flawlessly. It does load a little bit slow, so if you get a notification and open it up live, the motion that it caught may have already come and gone, but you can always revert to the 24/7 recording function and search through the recording history with footnotes that will take you right to the motion or object detection. Say a person walks by, it will save a bookmark for person detected. With a 256gb SD card, my camera tends to hold about 2-3 weeks worth of footage and I record 24/7. I used the motion tracking feature for a little while after I first got the camera so that I could follow people to see which direction they've gone after they pass my apartment. I have my parking space right in front of my unit, but someone still slashed the tires one night, hence the camera. It's a great feature, but I have a lot of car and foot traffic in front of my house that caused the camera to be panning left and right far too often. I didn't want to overwork it, so I turned it off. I don't think this is a quality issue here, but a motor/gear issue within the camera body itself that controls the panning and tilting functions that sound like they'll get pretty tired pretty soon if there's a lot of motion tracking. It doesn't sound terrible and it's only as loud as a very small fraction of a vibrating phone when it turns, but in a quiet room and it's tracking people in the early morning it's enough for you to want it to stop. But it's as easy as opening the settings and turning off motion tracking, but it will still record. If you have constant patrol or motion tracking, it's likely to run out of motor power sooner than later. I didn't want to put it to the test, because you can set "viewpoints" to your devices. I set up three viewpoints to cover my parking space and vehicle. I have a viewpoint to the left, with my vehicle on the right side of the frame. I have a second viewpoint that points directly at my vehicle, dead center in the parking space, and I have another viewpoint that keeps my vehicle in the left side of the frame. I can view a large swath of the street in front of my house and my neighbors feel better knowing I have a decent camera, because we all know that our complexes security cameras suck and point at nothing of importance. So, to hit the algorithm for the cameras durability - I don't think they're waterproof, I wouldn't want to drop it, it is made out of cheap plastic after all, but I've never had any lens issues so far. My biggest worry about it's long-term durability would be focused mostly on the gears and motor that turns and pans the camera. Within the My Kasa app, you can open it and it will display your list of devices, assuming you have multiple. If it's just a single device, it will show just the one device. You can select your device and it will pull up its real-time live feed. There is a microphone and audio settings on it, so if it's inside you can talk to your dog or whatever, you can hear your dog bark etc. My other issue with this camera, and this is specifically about the white version of the camera that supposedly has a higher quality of video (something I could not tell the difference between, I'll explain here shortly) is the fact that when it does go through motion tracking or any sort of panning, it will return to its original viewpoint. That would be fine, having my vehicle dead center, but the viewpoint tells itself that the real viewpoint is several degrees off and is often pointing a bit higher than you originally had the viewpoint set. This leads you to having to reset the pan/tilt of the device almost every time it's done tracking motion. Now the difference in definition and quality, for me, was negligible, at best. Neither of the cameras could clearly read my license plate, so there was no difference in resolution quality there. I think the white version is supposed to be running a higher quality camera, but I think it's built off of the basic materials still used in the base model, which causes it to have a lag, slight delay, and it takes longer to load in the app. If anything, the higher "quality" is actually reduced because I don't think the hardware can withstand the power of the software and the lens capabilities. Long story short, get the base model for $20 and you won't be happier. Beats a $100 Ring by miles. If you really want a doorbell that badly, then I guess get a Ring and have fun changing the terribly short-lasting batteries every day. Or hardwire it into your wall, which, if we're being real here, is something that pretty much nobody ever feels like doing.