Stuff UK — June 2017

BEST

FOR

APPY

WATCHING

BEST

FOR

HOMEKIT

HARMONY

GROUP TEST SECURITY CAMERAS

DLINK OMNA

£200 / stuff.tv/DLinkOmna

NEST CAM

£159 / stuff.tv/NestCam

What’s the story?

This app-controlled security

camera is the latest addition to

Nest’s smart home ecosystem,

which already has a thermostat

that learns when you actually

need your house heated, and

smoke detectors that send

alerts to your phone.

It’s a Full HD cam with night

vision, a handy mounting

mechanism that should

let you place it just about

anywhere with minimal drilling,

and a speaker so you can

perplex would-be intruders or

keep your dog off the sofa just

by shouting into your phone.

Is it any good?

Nest’s app shows live previews

and a three-hour snapshot

of everything the Cam has

spotted (see below). Setup

takes less than two minutes,

and picture quality is top-notch

both day and night.

Schedules save you from

constantly recording yourself

while you’re at home, and

it does a pretty good job at

recognising faces too. No, you’re

not paranoid, and yes, your

neighbour is definitely stealing

your morning paper.

You only get fancy features

like zone monitoring and

unlimited cloud storage for

clips if you subscribe to Nest

Aware, though. At £80 a year,

it ain’t cheap. That’s the price

you pay for in-app convenience.

STUFF SAYS ++++,

Slick and simple, but only excels

with the paid-for subscription

What’s the story?

We finally have the first

security camera that works

with Apple’s smart home

platform, HomeKit. That should

allow for easy integration with

a whole host of other gadgets,

from lights to heating. What’s

more, the D-Link has a wider-

angle lens that any of its rivals

here, with 180° being more than

enough to monitor the most

cavernous of rooms.

This is not a wall-mountable

design but it does look pretty

smart, and the long mains cable

makes it flexible for positioning.

You’ll need to add your own SD

card, though.

Is it any good?

The fact that there’s no bundled

SD card feels a bit cheap, but

more concerning is the lack of

cloud backup for your captured

videos – which means that if

the person stealing your telly

also steals the D-Link, you’ll

have no video evidence.

It also requires you to have

an Apple TV or homebound

iPad if you want to get

notifications or watch footage

remotely, and the lack of face

recognition means you have to

turn the thing off when you’re

home if you don’t want to be

constantly badgered about

your own movements. The

actual footage is great, but

that doesn’t make up for the

Omna’s lack of smarts.

STUFF SAYS +++,,

HomeKit inte

ration is handy,

but this is a flawed device

Q THE APP

Using the Omna app you can choose which

parts of a room the camera should monitor

for movement and which it should ignore –

useful if you only want it to be triggered by

a particular door opening, for example.

Q THE APP

Nest has a clever snippet system that

automatically creates clips of the last three

hours for at-a-glance checks without

having to open each one separately. „ e

timeline is easy enough to swipe through.

INDOOR

CAMERAS