Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is going to be a long review. However, the purpose of it will be to get your head adjusted to what you can expect (and perhaps not) from the purchase of this Amcrest ProHD camera. I think this will be one of the most comprehensive reviews posted on the product and I hope that if it helps you, that you will indicate so at the bottom. Let me begin by saying that I have tested this camera for several weeks now. I also purchased the Nest Cam. I believe both the Nest Cam and the Amcrest ProHD security cameras are the two best products of its kind. To pick a winner would be difficult. Each camera excels in one aspect above the other, and each camera has major flaws. I am going to cover both in this review. My choice as the best camera between the Nest Cam and the Amcrest Cam is not a clear one. By far, the Nest Cam is the easiest to set up and use. You can have the Nest Cam set up in under 3 minutes and have it working perfectly. The problem? You have to pay a subscription fee for its cloud based video recording and there is no option to record directly to a SD card. This Amcrest camera, on the other hand, has no subscription plan. It offers the same high quality video feed as the NestCam (though the software is not as polished), and you can record to an SD card. The problem? It's not going to be an easy setup for everyone. For some, you may indeed be able to set this camera up within minutes. However, judging from the many reviews I have read on Amazon, it seems that most customers ended up having to call support to get their cameras working properly. Count me in as one of those persons. I'll get back to the support issues in just a moment... While I love the Nest Cam, I now have two of them in my home. The cloud based subscription costs me $150 per year. That's a pretty hefty fee. The great thing about cloud based subscriptions vs. recording to an SD card is that your monitored video is uploaded to a server. If a thief breaks into your home and steals a security camera that is only supported by an internal SD card, you lose that video with the camera. However, there isn't always the guarantee a thief will actually notice or steal the camera. Personally, I use both the Nest Cam and Amcrest ProHD camera in my home. This way I have both paid and free storage options. I can add more Amcrest cameras to my home network without worrying about enlarging my monthly fees. There are no fees associated with the Amcrest camera. Let's talk about Amcrest Support.... As I noted, hopefully you won't need to call support. The camera is supposed to be plug and play. However, in my experience -- going through two of these ProHD devices -- they didn't work as promised until I got issues cleared up with support. The Amcrest Support team is INCREDIBLE. You will notice that mentioned in dozens of reviews here on Amazon. My support agent's name was Carlos Barletta. He spent over an hour on the phone with me, with a remote video session shared on my computer screen, to ensure that my connection was working correctly. The difficulty I had was that I could not connect to the camera outside of my home network. This can be a common situation due to common IP address problems. Carlos was able to fix the issues and now my camera is working perfectly inside and outside my home. This means that I can be anywhere in the world and through my smartphone/tablet app or directly through my browser I can connect to my home camera(s). The Amcrest ProHD camera itself is pretty remarkable when you consider it's half the price of the Nest Cam and it comes with no subscription. Certainly, the video quality is just as outstanding as the Nest Cam. In fact, while I am not too crazy about the Amcrest software, it does have more functionality to it than the Nest Cam. For instance, from a remote location, you can pan, tilt and zoom the camera. That's a pretty remarkable feature that many of these cameras don't have -- or don't do well. So, if you are watching a subject moving around the room, you can actually track the movement of that individual by panning the camera left, right, up and down. The camera also allows you to listen and speak through its integrated microphone and speaker. Great way to communicate with an elderly loved one while you are way, or, perhaps scare an intruder who has entered your home. The software on both the app and the browser side is not as intuitive as the Nest Cam. I really think Amcrest needs to polish this software up to make it look more professional and easier to just click on things and get where you need to be. It's not overly difficult, mind you, but Nest Cam does it so much better. However, one of the features I really like with the Amcrest software is its ability to put all your camera fees on one screen. So, say you have 4 Amcrest cameras in your home. You can have 4 boxes of feeds where you can monitor each camera on a single screen. I hear Nest Cam is about to introduce this feature, but as of the writing of this review, it has not been implemented. The video quality of the Amcrest ProHD is superb. Just as good as the Nest Cam in both fully lit and night time settings. I was amazed at the amount of detail this camera was able to pick up in pitch black settings. The ability to record to an SD card can be a good or bad thing. The ability not to pay a company a subscription fee by recording directly to a card is a godsend. On the other hand, as I mentioned earlier, if a thief steals your camera your SD card goes with it. Amcrest support helped me pick out the perfect micro SD card to use. I would recommend not going with a 64gb card. A 32GB card max is recommended. Use a class 10 card. Recording will take place as an endless loop, always recording the newest activity while it erases the old. Additionally, you can set this camera up to send you email notifications whenever movement is detected. This worked wonderfully for me. The Nest Cam does it better as you can immediately review the recorded content from your portable device. You cannot actually do that with the Amcrest camera. Unlike the Nest Cam, you can hook the Amcrest camera to ethernet. The advantage of this would be a stronger broadband connection. Wireless connections are usually not as strong and these cameras need decent uploading bandwidth to work properly. As I mentioned at the top of this review, it's hard to pick a winner here. I will try to break down the pros and cons of each camera and let you decide on your own. Before I do that, let me just again reiterate that should you have ANY problems setting up this Amcrest camera, the support team is exceptional. They will get this camera working for you one way or the other -- should you have any initial setup problems. AMCREST PROS and CONS (vs. NEST CAM) Pros * Exceptional video clarity in both lighted and pitch black conditions * The ability to pan, tilt and zoom (Nest Cam does not have all these features) * The ability to record to an SD card (Nest Cam does not do this) * The ability to use an ethernet connection (Nest cam does not do this) * 2-way talk/listen feature * Excellent customer support * Ability to see all camera feeds on a single screen through browser or mobile software app Cons * Chances are there may be initial setup issues where you will have to contact support (Nest Cam is more reliable in perfect setup) * Software is not as polished as it could be (Nest Cam software is better). However, Amcrest is constantly updating their software so an improvement may be forthcoming. Overall, the Amcrest ProHD camera is a first-rate security camera. For its $100 price point (half that of the Nest Cam), it's an easy choice to make. You are getting just as good a product with added functions at half the price. The only downside is that the setup can be more frustrating -- however, when it does -- you can count on Amcrest phone support to make things easy. If that's the worst thing you will have to deal with when purchasing this product I don't think you have a single thing to worry about. [...]