Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I really wanted to like this device. It is supposed to fill a gap in the market, and it makes a good attempt. Many of us want a camera at the front door that looks like a sensible part of the home. Here's what you really need to know: PROS - Camera quality is as good as it should be based on current technology (during the day, that is). Clear picture, reasonably clear audio. - When it works, it does provide additional peace of mind for the homeowner. - It looks attractive, and is not obvious from a distance. This means that by the time someone gets close enough to see what it really is, they've already been recorded (that is if, and when, it works.) CONS - It simply doesn't work correctly most of the time. My camera stopped detecting motion. Emailed company (see other reviews about the lack of phone support.) 3 days later I got a response that said that they were working on a software update that triggered this problem and it should be resolved now. It wasn't, so I replied as such. 2 days later I got a message telling me to power-cycle the device. That worked. Next day, exact same problem. Power-cycled again. OK. Next day, same thing. Emailed company again, saying that power cycling the device daily is an inadequate solution - what if you're out of town? Never heard from them on a long term fix. - Customer 'support' is slow, if not nonresponsive entirely. See comment above. - If you talk to someone at the door through the app and device, your side of the conversation is not recorded. This matters because if someone else in the home speaks to someone at the door and you happen to view the recording, the only thing you'll hear is the voice of the person at the door. - They claim that there is no night vision because the light facilitates the HD color recording of the camera. This would be true, except for the placement of the light. Take any camera you can find, put 1000+ lumens of light less than 3 inches above the CCD and see how much you can see and record. I'm sure if you're reading this far, you know enough about tech to know the implications, and that the video is worse than useless at this point. I have to believe its more likely that the inclusion of the IR tech would have raised the cost to the point that the consumer price point goes higher than $200, which they realized was not a good idea from a marketing standpoint. - They don't tell you this in the spec, but make sure that you have 5-6 inches of relief on either side of the installation location. My previous porch light was smaller and I barely got this to fit with some 'engineering' that created displacement from the junction box location. The bottom line is that this company has rushed to market to get first-mover advantage and to establish the brand in the marketplace. Our friends at shark-tank would say that 'you have a product, not a company.' The fact is that the company is simply not big enough to offer phone support, as detailed in other reviews. They also have not nailed the software piece, which is why 'updates' are sent 'seamlessly' to the device, but their updates rendered my device useless. The device became useless because it must be power-cycled daily. The company doesn't appear to know why this is happening, which is why they haven't responded to my repair request. They did, however, tell me during my earlier call that they looked at my 'log' files and confirmed my diagnosis that the camera wasn't responding to motion activation and not recording. If you think about that, though, combined with the fact that they have 'included' 'free' cloud recordings as a 'trial' until they 'get the pricing model straight' for the recording service, then a discerning consumer can figure out that they are keeping the log files and recordings on their servers so that they can scrub the data to assist in software development. YOU GET TO SPEND $200 TO ASSIST THE COMPANY WITH FIELD TESTS, DATA COLLECTION AND TROUBLESHOOTING. YOU PAY A PREMIUM TO BE AN EARLY ADOPTER, WHICH THEY REALLY NEEDED TO FLUSH OUT THE BUGS. TRUTH IS, WHEN THEY GET IT FIGURED OUT THEY SHOULD SEND YOU ANOTHER ONE AS A 'THANK YOU' FOR HELPING THEM GET A WORKABLE PRODUCT TO MARKET. I'm sure you'll soon see a company reply that says that this is not the case, but you and I know better. Consider the alternative - that they are convinced that the product was completely ready when it went to market and that I am in the sixth sigma. If that were true, they would replace the one device in the million that went wrong and move on down the road. Either way, you can draw conclusions about what either of these actions would mean (keep troubleshooting my problem without communicating with me or send me a new device as this one is a fluke.) My opinion is that I have inadvertently become a beta tester. Then again, perhaps you won't see a reply at all! UPDATE - March 15, 2016 I did receive a replacement device, which works as I originally described. That is to say that the nighttime functionality is nonexistent (no passive IR) and the daytime detections that aren't false alarms are notified too late to be of any real use. It functions like any other exterior cam - it may have some video to use AFTER the break-in has occurred, but you can get that same functionality from a device that doesn't cost $200.