Eighteen months ago I reviewed the Dropcam HD, which is now renamed simply as the Dropcam. Now the eponymous company has a new camera, the Dropcam Pro ($199 direct), that outshines not only its predecessor, but its top competitors as well. Dropcam Pro has twice the digital zoom power (8x) of the original (4x)—normally nothing to brag about, but newly enhanced visual quality makes it better than the pan/tilt/zoom on mechanized cameras of the same price (like the Compro Cloud Network Camera TN600W). Couple that with easy PC-free setup and the industry's best cloud-based recording, and it's a no brainer: The Dropcam Pro is our new Editors' Choice in consumer home surveillance.
Design and Setup
One look at the packaging for the new Dropcam Pro and it's obvious the company is channeling Apple's product presentation. Even the box is a beaut, containing the absolute minimal paperwork to get up and running: a postcard sized quick start guide.
The appearance of the Dropcam Pro is identical to the Dropcam (still available at $149.99). The camera itself is a small puck that clips into a metal stand on a hinge. The stand rotates as needed in the base you attach to wall or ceiling, so you can view any area of a room. In the stand, Dropcam Pro measures 4.5 by 3.15 by 3.15 inches (HWD). Without the stand, the puck-shaped camera itself is hard to position, but not impossible, if you want to add some stealth to your deployment. It's nice that the Pro's stand is now black to match the camera, but it's a shame the 10-foot long USB-power cord and wall adapter are still white, so they don't exactly match.
Dropcam Pro is one of the few cameras that lack an Ethernet port. It's all about the wireless: Inside the camera is not just Wi-Fi, but dual-band 802.11n, so you can connect via 2.4GHz (the typical setup) or 5GHz. Dropcam Pro is the only surveillance camera on the market with dual-band. The camera actually picks the band for you, generally going 5GHz if available.
Your installation options include plugging the camera directly into a PC to access the setup files for Mac or Windows and going from there, but that's old-school. Much easier: Plug the Dropcam Pro into power, open up the free Dropcam app on an iOS device (or eventually Android 4.3 device), create or log in to a Dropcam account, and let it find the camera. Give the camera your Wi-Fi network login credentials, give it a unique name, and you're done.
How does the smartphone even see your Dropcam Pro if it's not yet on the Wi-Fi? Dropcam Pro also integrates Bluetooth LE, the low energy tech part of Bluetooth Smart (4.0)—the same Bluetooth available on the latest iPhones and Android devices. Not only is Bluetooth LE an integral part of the setup via mobile, it's a future-proof scheme. The company claims Dropcam Pro will use Bluetooth LE to instantly talk to other peripherals in the future, and Dropcam may open its API for programmers that want to make devices that talk to the Dropcam Pro.
Features and Performance
What exactly does the Pro have over the old Dropcam that warrants paying the extra 50 bucks? It's all about the optics. The wide field of view on the Dropcam Pro is 130 degrees, up from the original's 107 degrees. The sensor size is double—Dropcam says it is even bigger than the camera sensor in the iPhone 5s. It delivers an excellent video stream at 1,920-by-1,080 full motion—without a doubt, the best video I've seen on a home surveillance camera.
On the mobile apps you can use a two finger pinch/spread to digitally zoom in and out on the video. The same effect can be duplicated with the mouse scroll wheel in the browser interface at Dropcam.com. Digital zoom isn't usually a big deal and sometimes looks awful, but the sensor size, video quality, and well-designed apps make it easy to pan or tilt around the high-def image. An enhanced view oversamples a zoomed-in area of the stream—click the magic wand icon to get a sharper zoom than you'd imagine possible. This works best in very bright light conditions.
Let's also note that on the browser, the Dropcam interface is Flash-based, so it works with every major desktop Web browser in existence. Unlike the interfaces for cameras like the D-Link Cloud Camera 1150 or Compro TN600W, which limit you typically to Internet Explorer.
The audio capabilities on the Pro are enhanced. You'll hear more because of the mic sensitivity, and I found the two-way audio (where you talk through the software interface so your voice comes out the camera) was better than most cameras, both louder and clearer.
The hallmark of Dropcam is its encrypted, cloud-based, digital video recording service, now officially dubbed Cloud Video Recording, or CVR. Dropcam can be used to watch live video feeds at no extra cost, but the power is in being able to go back in time to watch previous footage. If there's any area where Dropcam falls short, though, it's the pricing. Look at it as the cost of three cups of coffee a month ($9.95/month or $99/year) and it doesn't hurt as much, and having that seven-day buffer of recorded video can make all the difference when you have a break-in or other problem. You can also go back a full month if you pay $29.95/month or $299/year; how much its worth to you depends on your security needs. But it wouldn't hurt if Dropcam offered a 24-hour recording buffer for, say, $10/year (or gratis).
You can also use the buffered online video to create video clips of just about any duration: Download it as an MP4 file, or easily share the clip via email, Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. You can also make your stream public if you want; Dropcam features many public streams in its Featured Cameras section.
Dropcam Pro marks video as it's recorded, so you know when motion or audio events take place. Those same events can be used to trigger notifications to your phone or via email. Be careful with this in high traffic areas, though. While you can't set the level of motion detection, Dropcam's web interface is testing an activity-recognition feature where the software learns motion patterns of your stream—you label them to help recognize pets vs. burglars. And while it's not much to praise now, since it's a Web interface, CVR subscribers will automatically get updates.
You can schedule times for when alerts can are sent. iPhone users get a nice little extra—Location Scheduling. Tell the Dropcam service to turn on notifications when you leave a location, based entirely on where you phone is. That way, you don't get inundated with alerts when you're home in front of the camera.
The night vision on the Dropcam Pro is phenomenal, especially considering it only uses eight infrared LEDs. That's fewer than most—even the previous Dropcam had 12. The large sensor size makes up for it; it takes in so much light, it requires a cavern-dark room for the night vision to even kick on.
I've dinged Dropcam in the past for not offering a battery but, realistically, it can't without making the camera unwieldy, the size of a phone at least. Luckily, being powered by USB, there are third-party options for hooking it to battery packs a-plenty.
Conclusions
Dropcam Pro shows just how great a camera like this can get with quality optics. That Dropcam sees itself more as a software-and-services company, and thus works hard on the back-end and apps also makes a huge difference. The CVR service is costly, but worth it when you capture something important with your baby, your dogs, your family—or something a lot less savory, like burglars. The lack of on-board storage may seem like a burden, but Dropcam would argue the set-it-and-forget cloud storage saves you even more hassle, and I'd agree.
Other options: The Logitech Alert 750n Indoor Master System offers HomePlug connections (a convenience for some with tricky wireless setups at home) and a good cloud service for video, but its price and video quality no longer can compare. Likewise, the Wi-Fi-based Y-Cam HomeMonitor Indoor has some great features, like long-distance night vision and seven days of free online video storage. But with only VGA video, its simply not as good a camera or service combo by any stretch. All told, with this Pro release, Dropcam pulls ahead of the pack in the home surveillance camera market.
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