Belkin NetCam HD Wireless IP Camera for Tablet and Smartphone with Night Vision and Digital Audio (F7D7602)

I have read several negative reviews of the Belkin NetCam that are critical of its performance and functions. I have three of these cameras in operation and they work absolutely flawlessly. They do exactly what they were designed to do. They give me remote viewing of the cameras from my PC or iPad instantly whenever I want to view the cameras. I have one of them set up to notify me by email when there is motion (and once I set the sensitivity for the motion) it works fine. They even have infrared vision for night viewing which works well when there is some limited light available. This camera is designed to allow quick camera setup without the need for a PC. It took me about 15 minutes from opening the box to having it in full operation. Everyone I have shown the iPad app to, cannot believe how clear the video signal is and are impressed when I show them emails with pictures that are sent to me whenever there is movement in the camera view. These cameras do exactly what I purchased them to do. Very satisfied.

The product is neat, clean, well designed - it looks as if it was made by a top quality manufacturer. Trouble started for me when I tried to follow the accompanying instructions (which, by the way, were among the clearest and best prepared instructions I have seen with any product in some time.) Already one of the first steps failed: download the Belkin camera app on your mobile device. First, I tried my one year old Ipad. The App store advised: no app for Belkin camera available. OK, so I tried on my 4 year old Ipad - one of the originals. It found the Belkin camera App - hurrah. The cheers did not last long as it required me to sign in to my Belkin account. My Belkin account?? I had never heard of Belkin before, certainly had no account with them. Not ready to give up, I found the Belkin site with Safari on my MacBook Pro. After a little hunting around, I found a place that offered opening an account for free. Success at last? Not for long. The Ipad Belkin App "failed to recognize username or password". So, I changed the password and tried again: Same result. I gave up for day one. On day 2, I changed the password and username a few times, went in and out of this and that Belkin web site on this and that Ipad and MacBook Pro, but the Belkin camera app simply would not load on my Ipad - which seemed to have gathered my username and password in some other, strange universe - so a password entered with MacBook Pro would not work on any of the Ipads. Most annoyingly: all this occurred within the first few lines of the Belkin camera instructions - which said only to download the app on the mobile device but said absolutely nothing about an account with Belkin or about usernames or passwords or how they worked only on one type of device and not on another. The instructions also boldly proclaimed that one needed no computer - only the mobile device to activate the uit. Rubbish!! So, sadly, the very nice unit went back in the box and is now on its way back to Amazon - which, thank God, takes stuff back and gives full credit for it. Wish someone had tried to actually use one before marketing it! Certainly, Belkin's name is dirt around my place.

Easy to set up and been very reliable so far. The image quality is not that great though you lose a lot of detail in anything that is more than about six feet from the camera. Works at night but again, very low quality black and white image at night. Motion detection works well at night.

While the camera itself seems well made and setup was stupid easy, the app and web ui are simply awful. There is no ability to zoom the image digitally. The audio is choppy and static filled. You can only view one camera at a time and only one user can view using the same account at the same time. The IR kicks is way before ambient light requires it and is not adjustable. Flash is required and there is not a native ipad app, so no ipad viewing. Every time the iphone app loads it displays a startup animation that pauses the app for three to five seconds, even when you already have the app on standby. The app lags and occasionally freezes. The app locks into landscape mode and when you double tap the home button to close it. This is awkward because the whole phone thinks it is sideways so swiping the app closed is annoying, and you might as well close it every time due to the annoying splash screen to save resources since you'll see it every stinking time whether you have freshly opened the app or just navigated away from it. I have so far kept the review geared toward the camera's intended use but there are lots of other features that most other cameras do that this one doesn't. The camera can be used with no other app for instance, and the Netcam app doesn't recognize any other type of camera, so you'll need two apps if you have a different brand camera or want to view public cameras. Despite having its own wi-fi device for initial setup the camera cannot standalone, it only works through a home network. The camera cannot be adjusted in any way and there is no way to turn off the power light unless you put a piece of tape over it. I'm going back to foscam, they may be difficult to set up the first time, buggy, and poorly made, but at least I can use them in a way that makes sense. I tried to live with all this camera's flaws and ended up past the return date, but there just is no getting around the frustration of knowing that this camera could be soooo much better with a UI update.