Why You Can Trust CNET D-Link Pan & Tilt Day/Night Network Camera review: Peace of mind not included with D-Link's Network Camera
The network camera from D-Link can pan and tilt remotely as promised, but I had no end of trouble with the promised smart features.
Being able to see your home from anywhere and confirm that everything is okay with your own eyes makes a device like the $120 D-Link Pan & Tilt Day/Night Network Camera seem extremely useful. (The same model sells in the UK for about £80, and in Australia for AU$200.) D-Link's camera with the unwieldy name does well in this regard. The 640x480 resolution isn't great, but it's enough to clearly see what's going on. And the ability to manually look around the room from afar by panning, tilting, and zooming the camera worked well and can help you check every nook and cranny.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
If you can't keep your eyes on your home, though, don't expect D-Link to help. Aside from the live viewing, the camera promises features that should allow it to function as a sentry, alerting you when something unexpected happens. Unfortunately, these video and sound notifications are unwieldy at best and completely non-functioning at worst. None of the detection features are reliable enough to actually help with security, so you'll want to look elsewhere for that elusive peace of mind.
The basics
Initially, I was quite hopeful for the D-Link Pan & Tilt Day/Night Network Camera. It offers a promising mix of features, especially for its price, and without any monthly fees. Similar fee-free smart-home cameras include the $200, £190 Dropcam Pro (not yet available in Australia, but converts to about AU$230); the $200 US-only Piper ; the $190, £160 Samsung SmartCam HD Pro (not yet available in Australia, but converts to about AU$215); and the $130, £130, AU$170 Belkin NetCam HD+ .
The more expensive cameras all offer better resolution than D-Link and wider viewing angles to boot. Samsung, Dropcam, and Piper have a full 1080p image with 128-degree, 130-degree, and 180-degree respective fields of view. Belkin only has 720p with a 95-degree viewing angle, but D-Link's picture maxes out at 640x480 with a 66-degree horizontal viewing angle. Next to the Belkin camera, the D-Link's narrower viewing angle feels especially underwhelming.
However, it makes up for the smaller viewing angle by allowing you to remotely turn and tilt the camera. With night vision, a built-in microphone (though not two-way audio), and alerts for both motion and sound, D-Link gets back to being quite competitive on features, especially if you don't feel the need to monitor your home in high definition.
To top it off, D-Link brought their prowess with Wi-Fi routers to the camera with a unique extender mode. This allows it to act as a mini-router and bring signal to previously unreachable areas of your home. I was excited for this feature in particular, and thought that if the D-Link cam could act as a router and an effective security camera, the $120 price point would make it a steal.
The setup
The camera looks sleek. An all white base holds the black rounded lens shell. It's not exactly inconspicuous, but I wouldn't call it outlandish either, and I didn't mind having it on my shelf. You won't have to worry about any physical construction, the camera comes assembled complete with a power cord, an ethernet cord, and a simple instruction manual. The box does include a bracket for mounting the camera to a wall so you can set up an optimal viewing angle.
Getting it set up on your home Wi-Fi network is a bit more involved, and requires that you use your Windows or Mac computer. A "zero configuration" page in the manual tells you how to skip most of the steps if you're also using a D-Link router. I was, and didn't get it to work right. The more complex steps necessary in that circumstance require you to download setup software and do some light configuration. Nothing proved too daunting, but this certainly isn't Wink's "hold your phone near a sensor" approach where you're done in a few seconds.
I was more than willing to jump through a few hoops in the set up for the promise of extra Wi-Fi range in addition to a smart security camera. Unfortunately, it didn't end up giving much of a boost.
For the mobile app, D-Link uses its old myDLink Lite app, rather than its new MyDLink Home app that debuted with its new smart plug . The new app is supposed to let you control all of the D-Link products on your network, but for some reason that doesn't include support for this new camera.
Live viewing
Though first you'll need to get it up and running on your computer, you can then control the D-Link using either the website or the myDLink Lite app. I started playing around with its panning and tilting features. The range of motion impressed me, and I was successfully able to follow my coworkers around a room, listen to their conversations, and generally creep them out. I didn't really notice the lack of resolution until I zoomed in; standard definition looked sharp enough.
With the digital zoom, the clarity peels away and things get downright blurry at full 4x zoom. The camera itself doesn't zoom, so the function just makes the existing picture larger on your computer, and the lack of definition shines through.
At any time, you can snap a picture from the camera's viewpoint, so you can capture a special moment or an incriminating one. Just don't expect the zoom to show up in the snap. Because the zoom doesn't happen on the camera itself, even if you're computer's picture shows a tight view of your kid reaching for the cookie jar, the saved snapshot will be back at the full unzoomed view of the kitchen.
Controlling the pan-and-tilt action was another source of minor disappointment. On your browser, you have to manipulate the horizontal x-axis or the vertical y-axis individually, and the camera won't move until you release the slider. This makes getting to the right spot a guessing game. Fortunately, you can save a location once you find it, and automatically move the camera to that position with the click of a button.
Manipulating the view with the app proved slightly easier. It allows for intuitive swipes and pinches, though the lag between input on the app and movement of the camera still caused me a bit of frustration.
Overall, in terms of live viewing, the D-Link Pan & Tilt Day/Night Camera gave a competent showing and will allow you to spy on your family with reasonable clarity of picture and sound. But because the camera isn't inconspicuous and because the movement of panning and tilting isn't silent, don't expect to remain incognito while you watch.
Alerts and security
While it can grant you peace of mind with a visual check-in, the D-Link Pan & Tilt Day/Night camera proves almost completely useless at keeping an eye on things while you can't. The customizable alerts and automatic recordings should allow this, but they don't work consistently.
You can tell the system what, when and how to monitor. The camera can't move on its own, but you can point it at your prized Han Solo figurine (not that I have one) and highlight an area. Then, set an alert only if there's motion in that particular spot between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. Similarly, you can set a decibel threshold for sound alerts and even movement sensitivity.
Getting the sensitivity levels where you want them is another guessing game. Sound is easier, as a scrolling graph shows the current levels in the room, but movement you'll just have to ballpark. Like the initial setup, this process needs to be done on the website, though you can turn the alerts on and off with the app.
I turned on email alerts and push notification on my phone and went to work triggering events... and nothing happened. For a full day, I screamed and danced in front of the camera hoping for it to send me something. Nothing. Worse, when I left it on for an extended period, the sound grew unusable, even with the live feed. All I could hear was loud, persistent feedback.
After unplugging it for a day and resetting it to factory settings, the sound managed to fix itself, but the alerts didn't. Randomly, with no input on my part, sound alerts started to happen the second time I left the camera plugged in for more than 24 hours. At that time, I also received the only push notification I would ever get. I could never get those to replicate, and motion detection still didn't function.
To get motion working, I had to go in to advanced settings, which require you to click at least two different warnings about the security of your computer, and download a specific video software driver. Finally, I was up and running, but the email alerts still proved slow and inconsistent and I never got another push notification.
I tried it with a replacement unit from D-Link, to rule out whether I had a faulty one, and experienced the same inconsistency. When I reached out to D-Link, they confirmed that they had replicated my problem and were "looking into" it.
While the alerts are problematic, the recording function doesn't work at all. The link in the email notification takes you to a page that should show you a video or snapshot of what caused the alert. Instead, it just takes you back to the live view. The recordings never once worked for me.
Thus, to catch someone using this camera, you either need to be watching, or you need to hope it was one of the times the email came through right way, then check your email, click the link, log-in to the server, confirm that you want to allow Java to run, and wait for the lag to catch up and the camera view to load. You'll basically need to hope your thief decides to stick around and have a cup of coffee.
Smart-home integration
The other DIY security cameras I mentioned earlier have different ways of integrating with other connected devices in your home. Piper doubles as a Z-wave hub and Dropcam has Bluetooth. The hope is to turn these cameras into the eyes of your smart home, so it'll know when to lock the doors and flash the lights if something is amiss. Piper even has a built-in siren that can let out a screech to send a potential thief running.
The best the D-Link Pan & Tilt Day/Night Camera can do to improve your smart home is add an underwhelming amount of extra Wi-Fi range. The idea was a good one. In practice, I checked the signal boundaries around the office, and found that no matter where I positioned the camera, I got a boost of a few extra feet at most. D-Link's cloud camera fails to be the comprehensive solution which its competitors offer.
Conclusion
D-Link's newest camera is an unrefined experience at best with its unpolished -- and sometimes non-functional -- software. Fortunately you have other reliable options from Piper , Dropcam , Samsung , or even Belkin, with the similarly priced and much more competent NetCam HD+ . They all cost a little more than the D-Link Pan & Tilt Day/Night Camera, but their reliability when it comes to security makes each more than worth it.