D-Link's connected camera goofs off when you're not looking

[MUSIC] Hi, I'm Andrew Gebhart for CNET. Today, I am taking a look at the D-Link Pan & Tilt Day/Night network camera. This $120 wi-fi smart cam doesn't quite have the same resolution as its $200 competitors. Like the Samsung SmartCam HD Pro, the Dropcam Pro or the Piper. It also has a smaller viewing angle, but it costs significantly less, has no monthly fees, and still has plenty of competitive features. So as the name suggests, that big long. There, you can remotely pan, tilt, left, right, up, down, this camera to look around whatever room it's in. It will make a buzzing sound when it moves, so if you're checking in on your family and you wanna see what they're up to, expect for them to hear that sound and be a little bit creeped out as that buzzing sort of follows them around. So panning and silting. What unique for a DIY security camera. Combine that with night vision, a built in mic, customizable alerts for sound and motion and even a Wi-Fi extender so you can use the camera to extend your signal to previously dead areas of your home and this the relink looks pretty good especially for 120 bucks. Except. So the whole idea of a smart security camera is that you want it to give you piece of mind when you hope to spy on your family. Check. This thing can do that. But you also want it to watch your home when you can't so it can let you know when something is up. The automatic sound alerts motion alerts and automatic recordings should do that except in my testing they working sporadically at best and downright failed a large number of times. To top it off. The recordings never functioned at all, the push notifications, barely. So, if you're going to get robbed, you wanna make sure you have a very patient and understanding thief who will kindly wait until you check your email, pull up the browser window, log in, click on your camera, confirm that you want to launch java, and wait for the lag to catch up. Then, you can catch your very polite and accommodating [MUSIC] Thief red handed. Otherwise, this D-Link pan and tilt, day, night network camera really isn't the smart cam you're looking for. If all you want is live monitoring, sure, this thing'll function just fine. But rest assured that there are many other DIY security cameras out there that will prove much more [INAUDIBLE] at actually helping you secure your home. For CNET I'm Andrew Gebhart and for my full review and all of our other smart home coverage be sure to checkout cnet.com