Lots of Features, But They’re Not All Great – Review Geek

At only $80 for two security cameras, SwitchBot packs in quite a few features. Some of those features work wonderfully, like night vision, and others falter, like human motion tracking.

SwitchBot’s Indoor Security Camera Combo seems too good to be true, but after testing these two cameras out for the past few months, I can assure you it’s not—as long as you’re not interested in human-only motion detection.

Currently, Wyze would be the biggest competitor for SwitchBot’s indoor cameras, but Wyze has made some questionable decisions regarding its camera’s vulnerabilities. That’s why Review Geek can’t recommend Wyze (or eufy) cameras anymore, and why it’s exciting that SwitchBot’s Indoor Cam and Pan/Tilt Cam 2K seem to have the potential to be good replacement candidates.

By themselves, the Indoor Cam retails for $29.99 and the Pan/Tilt Cam 2K retails for $49.99. When you buy them together in the Indoor Security Combo, the total actually isn’t different, but you’ll usually see an on-site discount. Right now, the Security Combo is priced at $71.99. Then, you can add on an optional cloud subscription service for an extra monthly or annual fee, but more on that later.

For the most part, everything SwitchBot advertised about these two cameras is accurate. The video quality is great, night vision was better than I expected, and it’s easy to incorporate the cameras into SwitchBot Scenes and automate when they turn on and off. The biggest issue I had with the cameras was their motion-detecting capabilities, particularly when I had human-only detection turned on and they were still picking up my cats.

That said, that technology is tough to get right and it’s possible to improve it over time with firmware upgrades. There were a ton of other things I loved about these cameras, so without further ado, let’s get into it!

Specs

Build Quality & Design

Both cameras, as well as many of SwitchBot’s other products, are very light. One of the ways SwitchBot is able to sell its products at such a low price is because it doesn’t use heavier, top-tier materials. That said, the products don’t necessarily feel cheap or poorly built—just light.

The Pan/Tilt Cam 2K has a 360-degree horizontal angle and 115-degree vertical angle, which allows you to see almost everything in a large room. You can only use the camera indoors, but you can set it on a dresser, stick it to a surface with double-sided tape, or mount it upside down on your ceiling.

SwitchBot’s Indoor Cam is stationary with a 130-degree wide-angle lens, so you can only point it in one direction, but you can see quite a bit. It’s super tiny, and it comes with a stand you can attach if you want to give it some extra height. Otherwise, you can simply set the camera on a flat surface or you can mount it to the ceiling.

Both cameras allow you to store files locally via a microSD card or virtually via a paid cloud subscription, which allows for event recording for the previous 30 days. The Indoor Cam supports a maximum 128GB microSD card, while the Pan/Tile Cam 2K supports a 256GB microSD card. If you opt for a paid cloud subscription, there are three options:

• Standard Plan for one camera ($4.99/month, or $49.90/year)
• Premium Plan for two cameras ($7.99/month, or $79.90/year)
• Family Plan for three cameras($9.99/month, or $99.90/year)

Setup & Using the App

All of SwitchBot’s products are super simple to set up, and these two security cameras are no different. You download the SwitchBot app (Android/iOS), select your device from the in-app menus, and then show a unique QR code to the camera lens to pair the camera to the app.

Once you’ve paired the cameras, you’ll see them show up as individual icons in the app’s home screen. When you tap the camera’s icon, it’ll automatically open up to a screen where you can see what’s in the camera’s view as well as the Events tab.

Depending on which camera you have, you’ll see different tabs at the bottom of the screen and different options within the settings menu. The Pan/Tilt Cam 2K has four tabs in total: Events, Direction, Features, and Playback. The Indoor Cam only has three tabs: Events, Features, and Playback.

Between the two cameras, the Events tab and the Playback tab are the same. The Events tab shows the last motion-detected event screenshots, and the Playback tab lets you view saved Recordings and Screenshots, Cloud Videos, and microSD Card Videos.

In the Features tab on the Indoor Cam, you’ll find quick toggles for Privacy Mode, Night Vision, and Motion Detection. On the Pan/Tilt Cam 2K, the Features tab has quick toggles for those same three options as well as Sound Alarm and Motion Tracking. The Pan/Tilt Cam can rotate horizontally and vertically via the directional arrow controls in the Direction tab.

When you toggle Privacy Mode on, the Pan/Tilt Cam turns in on itself to completely block the view of your home and the Indoor Cam simply closes its camera shutter. Tapping the Night Mode button lets you choose between Auto, On, or Off options, and tapping Motion Detection or Motion Tracking toggles the feature on and off. The Sound Alarm button on the Pan/Tilt Cam instantly sounds off the alarm to scare away anyone who’s not supposed to be there.

Tapping the settings icon in the top right corner, you have more control over certain features, like motion detection and tracking sensitivity, preset points, detection zones, two-way talk controls, and alert notifications. The Indoor Cam has less settings to mess around with because it can’t do as much as the Pan/Tilt Cam, but you can still customize what’s important.

In the Indoor Cam’s Basic settings menu, you can turn the recording indicator light and night vision on and off, flip the video display or remove the time watermark, and choose between one-way or two-way audio. Then, you can personalize your mobile and email alert notifications, connect Google Assistant or Alexa, pair a SwitchBot Tag with your camera through NFC, and update the camera’s firmware.

Within the Motion Detection settings on the Indoor Cam’s screen, you can toggle it on and off, adjust sensitivity between low, medium, and high, turn on Human Detection, and set up a Detection Zone. When you set up a new Detection Zone, you’ll be able to drag and resize a square within the field of view of your camera, and then the camera will only detect motion within that square. This was incredibly helpful because the motion-tracking capabilities of these camera’s isn’t great, but more on that later.

Except for the Detection Zone feature, all of the settings mentioned above can be found on the Pan/Tilt Cam as well. With the Pan/Tilt Cam, you can also see your Wi-Fi signal strength at any time, though it’s worth mentioning you can only connect via 2.4GHz bands right now. This camera’s Basic settings menu also offers the option to recalibrate your rotation angles and set anti-flicker to 50Hz or 60Hz, which helps with how smooth the moving picture looks.

Instead of Detection Zones on the Indoor Cam, the Pan/Tilt Cam has Preset Points. You can set up to four Preset Points similar to how you’d set up a Detection Zone. You turn your camera to the desired position and angle, and tap Save to form a Preset Point. You can use a Preset Point as an action in SwitchBot scenes, like making the camera turn to your front door as a Preset Point when a specific contact sensor detects motion near that area.

Overall, the app is easy to use and there are a lot of ways to customize your cameras to your needs. Every time I would open the app to check on the cameras at home or on the go, they would load up quickly and I never had any major connectivity issues. A few times, I’d open the app and it would give me an error in showing the live feed, but I just had to close and reopen the app for the issue to fix itself.

Video Quality and Responsiveness

SwitchBot’s Indoor Cam is equipped with 1080p HD resolution. Considering many cameras only feature 720p resolution, I think the 1080p resolution is impressive, especially for the price. You can’t see sharply defined lines, but everything looks clear enough to identify through the camera lens. Overall, the video quality is decent, but it is slightly worse than the other camera, mainly because the Pan/Tilt Cam 2K has a better aperture and lets in more light.

Between the two cameras, the Pan/Tilt Cam 2K is better at viewing its surroundings in the dark. The infrared LEDs within the Indoor Camera just aren’t as powerful, and the picture becomes quite blurry. The Pan/Tilt Cam is equipped with eight infrared LED lamps that make night vision video almost look better than video captured during the day.

I was a bit worried when first using the Pan/Tilt Cam because of how people and objects looked when the camera was moving. It was almost like a person would move, but their faint shadow double would remain for just a few seconds before disappearing. When I turned the anti-flicker setting to 60Hz, this stopped happening, and the delay between when something would happen and when I’d see it on camera decreased.

The Pan/Tilt Cam also features a high-end CMOS image sensor, and supposedly has better AI detection than its 1080p predecessor. Though I haven’t tried out the Pan/Tilt Cam 1080p, I can’t imagine how motion detection could be worse than it is with the 2K version.

Privacy Mode, Motion Tracking, and Other Features

With people being wary of having cameras inside their homes due to privacy concerns, it’s nice that both of these SwitchBot cameras are equipped with a dedicated Privacy Mode button. You can set up certain times throughout the day for each camera to automatically go into Privacy mode, or just toggle it manually.

The Indoor Cam only closes its shutter when in Privacy Mode, but the Pan/Tilt Cam rotates halfway around so that the camera is pointed towards the inside of the camera. Being able to completely flip the camera around was a nice touch for privacy.

Motion-tracking features on both cameras were a bit lackluster. The cameras are certainly able to pick up motion, but they’re much too sensitive, even motion sensitivity set to low and human detection is turned on. If you have motion-tracking and notifications turned on, be prepared to receive a ton of notifications.

SwitchBot’s Indoor Cam says that turning on human-only movement detection will reduce false alarms from your pets or other non-human objects, but the detection technology just isn’t there right now. My cats constantly triggered a motion-tracking notification, and I’d always see screenshots that said Human Detection when the only moving thing in the picture was one of my cats.

Weirdly enough, when I set up a Detection Zone in my bedroom with human detection turned on and motion sensitivity set to low, my cats rarely triggered a motion alert. I had the camera pointed towards an area of the room my cats had to walk through to get to a litter box, and the camera rarely captured non-human motion screenshots.

The Pan/Tilt Cam 2K struggled just as much with accurate human detection, and I had to turn off the motion detection notifications because my phone was buzzing every time a cat walked by the camera. I would also receive motion detection alerts when I would remotely adjust the camera angle from the app.

Because it can rotate horizontally and vertically, SwitchBot’s Pan/Tilt Cam comes with motion-tracking capabilities. When the camera latches onto a moving subject, it follows it around the room until it’s gone. This feature worked really well, but my cats got a bit freaked out by hearing the camera move constantly, so I only tested it for a short time.

Both cameras are equipped with one-way and two-way audio functionality, and it works pretty well. It’s not stellar quality, but each person can hear one another clearly, and it’s reminiscent of chatting with someone on speakerphone. There are occasional moments where you need someone to repeat something, and there’s a slight delay in speech. After you end the two-way “call” from the app, you can still hear what’s going on in the room and press the mute button to stop hearing audio.

The Indoor Cam’s built-in speakers and microphone were a bit worse than those on the Pan/Tilt Cam, but it still worked well enough. The person’s voice coming through the camera’s speakers was clearer than the person talking into the camera’s microphone. It’ll do in a pinch when you need to check in on your kids or tell your pets to stop fighting, but it’s not either camera’s best-selling feature.

Verdict: Useful Camera Bundle, But Maybe Not For Everyone

The Indoor Security Camera Combo lets you bundle SwitchBot’s cameras together for a slight discount, which is awesome if you just can’t decide on which camera you should get. While I think the bundle of an Indoor Cam and a Pan/Tilt Cam 2K is a great introductory option for a lot of people, it’s not what I’d personally do after testing them both.

With the Pan/Tilt Cams, you can use them together to show a 4-camera live view, but you can’t add the Indoor Cam to that mix of multiple cameras. The Pan/Tilt Cams have a wide field of view, and I’d rather spend an extra $20 on another Pan/Tilt Cam rather than get the Indoor Cam.