The Maximus Smart Security Light has been around for a while.
You can pick it up online but you've probably also seen it at Costco or maybe even
Home Depot.
In short, it's a smart porch light with a hidden security camera.
I tested the Coach style Smart Security Light which sells for $179.00; thankfully, I was
lucky enough to get this one from Maximus for testing.
If you don't like this style, they also have other styles including craftsman, contemporary,
and traditional.
If you need multiple lights, you can always snag a companion light which retails for $99.
It'll sync with your smart light via Bluetooth but it's cheaper because there's no camera.
The Smart Security Light promises to do a lot for free, and it'll do even more if you
pair it with Kuna AI, which is the cloud intelligence and software that backs the Maximus hardware.
So today we are going to dust off my favorite game and pit Maximus' claims about the light
against its actual performance by playing Claim versus Performance.
Claim 1 being that it can stream HD video 24/7, and this claim is mostly true
You can stream footage from anywhere but any time is a stretch.
In testing, there was no lag and the camera lived up to its HD 720p promise.
And when compared to other HD cameras it holds its own.
The camera offers a 116-degree field of view.
It's fixed, but you can rotate the camera lens 40-degrees up, down, left, or right to
perfect your shot.
The reason I rated this claim "mostly true" is that the camera lacks night vision.
Instead, the Maximus Smart Security Light relies on its light feature to help it see
at night, but as the light sits right above the camera, it tends to blind it.
Moving on to claim 2, Maximus claims that you'll only be notified of events that matter.
If you pay for Kuna AI, this claim is true.
If you don't, it's mostly true.
The camera does use a Passive Infrared motion sensor which will cut down on some false positives
but not all of them.
Adding Kuna AI is reasonable as it starts at $7.49 per month or $59.88 per year and
adds person detection and car detection.
I tested Kuna AI for over two weeks and only had two false positives, which is impressive.
Also, it will not only let you know if it sees a person but will estimate how many people
it thinks it sees although it's not always accurate in its estimations.
For example, here you'll see that it marked my grill cover as potentially
more person-like than I.
For free, the light also allows you to adjust motion sensitivity.
If you pay, you can dig in further by creating an activity zone for people and a separate
one for cars with the blue highlighted tiles representing areas you want Kuna to monitor.
Though false alarms were few, motion detection was an area that left a question mark for
me.
First of all, the motion detector has a mere 10-foot range, but there are settings that
you can adjust to account for this.
For example, there's a motion sensitivity slider for the motion sensor, one related
to motion activated lighting, and yet another related to Kuna AI, and they do help a bit,
but with the sensitivity slider set to the max and KUNA AI set to default, I was
able to walk right by the camera multiple times without being detected.
Of course, I also tested everything set to max, which did improve performance, but
I still felt a little bit concerned overall about the camera's ability to detect
motion.
Claim 3 is that you can react from the lock screen.
If you are an iOS user, this is true, and it's one of my favorite features.
Plus, it works even without a paid plan.
Essentially, when a push notification comes through, you will be presented with a clip
of the event and the option to snooze all push notifications for two hours or to play
a recorded message.
Snoozing is also one of my favorite features, but it only snoozes push notifications.
I found myself wanting to snooze other things, like Greetings, which brings us to claim number
4, Greetings.
While you can take control from the app, the light can also take action on its own.
For one, you can set it to play one of six pre-recorded Greetings when motion is detected,
which is usually enough to get someone to look directly at the camera.
As already mentioned, these greetings will continue to play every time motion is detected.
You can't snooze them, but you can turn them off from the mobile app.
If you swipe to open a push notification, you can head to the live view screen and take
even further action.
From here, you can use the walkie-talkie style two-way audio feature, turn the light on and
off, play a Greeting, record on-demand, sound the integrated 100-decibel siren, or call
911.
Claim 6 is again true.
For free, you can view all events from the past two hours and can download up to three
clips per month.
If you pay for Kuna AI, you can choose between a 7, 14, and 30-day look back.
A paid plan also adds unlimited downloads.
While the video history shows short clips, recorded videos are much longer.
And though I didn't nail down the exact clip length, clip lengths were generous, even including
a 10-second buffer that allows you to see what happened before an event triggered the
camera.
Moving on to claim 7, the Maximus Smart Security Light is a smart light with two distinct lighting
features.
First, you can set the light to turn on when motion is detected.
It can do this at night or all the time.
You can also set a motion timeout which will turn the light back off after a fixed period.
Second, you can create a schedule.
The schedule is the same for every weekday though you can create a separate schedule
for weekends.
The light can also turn on at dusk and off at dawn.
You can even create a dusk/dawn offset.
Our final claim, is again, true, though perhaps slightly misleading.
I assumed as I'm sure many people do, that voice control would be related to the camera.
It's not, you can only use your voice to turn the light on and off.
As far as performance, I’d give Maximus a 7.5/10.
I enjoyed Kuna AI, rich notifications, the clear speaker, loud siren, stable app, and
smart lighting features. However, the camera lacks third-party integrations, motion detection was questionable,
and night vision was awful.
But if you can live with those shortcomings and you happen in the market for a smart security light,
I think you will enjoy using Maximus.
I am curious, however, how you all feeling about using a smart security light versus just going with a standalone security camera.
Let me know if the comment section below, and I will see y'all soon.