The Lorex Smart Indoor Camera costs under $50
and hits that sweet spot
between features and affordability.
Its audio and video quality isn't award-winning,
but it's enough to tell what's happening in the room.
And the Lorex comes with a tiny micro SD card
that helps you record activities
and takes stills of the action as it happens.
The camera itself is kind of a swivel head on a flat base.
So you can tilt and move the camera
a number of ways to get it to the right angle.
It also comes with a mounting kit to fix it to the wall.
It only took me a few minutes to get this little
Lorex camera going right out of the box.
And once you set it up,
it creates its own little hotspot
so you can sign into it from there.
So don't be too surprised when you see
an unfamiliar network when setting this up.
That's just the camera coming online.
So stick around as I give you
a quick tour of the Lorex Smart Indoor Camera.
But, before we get into it,
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All right, let's get into it.
The Lorex Smart Indoor Camera
shoots and takes stills in 1080p.
In clear daylight, the video comes out really nicely.
And when you turn on the recording feature of this camera,
it captures stills like these onto the SD card.
And these weren't quite as clear.
The smart indoor cameras' night vision
landed in a similar category.
The picture was sharp for objects up close,
but the further you go back,
the murkier things got.
I'd estimate that this camera can see
up to 10 feet in the dark.
All of this applies to most 1080p cameras.
The video quality reminds me a lot
of the old digital cameras
I used to use in high school to take Myspace photos.
It's not especially crisp or clear,
but it's enough to generally tell
what's happening in the room.
Speaking of, recording video is simple
and works one of two ways.
You can record from the live view
by holding down the record icon for the length of your clip
or select "continuous recording" in the Lorex app.
This will make the camera start recording
and grab a snapshot of any time
the motion sensor is triggered.
You can do either or both.
Plus, you can share your clips
if you catch anything exciting or noteworthy.
It also has the ability to record on a schedule
or work with your location
if you don't want it recording while you're at home.
But, you will need that microSD card in it at all times
to see any recorded events in the app.
Without it, this camera only
livestreams footage to the app.
And, like many of its peers,
the Lorex Smart Indoor Cam has two-way audio
that lets you listen in and talk through the camera.
So I checked the camera's speaker.
This is what the Lorex Smart Indoor Cam sounds like.
Its microphone
(mellow music)
Oh hey, didn't see you there.
And I tried talking through the app.
You hear that garbled sound?
That's me telling my cat to get off the table.
The audio from the speaker doesn't pick up well in the app.
So if you record a conversation from the app
while speaking to someone else,
you might not catch both sides.
One audio-centric feature I did like
was the sound alerts.
Yet another item on the checklist for new parents.
Basically, sound alerts tell the camera to
listen for loud noises
like breaking glass, or crying babies, or dogs barking.
You can adjust this setting
to listen in for sounds
anywhere between 50 and 90 decibels.
Out of curiosity, I adjusted it to the lowest setting
and it consistently picked up sounds of
closing doors, footsteps,
or me just talking to myself at home.
Like I mentioned before,
the Lorex Smart Indoor Cam
uses local storage instead of cloud storage.
It comes with a 16 GB mini SD included.
So you won't have to rummage through
your junk drawers to find one on your own.
And it kicks the pants off of other local storage cameras
with its support for up to 256 GB.
All of this is big for a couple reasons.
I mean first off, 256 GB is huge.
It's about as much storage as an iPad.
And this allows for a continuous recording,
which keeps your stored and recorded footage offline
and away from any prying eyes.
When the chip is in, this allows you to
go into the app and see past events recorded.
"Events" usually refer to movement the camera detects,
like someone walking into the room or past the camera.
Without that chip, you won't see any past events.
After leaving mine recording for several days,
I took a peek at what was on that chip itself
and found stills of all the past events
my camera notified me about.
Thankfully, there wasn't much noteworthy
that happened over the days I recorded.
And I only found stills of me doing yoga
in my living room and talking to my cat.
So now that I've given you a quick rundown
of the Lorex Smart Indoor Cam,
here are a few quick pros and cons from my tests.
The Lorex Smart Indoor Cam
comes from a pretty underrated brand,
but this particular model didn't really blow me away.
So first, we'll go into the cons.
The video quality wasn't particularly good
unless it was the middle of the day.
And the still images on this camera weren't much better.
And while the cameras mic and speaker
work just fine, speaking through the app
never quite seemed to come out clearly.
Luckily, this isn't the strongest camera Lorex
has to offer.
The brand boasts better ones of up to 4k resolution.
And we'll definitely be aiming
to test those in the near future.
But for its price, 1080p works just fine.
Lorex also doesn't have cloud storage,
which can be a drawback if you prefer to go down that route.
And its local storage kicks butt.
With the potential of storing an iPad's worth of video
on a tiny little chip like this,
you can keep your camera rolling all day
without paying extra fees that come with cloud storage.
This does mean that you'll have to offload
footage the more you record,
but you'll catch everything.
I found its app and the camera itself really intuitive.
It has a simple user interface
and blends useful features
that don't feel like weird vestigial things
you'll never use.
Some other great features on the Lorex cam
include its reliable video recording,
sound alerts, scheduling, and extras like geofencing
were pretty cool.
These are just a few of my favorites from using this camera.
The Lorex Indoor Smart Camera
fits in with a family of $40 cameras
that work well for their price.
It's simple, and if that's all you're looking for,
this is a great option to go with.
But, it won't make your cat respect you.
(gentle music)
After this experience, I'm hoping to test more from Lorex.
Especially its higher quality cameras
that shoot in 2K and 4K.
So stick around to see those as they come out.
If you want to see more or have questions about it,
let me know in the comments
and we can post a short
to answer your questions.
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