- (Laughs) There we go!
This is going to be a video guys where I try to redeem myself; let me tell you the story
of last week.
The story of last week is that I uploaded this video right here where I, well, thought
I was reviewing a really good priced CCTV system.
It's honestly amazing.
But then as soon as we put the video up, the price doubled from £200 to £400, so I was
quite annoyed at that and evidently you guys were too in the comments.
So I made it my mission last week to find the cheapest, but hopefully good, security camera.
This thing cost £24 to be delivered to my house with next day delivery.
Let's check this thing out.
So, this is the Neos SmartCam.
It's a really cool thing - this is the box.
It's a tiny little camera.
So essentially what you're getting in this is, well, it says on the side of the box,
full HD quality.
You also get live streaming and motion detection.
Those are the three things you really need when you've got a security camera.
You want Push notifications - they need to be fast.
It wants to record things, it's got night vision, as you guys can see, cloud recording,
you can also put an SD card in this.
8 times digital zoom.
So I'm really, really excited about this.
As I mentioned, I've been on this mission to try and find a really, really cheap security
camera so I can bring it to you guys.
This one was actually an Instagram advert - I kid you not.
I found this as I was scrolling on Instagram.
It came up saying: £24.99 delivered.
Home security camera, 1080p and I just thought: There's no way.
I actually looked at a few reviews and they were all really, really good.
So that's the camera itself - I'll place that off to the side for now and we'll see what
else we get in this tiny, tiny little box.
There is an instruction manual, quick start guide - I'm sure we can figure this out - and
then hopefully, in here, we sort of have some mounts.
That is essentially it.
So let's get in here.
The mounts are already falling out.
We've got L, L... 3M VHB pads, we've got some of these things and then that's it.
Okay, you only get...
Okay, you get two mounts.
I'm not even sure how that works.
That's just a metal disc.
Sticky pad, yeah, and then a USB to micro B and then...
Five volt, 1 milli...
1000 milli-amp hour power supply.
So you could power this thing off of a battery bank.
So that is awesome.
That is wicked!
Okay, let's get in this.
So this is the camera.
So on the back, it looks like we've got our speaker with like a home sort of decor on
there - that looks quite nice.
Full sized USB port and then a micro B port there for this cable.
Looks like a little reset hole there.
And then nothing on either side or the top of the unit.
On the front, we've got our, what looks like, lens with a, hopefully, an IR ring around it.
Not sure what that is there.
And then the little stand here, I've seen.
Yeah, okay, so it's sort of, you can stand it and then it will twivel...
Twivel?
Swivel round on this little thing.
That's pretty neat actually.
This is, this is quite big.
It's quite a big, bulky thing but it also looks quite modern.
Like, that's just sat there.
That's pretty cool, isn't it?
Like, I wouldn't complain about that.
Okay, so as you guys can see, this is the newest addition to my family.
This is my dog and we're going to use him as a test subject.
Okay, so that's that explained.
He can now go down here.
Essentially, he lives in the downstairs toilet.
That's his little house and I've got a camera in there at the moment to make sure that he's
okay at night because obviously he's a puppy and he wails and screams and I just like to
make sure that he's okay.
So what I'm going to do is take that camera out of there and use this camera for the same purpose, right.
And then what I'm also going to do is use a totally different micro USB cable, different
to the one that came in the box just to prove that it's going to work with any micro USB
cable, so there we go - that one goes in there.
It's a nice Anker one and then - icing on the cake - I'm also going to power it through
this 20,000 milli-amp hour Anker battery pack.
So there we go, we now have a portable camera rig.
Now this is really cool.
What I'm also going to do is tilt it off the edge of a unit in the bathroom and use the
Anker battery pack as a weight to make sure it stays there.
This is cool.
So this is the current camera system at the moment.
As you can see, we've got a horrible cable running to it because it needs external power
from a UK socket so we're going to take this down right now and we're going to sort of
introduce our new elegant system.
I'm just going to leave you dangling there for now.
Cool.
Okay, so this is our new camera.
Simply what I'm going to do is have it right here on the edge looking down to where the
dog's going to be and then I'll put the battery pack on it like that and it'll stay still.
That's awesome.
To note guys, there is a little flashing light in the back there, so I think that means good
things, essentially.
So I'm going to put this back and we'll download the app on my phone and we'll get this thing
all set up.
Also, side note - these are the little things that are included to mount it, if you want
to stick it up somewhere.
So essentially, there's a magnetic plate that magnets on to the bottom of the bracket and
then allows you to still use the actual bracket to point and position the camera.
This is Chloe from the company.
Hey Alex - We're excited to announce...
That's so weird.
Like, what...
What is that?
This is...
This is like a...
I just want to set up the camera, man.
That's literally all I want to do.
- [Electronic voice] QR code scanned - please wait.
- Okay, so...
I was literally just sitting down - it said that there was a firmware update.
So it's done the firmware update now and literally within seconds of it doing it, a notification
comes through on the watch.
Motion detected in the bathroom which is what I essentially named this camera because that's
where I'm going to put it - in the bathroom to look at the dog.
Very impressive set up experience so far.
This is promising.
Very promising.
So I've been testing out this Neos Smart Camera in numerous locations around my home over
the last two to three weeks and this video is my results.
So luckily enough for me, I have had the perfect,
the absolute perfect test subject in my house.
Say hello to Atlas in his cage, asleep.
Now I've been videoing my dog whilst he's been asleep and using this camera to check
up on him and I'll go more in to this story in just a second, so this video is going to
be full of dogs as well as me sweeping outside on my deck and comparing it in the office
to some other cameras that are a heck of a lot more expensive than this one.
Now the website of this camera claims that it is a really simple piece of kit to get
set up and as demonstrated already in this video, because we've already set it up, it
is really, really simple.
You scan the QR code - bish, bash, bosh - there you go.
But throughout my testing, I found that I had no complaints about the 2.4 gigahertz network.
This thing - 100% reliability, well, for me, over the last few weeks anyway.
And by the way, throughout my entire testing, it's been connected to a battery bank.
A battery bank and just so that you guys know, around 20,000 milli-amp hours lasted around
three days for this bad boy.
Now the mounting options for this camera are really quite diverse.
They don't really seem it to start with - let me explain.
So when you get it out of the box, you get this, what seems like, a really flimsy, sort of unusable
stand thing but then it also comes with a sticky mount and a magnetic mount.
So this can be magnetised to something and point that way, point that way, go that way.
You can actually mount it above a cash register and have it pointing straight down.
That works too.
The mount is actually really good but it doesn't seem it to start with.
So first off, let's talk about the image that this camera can produce.
Now usually with most home security cameras, they are looking at a still image.
Could you imagine, let's just say, a front gate, some trees or in your house, if it's
looking at a counter top, and your kitchen table, these things are inanimate objects.
They don't move so therefore they only need a low bit rate to look really, really sharp.
The thing is with this little camera, as soon as you introduce any sort of motion, you start
to get quite a bit of pixelation.
But it doesn't really matter because, number one, this thing is £20 and number two, well,
for home security, things don't really move all that often.
The camera is always mounted in a static place.
This is the G3 Flex from Ubiquiti.
I had it alongside this little Neos smart camera in Atlas' cage whilst he was sleeping
and these are the side by side results.
This £20, the Ubiquiti camera, around £180.
As long as I can watch my dog and view my car on the driveway, which, by the way, all
of these shots are from this little camera, then happy days, right?
I also wanted to test out the WiFi card inside of this little camera, so to do that, I brought
it to the office, connected it to the office's WiFi and put it all the way over there in
the kitchen, which is about three brick walls away from the access point.
It maintained a solid connection and connected up really, really quickly.
No complaints as far as WiFi is concerned.
Whilst I was in the office, I thought I'd compare it to the old, trusty £109 original LogiCircle.
So as you guys can see, this is the LogiCircle's quality and now this, the Neos Smart Camera.
Now again, going back to diminishing returns, you do get better quality with the £109 Logicircle
but does it really matter when you can get this quality for £20?
You're not even talking less than half price here - it is around one fifth of the price.
One fifth of the price.
Another thing I would use this camera for, and I would pay £20 alone just for this
feature, is the noise detection.
Now none of my other cameras that I've used can detect noise - they only trigger recording
when they see motion.
This thing, well I was using it as a noise detector to see when my dog was barking and/or
whining, so I could then go and make sure that he was okay, let him out of his cage,
feed him and so on and so forth.
I also then wanted to go ahead and test it against some other home security cameras,
so at my front door, I have a Nest video doorbell.
These are fairly expensive pieces of kit too.
So, here you go, this is the Nest video quality and this is the Neos SmartCam quality.
Now bear in mind that this is also the audio from the Neos Smart Camera.
And this is what the audio quality sounds like on this tiny little £20 camera.
What do you guys think?
Let me know in the comments section down below.
Now the audio isn't really the best and neither is the two way communication.
The speaker on this thing does suck a little bit.
You can make out what people are saying on the other end but it is just a little bit
wishy-washy.
You do have to really sort of...
I think the be all and end all of this conversation is that if you do want a reliable, live view
camera that's going to record the odd 12 seconds of video when it sees motion or hears something,
this is the perfect guy.
However, if you want something that is going to continuously record 24/7, and if you've
watched any of my other camera reviews, you'll know that that's something I rave on about,
then this isn't really going to cut it for you.
Now they say that you can put a micro SD card in the bottom.
I did install that - it did absolutely nothing so I'm not sure what's going on there.
However, I did get my 12 second clips every time it detected motion or a sound and they
were adequate enough for me.
I've put a link in the description.
I rate this thing - it works.
This is the best camera for £20, hands down.
I'll see you in the next one.
Adios.