SimCam AI 1080 HD Home Security Camera 1S (Black)

I'm sure this is great for many people. There are some cool features, setup is smooth, I love the local storage and the lack of necessary subscriptions for important features, and image quality is good. And yet it utterly fails to do the job for me in a bunch of surprising ways.1. It's AI or nothing - no simple motion detection. The fancy AI features do a great job of reducing false alarms, but what if you really do want to save a clip of any and all motion that occurs? Or are willing to put up with some false alarms to make sure you get things that aren't recognized as people, pets, or cars (or a single specific object in the scene). You can't. There's no way to do that.2. The "pet detection" feature is terrible. Less than half of the time - way less than half - does it work for me. Maybe it's optimized for dogs or something, but my cats can pass right by the camera over and over again, and at best 1 in 3 times does the camera recognize it as a "pet".3. Even person detection is far from perfect. I can easily pass through the frame where the camera is right now without it detecting a person (I just did it several times before writing this just to prove to myself, again). If I stop and face the camera and make it easy, sure. If I dash through the frame, or wave an arm into frame, or any number of things the camera misses it.3. You can't customize the video recording. Don't want the time to show, or to show in a different format? Don't want the SimCam logo in the corner? Tough.4. There's a *great* feature where you can review all the video (not just the "alert" clips) from the last X hours (depending on the size of the SD card you have installed), and it even marks times with motion for review. But there's no utility for marking and saving clips from that. You can presumably take the SD card out, transfer the entire file with hours of video, and edit it down on a computer from there (without the benefit of the motion bookmarks), but that's an awful lot of hassle when a few extra options in the App could easily handle this function.If the AI works for you, and you aren't interested in things that aren't people/pets/cars, and you would never have a reason to extract portions of the video, you may love this camera. I imagine a lot of people will be happy with it. For me it's a near complete bust.

Disappointing. This product promises much and delivers much less. Tried other much less expensive wifi cameras that performed better. The Wyze Pan is under $40 and the Reolink E1 is about $30. Both performed better than this camera costing $100 more.The CONs:1. The image is laggy. Usually 2 to 10 seconds (sometimes more) delay. This results either in motion sped up to "catch up" or sequences are dropped entirely. This was the deal-breaker for me. Go ahead and blame my router but I used the Wyze and Simcam side-by-side and the Reolink and the Simcam side-by-side. The Wyze and Reolink both performed better on the same network simultaneously.2. The Night Vision is grainy. Despite 10 IR LEDs and claims of superior performance, it doesn't have the resolution it purports to have.3. The app is BUGGY. Two examples: the camera's Status LED keeps turning itself back on and the Camera information menu (where the firmware version, IP address and RTSP streaming address appear) randomly depopulates.4. Advertised as PTZ. The Pan is motorized but the Tilt is manually adjusted.5. Documentation is lacking. RTSP instructions referred to the Synology app but if you don't have the Synology hardware, it is of no use (Simcam Tech Support did respond to my inquiries and suggested using VLC to stream however you cannot zoom/pan with this option). Also, the printed User Manual arrived in Chinese only (English version download available).6. App doesn't run on FireOS. Other cameras' Android apps can be installed on my Amazon Fire tablet (with a little monkeying around) but not this one. Tech Support indicated they *may* support this in the future.The PROs:1. Didn't get into daily fistfights with my dedicated firewall appliance as did the Wyze camera (that was the deal-breaker for the Wyze camera which was otherwise quite functional).2. Tech Support did reply politely to my emails although responses were largely not helpful.3. Product packaging was freaking bulletproof. Kudos to the packaging engineers in Wuhan. App developers, not so much.4. Comes with a complimentary microSD card.For my purposes, the Reolink E1 did the trick. It was the cheapest one of the three and worked the best.Bottom line, the Simcam is going back.

Love the face recognition of webcam. It was definitely worth my money. Perfect 👌

took me 3 hours to format and update operating system so it could finnaly link with alexa app. but when using alexa it shows a black screen w a lock in middle ... customer service is nothing, still waiting for them to reply

The first issue I had with the device is the micro SD card cover does not come off. I tried using their tiny allen wrench every which way and it does not come off. So it's forever attached to my device.I used it two days just fine. Worked as exactly described.For some reason, over night into the third day, it went offline. I tried everything I could find in the app to reconnect it. And, no, it wasn't a home network problem. My other devices were connecting to my wi-fi just fine.After some more research online, I found I had to hit a reset button to get it to connect again, a reset button under what? You guess it...the micro SD card cover I cannot remove.Also, I sent an email directly to their customer service department with the email I used to register the device. I heard nothing back. I did get a response back when I contacted them through amazon, but honestly, the response was a bit smarmy. They didn't like I called the allen wrench "useless." Well, if it doesn't remove the micro SD card cover, then what is it?Sorry to say I am back in the market for a new security camera. This one should be at the bottom of any recommendations list.

Perfect product, I buy 2 and it's the top