FoscamG4 Full HD 4MP 2K WiFi Outdoor Security Camera with Human-Only Detection,Motion Detection, Free Cloud Service Included, 65ft Night Vision with IR Lights, IP66 Weatherproof,Supports Alexa

** January 2021 Update (I usually operate about 9 Foscam WIFI cameras at any given time, so I always have lots of excitement to share) **This is a slightly different review of my fantastic Foscam outdoor WIFI cameras. I’d like to focus on Foscam as an extremely customer-focused company.Take for example, my most recent email exchange with Frank, a Technical Support Engineer with Foscam. First of all, my questions were thoroughly addressed in an expeditious and very polite manner. Frank asked me to perform a few tests over the holidays and unfortunately I was delayed in implementing Frank’s suggestions. Shortly thereafter, he took it upon himself to check-in on my progress and actually sent me a Christmas card!The relationship that I’ve enjoyed with Foscam generally, and Frank specifically continues to astonish me. In a world where customer service seems slipping away – at Foscam, it is not only alive and well, but vibrant and above all - wonderfully consistent.December 2020 Update: Prepare yourself for something remarkable – make that two things remarkable:1) These are excellent cameras with features and enhancements that I feel are unequaled at a very reasonable price point. Everything from well-designed mounting flexibility; ease of setup; a fantastic app interface; fast connectivity and the fact that cameras receive periodic firmware improvements that keep the Foscam experience current and very relevant to all levels of end-users.2) My experience has been that when you purchase from Foscam, you will essentially have a partner who will make sure you are not only operational but pleased and that your system is performing optimally.A perfect example: A few days ago, I received a very nice, personal email message from Frank, a Tech Support Engineer with Foscam. He offered recommendations regarding a product that he felt might be useful to me, given my inventory of Foscam cameras – the Foscam WiFi Extender.I thanked him and said that I had read so many positive reviews on their Extender that I already made the purchase!During our email exchange, I mentioned a small replacement part I was trying to find. Before I could even get in front of my laptop to write this review, Frank had provided me with a tracking number for the part that would soon arrive at my door!!Foscam + Frank = FANTASTIC!Update: Just received some excellent Customer Service and Tech Support from Foscam's Yiko Deng. Super fast resolution - friendly and helpful every step of the way!In my work, I provide video security recommendations to individuals and small businesses. Over the years, I've relied on Foscam to deliver stable, reliable and high quality products with excellent customer service at an affordable price.The two Foscam G4s I recently purchased for my own personal use are no exception - in fact they are true standouts. I’ve not had them long, but they have the same super easy setup and even better features and optics than the Foscam G2’s or the Foscam FI9900s I’ve owned.The Foscam G4 has the added enhancement of human-movement detection - a feature I’ve looked forward to for quite some time. Too early to have any feedback, but I anticipate it will be a nice enhancement.The night vision alone is worth the price of admission – fantastic!A review of Foscam cameras wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the excellent customer service they provide. I’ve NEVER had anything but exceptional and responsive service. As an example, I emailed Desmond Li with Foscam customer support for his product recommendation and insights. He quickly responded with detailed information that was relevant to all my questions and specific to my exact need.Not only technically helpful, but Desmond also made me aware of a promotion I had overlooked. He thoughtfully provided a link that resulted in a very much appreciated price reduction!Thank you Foscam – thank you Desmond Li

Bought this to use primary as a weather camera to accompany my PWS and upload to Weather Underground. The quality of the actual camera seems good. The picture quality is great. The software and instructions are terrible. I have managed to get it up an running but not without a great deal of struggle. All of Foscam’s media is just terrible to navigate. Their websites and instructions manuals are very poorly designed and written; and the user interfaces on their apps and other software are anything but intuitive.My first problem was that I was trying to do it all from my iPad. After hours of frustration I finally learned you must use a desktop computer a d browser to access the cameras settings. I’m about 12 hours into it and I have it working pretty good on wifi. However I have a lot more to do in order to set it up to view the camera remotely over the internet. I’ll probably update this review after I figure it all out and use it a while.**UPDATE**After many hours, lots of internet research and several days I have my Foscam up and running wirelessly and uploading images to Weather Underground. Much of the struggle was due to my ignorance but I self taught and pushed through. The biggest takeaway from my experience is Foscam’s software and instructions are terrible. I believe this is what leads to many of the negative reviews. The problems many people seem to have are related to connecting to their network. My experience was no different but in the end I have learned that much (if not all) of the problems were due to my ignorance of home networks. You must have basic knowledge of ip addresses, ports, port forwarding, programming your router and all the associated security settings in order to pull this off. This is where Foscam falls short. The way the instructions are written presumes the user knows what they are doing. They could do a MUCH better job at explaining the steps to the layman. Or even better would be a setup wizard to walk you through it. Yeah, there is a setup wizard to help you set the time and date, and name your camera and a few other elementary things. But setting ports, ip addresses, forwarding ports and setting up your router to accommodate the camera is not found anywhere in Foscams instructions.My second complain, somewhat related, is their apps are useless for controlling your camera. They work okay for viewing the camera images, but in order to access the detailed settings for the camera you must use a desktop computer and access the camera through a web browser. And wait... its even better than that. You must first download and install a plugin in order for any browser to be able to log in to the camera. Once you find the plugin on Foscams website and download and install it you can then access your cameras settings. I find this to be crazy. Why in the year 2020 can a company not figure out how to make their cameras settings panel available through their own app??It’s too bad Foscam has really dropped the ball on what should be a simple task, because the actual camera itself seems to be a very good product and with these issues addressed I would give it 5 stars.

I’ve got a bunch of Foscam cameras, both indoors (the cheap baby cameras) and outdoors. I’ve used one of their 1K HD outdoor cameras pointed at the sky for about 8 years and it still works perfectly. These are popular cameras for weather enthusiasts using Weather Underground because they have a lot of firmware and software features that allow you to integrate these cameras into other platforms, beyond just the Foscam cloud services. They are a great value for the money! Image quality and night vision are excellent!My only complaint is that you must purchase a separate cloud subscription for each camera as they no longer offer a blanket option for all your cameras, similar to that being offered now by Ring and many other manufacturers. Hey, Foscam…PLEASE FIX THIS!I have also installed Foscam cameras for friends with great results.I don’t want to post a photograph of my entire yard but I will include an image from my older Foscam camera (#1, my SkyCam) where you’ll see my flagpoles. I’ll also include an image from a and less expensive Foscam 1K camera (#2) that I added in January and have now pointed at the sky. (This camera is mounted next to the 2K camera being reviewed here.) My 3rd image will be this specific 2K camera *cropped* (#3) so you can compare the resolutions.This 2K camera has a bit wider viewing angle than some of their 1K cameras, but the iPhone app seems to crop some of the image on the left and right, so what is seen in the app doesn’t seem much wider than their other outdoor cameras. (I’m hoping a future app tweak will fix that.)I ordered this specific camera model to install on my garden house to view my backyard and house. I ordered another brand of microphone for audio since this outdoor camera doesn’t have a built-in microphone. (I’ve reviewed that microphone separately.)This camera has worked flawlessly for the last few months and the only issue has been the occasional spider that decides the camera is a great place to build a web because the infrared LEDs are attracting insects. Whenever that happens, I grab my electric leaf blower and shoot a blast of air at the camera and the spiderweb is gone.Foscam is one of the more reasonably priced Chinese brands, however they are very innovative and have been around for quite some time. They also manufacture some very high-end imaging products (thermal, etc.) for commercial environments, so they are not just another company selling cheap copycat cameras.Their smartphone app is excellent …well-designed, easy to use with many features. It’s a perfect app for monitoring multiple cameras and it’s easy to add shared access for individual cameras for those wanting friends or relatives to keep an eye on things.I’ve also used inexpensive Foscam “baby cameras” in each room to monitor an elderly parent. The baby cameras are like 33 bucks each (sometimes less) and are perfect for monitoring each room in your house; a much better solution than the big name brands! (I have a Ring Pro doorbell and seven of the battery-powered Blink cameras so I’m familiar with other brands). I definitely prefer the Foscam cameras where I have an electrical outlet within reach. However, there are places where a battery-powered camera is the best choice.This review is much longer than I had originally planned but I’ve had such good luck with these cameras that I felt the insight might be helpful to others that might want to standardize on a single camera brand.

For security purposes I will not post a photo as people may recognize the location of my residence.However, this camera is amazing!!! I’ve been a customer of Foscam for 6 years and I’ve never had any issues. Any issues I did have Foscam took care of it as customer care should with no delay.***I was afraid of this camera because you can’t turn it left or right, you can’t zoom in or out as you can the others such as the R4S.After seeing the picture quality after finding your position where you want it mounted I see why you really don’t need the options. The picture is CRYSTAL CLEAR along with the quality.With the lighting at the rear of my residence at night there was no need to use the night vision. It was so clear without the night vision you would assume that it was still day light outside. I was in awe.I don’t like that you have to connect a mic in order to get sound but with the picture quality being better than expected I will not complain at all.However this is an outside camera and Foscam does not provide a cord that’s long enough to do anything with you will need to buy an adapter cord up to 40ft if you want to mount this camera otherwise you will not be able to mount it and use it as intended. However Foscam know they should have included an extended cord or just made the cord longer all together.Based on the quality of the camera I must admit that I made a bad judgment thinking I wouldn’t like this camera. I will be buying more of these cameras in the future. I will also look into the Foscam outdoor camera that does rotate and zoom in and out.Best outdoor camera so farBest cloud plansBest playbackBest notificationsGreat app if using an iPhoneThe people who leave bad reviews really haven’t took the time to get to know their camera

THE GOOD: It has good construction, features and image.THE BAD: My QNAP NVR software generates an alarm every time that the camera disconnects (to let me know if a burglar is messing with the camera, the data or the power to the camera). When connected via WiFi to my Ubiquti Unifi at only 15 feet of distance the camera disconnected from the NAS several times per hour. The same happened when I reduced the settings to 720p in the camera. I have been observing the connection via ethernet and it seems stable so far. I'm about to raise the resolution to see what happens.Update: I raised the resolution to 1080 and 20FPS, but the camera kept disconnecting several hundred times per day. This was using ethernet. On top of that the storage of alarms in the SD card was very erratic. Initially it only worked for regular movement - not human movement. Once it worked for human movement, it keeps just a few videos, even when my card is almost empty. This is a High Endurance SanDisk card. This camera is going back.THE UGLY: I work designing technology systems that needs to be relatively secure. A connection to a browser via HTTP is secure as long as the host device (the camera in this case) uses a certificate from a recognized Certificate Authority and it negotiates secure version of the TLS protocol. This is the industry standard for security. Yet, Foscam argues that 'for your security' you have to use Microsoft Edge only on a Window machine and trust them to download one program from their servers in China. This is a complete lie. There is no security justification for this.The most innocent explanation is that they are not buying a certificate from a Certificate Authority and want to install the client certificate in our browser this way. Another explanation is that for some valid reasons no Certificate Authority is willing to sell a certificate to them and they are inventing this explanation to avoid telling us. Finally, they could use this justification to comply with a requirement of the Chinese government of installing a zombie monitoring application with all their products.Since I know that their justification is a lie, I can only assume the worst. I can keep all my cameras firewalled from my home computers, but once I install this software, I have no assurance that an uninstall will really remove this potential trojan from my computer.I typically use a disposable Linux CD on a laptop without hard disk for this kid of risky stuff, but this is not an option on the case of Windows.