PC World – December 2015

Roundup: Security Cameras
with no fish-eye distortion in either day or night modes. There’s no
digital zoom feature, though, so you can’t hone in on specific areas of
the panorama. Video playback is crisp and smooth.
Aside from managing profiles and recording settings, the app can be
used to turn the camera on and off. You can set a four-digit security
code for accessing the on/off switch to ensure unauthorized people
can’t deactivate your camera.
Bottom line
The Netatmo Welcome gets points for trying to make the homesecurity
experience more reassuring than alarming. Everything from
the product’s name to the extensive personalization options seeks to
remove—or at least to downplay—the creepy surveillance aspect of
home monitoring. Unfortunately, the system’s lynchpin—facial
recognition—is far from reliable and results in exactly the kind of
vague alerts it promises to eliminate.
Add to this the fact that the camera lacks many common homesecurity
camera features—including sound detection, two-way audio,
and cloud backup—and it becomes a really tough sell, especially
compared to such stronger competitors as the Nest Cam and the
Simplicam.
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