TechRadar Verdict
Want a security camera that actually looks good in your home? This indoor cam from Netatmo is a great choice, with voice assistant integration and no pesky subscription fees when it comes to storing your recordings.
Pros
- +
Fantastic design
- +
No subscription fees
- +
Voice assistant integration
Cons
- -
No two-way audio
- -
Not portable
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Smart security cameras are increasingly popular, with more of us taking an interest in what happens in our home when we’re not around – as well as wanting to protect our loved ones and our expensive belongings.
Nowadays, the best indoor security cameras come with tons of modern conveniences like cloud storage, facial recognition, and voice assistant-compatibility
The Netatmo Smart Indoor Camera boasts all of these features, all housed within a chic, cylindrical frame – but can it compete with the likes of the Netgear Arlo Pro 2 or the Hive View?
Price and availability
You can buy the Netatmo Smart Indoor Camera for $199.99 / £199.99 / AU$349, which is about half the price of the Arlo Pro 2 starter pack – although the latter comes with two camera and a hub.
If you want to monitor more than one area of your home, you can buy kits in the US and UK with multiple cameras; two Smart Indoor Cameras will set you back $350 / £350, while a combination of the Smart Indoor Camera with the Netatmo Presence outdoor floodlight/camera costs $420 / £380.
Design
At first glance, the Netatmo Smart Indoor Camera doesn’t look like a security camera – and that’s a good thing.
Its minimalist cylindrical build means that it blends into your home seamlessly, looking more like a cool ornament than a serious piece of smart security kit, with its anodized aluminum outer housing glistening any time the light catches it. In short, it looks really attractive.
A black bar on the front of the camera contains the lens itself, while a small LED below lets you know whether the camera is on or off.
On the back of the Smart Indoor Camera you’ll find a slot for your 8GB microSD card (this comes included with the camera), an Ethernet port should you wish to hook it up to your home network directly, and a power port – you’ll have to keep it plugged in at all times, which isn’t ideal if you want something more portable with a built-in battery.
Features and performance
With a 130-degree field of view, the actual camera won’t capture as much of your home as competitors like the Hive View, which sports a 180-degree field of view. Saying that, it’s enough to get a decent overview of the room you’ve set the Smart Indoor Camera up in.
It records in up to Full HD 1080p, which we found to be clear enough for our needs, although it’s worth noting that some of the best security cameras go up to as much as 4K resolution. It can also record in night vision, which is an important feature to consider when buying your next security camera – indoor, or outdoor.
We were really impressed with the night vision mode: it’s clear, detailed, and though you don’t get the nifty color night vision that the new Arlo Pro 3 boasts, black and white is perfectly adequate for getting a sense of what’s going bump in the night.
Recordings are automatically stored on the 8GB microSD card, and you can also choose to store them on your own Dropbox account, or FTP server – this is something that often costs extra as part of a subscription, so it’s great that Netatmo does this free of charge.
Perhaps the coolest thing about the Netatmo Smart Indoor Camera, is its ability to recognize different faces, learning the faces that come and go from your house in the weeks after you set it up – and automatically recording and notifying you anytime it detects a stranger.
Any time the camera recognizes a new face, you can create a new profile within the app – this means that you can customize the way it interacts with different people in your household.
For example, you can ask it to send you a notification when your kids get home from school, or ask it not to send you updates every time your partner walks past the camera – this is a fantastic feature that many security cameras don’t have, leading to annoying notifications every time they detect movement.
One thing missing, though, is a loudspeaker, which means there’s no two-way audio and you can’t talk to people in your home.
The app is pretty easy to navigate, and thanks to IFTTT (If That Then This) you can create 'applets' that connect the Netatmo Security app to another; for example, you could set it up so that your Philips Hue lights come on any time your Smart Indoor Camera detects an unknown face.
In terms of smart home integration, the Netatmo Indoor Security Camera works with Alexa, Apple Homekit, and Google Assistant. So, if you’re a Google Assistant user for instance, you could ask your Google Home speaker to show the camera’s livestream on your TV.
Final verdict
Despite being cheaper than much of the competition, the Netatmo Indoor Security Camera is a great option for anyone who wants to keep an eye on their home – and their loved ones – when out and about.
It’s chic and elegant design sets it apart from competitors like Arlo, and while the lack of portability is a shame, the simple setup and easy-to-use app makes up for this.
The quality of recording, while not the best, is absolutely good enough to monitor your home – with Full HD streaming, decent night vision, and facial recognition technology. We’d like to have seen two-way audio, though, which does come with many security cameras these days.
The fact that there are no hidden charges or subscription fees for storing recorded video is brilliant, and integration with Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant means that the Smart Indoor Camera can be built into any smart home setup.
