D-Link DCS-825L Wi-Fi Baby Camera product reviews

I was lucky enough to be given the DCS-825L Wi-Fi Baby Camera to review. First impressions are good. Well packaged and nice informative printing speaks to the inner impulse buyer within me. I see past the babycam idea to the real potential of it being a worldwide accessible HD 720p camera that works in low light conditions.

Out of the box the camera comes with 2 mounting options. Being completely round it will not just sit on a desk unless you use the flat cup seat mount. This will allow the cam to be mounted on a wall or just temporarily on a desk as the cup mount has screw holes. I noted that you need to be spot on when utilising this method because it is a no return one shot sticky solution to get the camera fixed to the cup. This also will mean that you cannot use the tripod style mounting solution. I opted to use the tripod solution because it is removable and also allows you to perfectly position the camera for the exact view you want.

The cam comes with pink as well as blue accents for the lense ring and the cup mounting ring to suit the application for either a girls or a boys room. The only thing you have to do is connect the power pack (which is the new popular mobile device style plug allowing you to also use it to charge Android devices etc) and download the mydlink Baby Camera app free from the Play store or ITunes store.

Initial configuration is very easy. The wifi password is written on the bottom of the cam and once you have launched the app and connected to the cam you can change the wifi password and also name the camera. This is I guess in case you have more than one, which to be fair is entirely possible as this is such a well-designed and technically specced N wifi device.

By default the cam will alert you to how many times your baby moves. It does this by comparing the images in batches from the last to the newest and when they are different it will pop a notification up with a green baby. It will keep a tally count. The cam will also alert you to how many noises it hears and it is intelligent enough to not trigger with finger clicks, it is looking for a cry like sound. It will tally these up in a yellow box next to the green one.

The live feed also displays the temperature in the room. It is only giving the temperature from the point the aerial is at but it is a good indication of an overall room temp. Additional features is the soft green ring of light that eminates from the top of the babycam. This can be individually turned on and off as can the crying and movement notifications.

If you decide you would like to take a picture of the view the camera sees, you can easily do this using the screenshot button that captures a single frame that the camera sees. You can also record a movie. The options for 360p and 720p will come in handy here as 720p will chew up storage space faster than when the camera is set to 360p. There is a micro SD slot for recording movie and saving still images to on the camera itself. Fine focus is adjusted via manual ring but I found the view distance of the lense is really deep, so focussing on a specific item did not really make any appreciable difference to the rest of the image and I didn't need to touch it at all in the end.

Another great feature of this product is the ability to setup motion triggered recording and scheduled recording. This will allow the cam to be used for almost any application. I found the automatic night vision infrared LED's was a really good feature because if I am recording the footage and it gets dark it will potentially lose the image quality. This happened to us as we have been using the camera whilst on holiday to monitor the kids when they are put to bed in the tent. When it got dark we did not need to enter the tent to change any settings. In fact even if we did need to, we can do all that using the app.

From the software on my S4 I was able to turn off the alert notifications, change the image quality, turn the night light ring on or off, activate one of the 5 inbuilt lullabies and adjust the volume of them also. I could turn on or off the 2 way sound, which I really liked because I could talk to the kids in bed and they could talk back not knowing exactly how haha or I could mute my direction so I could just listen.

The software is supported on PC windows and Mac when utilising the mydlink Cloud services. Connect the camera either through the internet or wifi. If you have a babysitter at home and you go out for dinner, you can still log in through the cloud and check on your baby without having to be within wifi range.

I cannot really find any negatives with this device at all, it does exactly what it says it should and the only thing that I felt was not fully thought out was the sticky cup mount solution. Apart from that it is awesome! With all the features this camera comes with, taking into account the settings, the ease of use and the app and cloud I don't know what else would come close to this for features and reliability. I give this product top marks.