Cheap Samsung SNH-1011 SmartCam IP Camera

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List Price: $199.99
Sale Price: $149.00
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First let me say I have a fair amount of experience using many different IP Cameras, but I am not a snobbish user. I tend to use simple, reliable IP cameras and then manage them through a good software product such as Blue Iris. I have a mishmash of IP cameras setup for my home surveillance system of varying quality. Today I saw these cameras on sale in a two-pack at a common shopper's club. When I saw the two-way audio feature listed on the box I had to try it out as this is something I was wanting.

I got home and quickly hooked one of them to my network and followed the installation process. I was immediately concerned when I was forced to go through the Samsung website to setup my camera. Every other IP camera I have seen allows you to setup the camera on your home network, but this camera absolutely requires an Internet connection and that you FIRST register your camera with Samsung AND give them total access to your camera.

This means that:

1. Samsung Has total access to your video streams AT ALL TIMES.

2. You cannot access your camera UNLESS you go through the Samsung website.... FOREVER.

3. Third party Camera management software cannot access this camera in any way, shape, or form. Every other IP camera on the planet allows direct access by a web browser or camera application software.

4. When setting up your camera you are divulging very sensitive data to Samsung, such as your WiFi router's password. There is no way around this.

Here are some other failures of this camera.

1. The packaging claims this camera has 2-way audio. in the IP camera world this means you can listen to audio from the camera as well as communicate back to the cameras speaker from your monitoring application. This is not the case with this camera. Using the Samsung website or phone app you can hear the audio from the camera, but the 2-way feature is an intercom that only works if you use the Android Smartphone app. Again, since all traffic in these cameras MUST go through the Samsung website the 4-5 second delay I experienced just for the one-way audio was maddening. The two-way delay must be excruciatingly slow.

I was unable to configure my camera for a static IP address. I tried to do it using both the Firefox plugin and the Internet Explorer plugin, both of them failed when I tried to apply the settings. I am a networking expert, so I know the settings were spot on.

The YouTube configuration as described in the manual was non-existent on the Samsung website. I believe this is because YouTube may have recently turned off the ability to auto-upload videos to them. This pretty much removes the only video save feature this camera had. There is no way to capture and/or save video from the camera to your PC.

On the video quality, this unit has a fair to poor quality picture. The night vision image is OK at best. With only 6 Infrared LED's, as opposed to some of my cameras which have 48 LED's, the illumination at night is very limited. The stated range of 15 feet is a stretch. My Sharx SCNC2700xx cameras produce a sharper, brighter image at 60 feet than this one does at 15 feet. The nighttime contrast is poor too. Unlike my other cameras at night, which have sharp, high contrast night time images, this camera's image appears somewhat washed out and gray rather than black and white.

I am terribly disappointed. To me this camera has no redeeming quality. For some people it may prove to be useful for one reason. It is fairly simple to setup and use as long as you are willing to put up with the very restrictive access to the camera. If you don't mind Samsung having access to your private life, and if you don't mind not being able to use any of the many great camera monitoring applications out there, then it is not the worse camera you can buy. Like I said, I use a couple applications that are capable of viewing almost any IP camera on the planet. I have 5 different manufacturer's cameras on my home surveillance system and I use many different applications to view all of them in one consolidated view, but this camera is unavailable to any of them. If you buy this camera and one day the Samsung website to view them goes away then you will be left with totally useless cameras.

I did not do much testing using WiFi with this camera, so I have no idea how reliable it is or what the useful range is. I will say from experience that using Wifi to control more than one or two cameras in your home network in not advisable. (see note below)

BEWARE FAKE REVIEWS

I went through every single 5-star review listed under this product. With only one exception, they were all written by users who have never reviewed any other products on Amazon. This is a strong indication that these reviews are completely bogus. This is becoming a huge problem on Amazon.com. I am sure if you removed these bogus reviews this product would rate in the range of two stars.

Note:

This is not part of the review, but I thought I would add this information based on my experiences setting up and trying many different types of home surveillance systems.

A standard resolution IP camera running at 15 or 30 frames per second uses a lot of bandwidth--something WiFi does not have much of. Even when I was running only 4 cameras at 640x480 15 FPS on a 100 mbps switch I was rarely able to achieve full FPS on all cameras even though the cameras were all rated at 10/100mbps capable. It was not until I put all cameras into a gigabit (1000mbps) switch that I was able to get all frames to process through to my computer. There are very good technical reasons why this is so, but for those who don't understand how switvhes work just take my word for it, you need a gigabit Ethernet switch and a gigabit Ethernet card in your PC (which most have today) to build a reliable home surveillance network with IP cameras. Alternately, you can buy a Network Video Recorder with built in ports for each camera. For me, the best setup is a piece of software called Blue Iris ($50) and the Gigabit Ethernet switch along with a mishmash of IP cameras. THis is by far the most reliable and robust I have seen and the cost can be quite reasonable as all you need are the cameras, the $50 software and a PC. Blue Iris also has an iPhone and Android app that integrates all the cameras into one system. It works like a champ. I am running 7 cameras, 4 of them 640x480 at 15fps, one USB at 10fps, and two 1080p at 15fps, all of them wired into a Gigabit Ethernet switch. The streams are fed into my PC running Blue Iris version 3. Blue Iris is recording all the cameras 24 hours a day onto one USB 3 hard drive. The 3TB drive can hold weeks of video. Blue Iris is also creating alerts every time someone walks in front of a camera so I can have alert thumbnails which take me right to the relevant video portion I want to see. I continue to be stunned at the capabilities of the Blue Iris system. It is the best $50 I ever spent on software. While it may sound like I work for Blue Iris, I can assure you I do not. I just like it that much. For less than half the cost of a similar turnkey system from one of the big companies like Q-See and Lorex, etc. I can build a system that is better in almost every way, and you can too. Just stay away from this camera.

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Let me tell you this. Previously, my home was burglarized, and burglars destroyed my security DVR by smashing it with sledge hammer. How outrageous.. Since then, I was looking for security devices that secure from those violent acts. That is the reason why I choose an IP camera. I researched through Internet and saw all the comments about how horrible IP camera is. So, I didn't have a high hope on IP cameras but decided to give a try. I ordered each IP camera that available on Amazon, and end up with this SNH-1011. Here is my review for Samsung SNH-1011.

Great picture quality and transmitting speed:

I saw couple of complaints about choppy and lagging video, but I guess Samsung step up with this problem. There are three type of option for bandwidth speeds; High, Medium, Low. I tested all these setting with my Verizon Fios and guess what? With highest setting, there is no delay at all! Medium 0.3 sec delay and low 0.8 sec delay. Not a big deal.

(I just confirmed with Samsung's representative that Samsung will expand their data server within US)

Set up is easy and simple:

The manual that Samsung provides is quite straight forward. You just have to follow their instruction. The downside is there are so many features that need more time set up such as YouTube, Picasa, E-mail notification, and etc. It took me around 35 minute to set whole thing up including other features. Once I set it up, it was working flawlessly.

Web Browsers:

I tested it with several web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. As a result, each browser has different installation time and transmitting speed. My preference is Chrome > Internet explorer > Firefox > Safari. Also, Safari does not support bandwidth option somehow. I tried to adjust it, but browser wouldn't let me. It was no big deal to me since I probably use SNH-1011 with either Chrome or Internet explorer.

Android and iPhone App:

SNH-1011 has free app called "SmartCam Mobile". Available on both Android and iPhone App store, but if you such through iPad, it will not show up. You need to switch your setting to see iPhone App compatibility apps. I do not know why Samsung does not list this app to iPad store, but they need to create an app for iPad since iPhone SmartCam Mobile app is does not work efficiently with iPad (stretched image just bothers me).

Slick looking with heavy base:

I love the exterior design of SNH-1011. Looks slick and has bright white color. LED Status light is also big plus (Red, Blue, and Purple). On the bottom of unit, there is a heavy weight component to prevent SNH-1011 to fall down. The weight is just about the right and can be removed.

I believe that Samsung is trying hard to make this SNH-1011 right. Only downside is it does not support cloud storage. To me, 30 sec record through YouTube is not enough. Also, I agreed that there should be way to protect our user ID and password. I'm not quite comfortable with this. If you are not going to use features like Picasa and Youtube, it does not really matter. But asking e-mail address and password seems lack of security feature. I contacted Samsung to ask about this, and they mentioned that they will fix this problem, and also, they will provide cloud service around March. Overall, I'm quite satisfied with my purchase and hoping Samsung will follow up these known issues and make it better.

Best Deals for Samsung SNH-1011 SmartCam IP Camera

First of all, I agree this camera is very easy to setup, literally in about a minute or two, you can have the camera up and running. I bought it because it was a Samsung and I have had great success with their products. I also bought it because, it optionally uses a wired setup to the router and since I intended on placing the camera in the room with the router, I might as well have a wired access for faster more reliable use.

If you intend on using this as a baby room monitor or other room in the house that you occupy within the wireless router then, it is a great camera.

However, if you want to use this camera as remote monitoring, using Samsung's website then I say beware. If you want to view the camera with the website, then you are stuck in "relay mode".

This means that you are limited to 3 minutes of use and very slow, grainy response since your video is passing thru Samsung's servers. I called the toll free number that was included in the package. The explanation given was that I am using 2 devices prior to the camera. Namely a cable modem and a router!! Samsung support indicates that they do not support live remote monitoring unless you are connected directly to the modem, not the router!! What's the point of having a wireless camera then?

Samsung clearly missed the mark on this product

update May 23, 2013

Apparently last night Samsung did an update on their website for monitoring this camera. In the process, the deleted all the registration information and I have to re-register with the serial number from my camera. Well, I'm not sitting next to my camera, that's the whole point. Customer service cannot give you your serial number over the phone and they don't know why camera registration's got deleted

Stay away from this camera-

Honest reviews on Samsung SNH-1011 SmartCam IP Camera

I just bought two of these and set them up in my lake house which is 2 hours away. There is a bundle pack of 2 for $200 at some stores, such as BJ's wholesale. It's a steal at that price, if you ask me. I ran them all weekend and tested the motion detection, alerts and other optional features. I tried the samsung app (on my iphone) and used Samsung's PC app too, very EASY to use. I also tried the private youtube (it uploads 30 second clips, not 50 as some advertise), picasa (still photos) and twitter options...individually and together. All of the features worked well and the cameras work well over wifi or cat5. In fact, the wifi stayed up 100%, which is a constant source of pain with other wifi cameras. It should be noted I updated the latest firmware too (which was a 1 click action item, real easy). The resolution is not the best, these cameras are very much like webcams but they are not awful. The night vision works OK. If you aim the camera through a window to view outside, at night, it will not work if there is no light or street lights. The audio is not great but I don't intend on using these for two-way communication. All in all, they are rock solid and work well. One other thing to note, when it switches from normal view to night vision (and vice versa) you will receive a motion detection alert, don't let that scare you ;). In fact, I consider it a twice a day reminder that everything is still working!

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Samsung SNH-1011 SmartCam IP Camera

I've had this camera for three weeks now and find it has a major fault. If you're just stream video it works fine. If you want it to email you an alarm event it's awful. Here's why. The motion detector gives off false alarms constantly. I now have it on its lowest sensitivity because anything thing above that will trip false alarms with no movement or even light in a room. I have noi animals or any flying insects.The audio alert is overly sensitive too and i now have that on the lowest settings. This is my second camera so its not the hardware. I have an alarm in my apartment and might have to just use the audio alert and turn off the motion detector. The app notifications work well and the uploading to youtube is great but I have dozens of false alarm videos uploaded to it. I have a Mace Home Security Alarm and will use it in conjunction with the Smartcam to view my apartment if the Mace trips for some reason, though it seems rock solid and doesn't false alarm. If the motion and audio detector worked great this would be an awesome camera. Now it's just ok if streaming video is all you need. BTW Samsung customer support was useless but they can help you set it up. As for it not working properly like every other company with a bad product they act as if this is the first time they've ever heard a problem. Maybe a firmware fix will turn this into a usable alarm but for now it will just drive you crazy.