This is a spy camera hidden in a picture frame. It is a good concept when you want to take hidden videos but the current implementation of this concept has a number of issues.
(1) A security camera is useful when it can record all the time because one never knows when that unpleasant event that should be recorded occurs. The battery last only for about a day, so I wanted to use this camera permanently plugged in. But the camera does not record while it is charging. You cannot use this camera when you go away on vacation or if you trying to record caretakers in the house of elderly parent who is not computer savvy as this camera is very hard to use and there is no chance I can get my mother to charge it and restart it on daily basis.
(2) The user interface is very difficult. It communicates only in blinks. The buttons on the frame are not marked in any way. The documentation is very poor. Starting from the right hand side the outer button is video (this is what starts video recording), the next button over is on/off button, the next "hole" does not appears to do anything, the next hole (the left most) is the status indicator. The status blinks in red or green or both.
To see the red and green LEDs you need to look straight down on the indicator lights, or the you will never see the faint green light. Both red and green light are coming from the same indicator. I got it to record, but it was not easy even for a techie geek like me who deals with complex computer problems on daily basis.
(3) On the left hand side there is a slot with a micro sd and USB port. A 16G micro sd is already installed. To access the micro sd I attached the USB cable to a computer and copy the files over.
The USB transfer rate for this photo is very slow. The Amazon description says that it supports USB 2.0 interface, and it barely does. The speed of transfer is 2.0 MB per second. The full speed for USB 1.1 is 1.5MB/s, so it just beats that. However a typical USB 2.0 reads 30 MB/s and writes at about half that speed. This camera is much close to USB 1.1 than to USB 2.0. It takes several hours to transfer 8 GB of data - the micro SD was about half full and I was recording for about 4 hours.
(4) When micro SD is filled up the recording does not over write the old files, it waits for you to delete files to make more space. Most cameras have a loop feature and this is really a big short coming of a camera that is meant to work for a long time until something significant happens. Have to remove the SD card and manually erase old files is not only a lot of work it makes it not a viable solution for an elderly family member who does not have a computer to perform this operation on regular basis.
(5) To set the current date and time you need to manually edit a text file on the SD card on the computer and then plug it into the camera frame. If your camera runs out of battery or is turned off this date will need to be updated again if you want the time stamps to be accurate.
(6) The camera records only when there is a lot of light. It has no infra-red mode to record in the dark. All you see in the darkness is blackness. However, it has a pretty sensitive microphone. I made my recordings in a room with a tickless wall clock - and I really cannot hear the ticks when I am next to it. But in this recording you hear constant ticking - this is my so called tickless clock! Video quality is not great, but certainly good enough to tell what is going on. I would have found it acceptable if there were no other issues I mentioned earlier.
(7) The camera has continuous video (confirmed by three red flashes) and motion activated video (confirmed by three green flashes). I aimed the camera at the cat's food bowl. Even though the food was eaten the motion activation did not trigger. I could get video in this mode if I shake the frame itself. Continuous recording mode works as one would expect but examining the video takes more time since there is a lot of not interesting videos.
(8) The first thing I saw was a the name "Prweyn" right under the camera calling attention to the camera lens. What picture frame has a logo of the maker in such a visible place? None that I own! The vendor lost track of the goal of this product by calling attention to the camera. This logo should be removed in the future versions of the product. I covered up the logo with a black ink pen, it is less noticeable but not invisible.
(9) When positioning the camera remember that because the frame is slightly angled the camera is shooting slightly up. So you need to set it up fairly low. The camera is not wide angle.
I really like the camera in the frame concept and wanted to install this camera at my mother's house but the need to daily recharge and manual cleaning of the micro sd made this camera completely impractical for such application.
You can find it on Amazon by following this link.
Ali Julia review ★☆☆☆☆
