GALAYOU Cameras for Home Security Outside-2K Battery Powered WiFi Surveillance Indoor/Outdoor, Security Cameras with Motion Siren, Color Night Vision Waterproof, Cloud/SD Storage 2.4Ghz WiFi

I was however a bit surprised that they were so small - I was expecting something bigger since they were battery operated. I was so anxious to give them a try that I didn't charge the first one before installation and learned the batteries are mostly charged upon delivery which was great. I am now charging the rest of them before I install any others. Installation was a piece of cake but I was initially worried that I couldn't add the camera to the Wansview app that I was already using. I had just installed a different Wansview camera so I was familiar with the process - the problem was that I was looking to add a Wansview camera and not a Galayou camera (different tabs in the app for each type of camera) and the fact that I missed that in the instructions. In the app, when you add a device, there are tabs for Wansview, Galayou, and Cinnado - I was initially only looking at Wansview cameras to add. Once I selected Galayou, the R2 camera was easy to pair with the app as expected. As for operation, it works as expected. I have a Wansview W2 in my living room so I initially put the R2 right next to it to compare the video. I don't notice any difference in quality. I later put the camera outside and placed it on a tree branch just to see how well it works outside. Its been pretty gloomy outside today from rain and right now it is pretty dark but the camera video is in color and is as bright and clear as it was earlier - see video and photo. At some point I want to integrate the camera into my Synology Surveillance Station. Although this camera is not specifically included in the Synolology compatibility list, neither was my Wansview W2 but I did get it to work. Synology does support generic IP cameras so I would expect it to support this one as well. I just need to purchase additional camera licenses for the surveillance system but I may end up just using a MicroSD card with the Wansview app instead to save the license costs. I had to ask support for help with the SD card since the camera wouldn't recognize it. It is a 64GB MicroSD and Windows would only format it ExFAT or NTFS and the camera needs it to be FAT32 so after I used a partition utility to format it FAT32 it worked perfectly! The only odd thing that occurred about a week into testing is that all three of my installed R2 cameras stopped working at the exact same time (see screenshot). I may have had an issue with my WiFi network but my other cameras continued to work just fine. Once I charged and reset them all is good again and has been ever since. Lastly - I can't speak about the battery life since I just installed it. My only complaint is that there is no indication when charging that the battery has reached full charge. Wansview helped out by upgrading my firmware to a special version that hasn't been released yet to help with the battery life - we'll see. Anyway, I know there are solar chargers that slow charge the battery and I may give that a try if I am not happy with the battery life... So, if you're looking for a good inexpensive camera, consider this one for both good performance and easy installation.

WiFi range is incredible. You will be amazed. If you have a mesh system, this camera should work anywhere on your property. So easy to get up and running. Even though the cameras came charged to almost 100%, I still topped them off. The picture quality is excellent as well as the motion detection. The the infrared night vision technology is the absolute best in the business. Even though the battery life is exceptional, you are still going to have to recharge it manually. For me, it’s not that much of a problem because Ilike to bring my cameras in once in a while so I can clean them up and give them a healthy 100% charge. If the charging isn’t convenient, I just take my PowerBrick and charge the battery up with that. And lastly, I love how you can just set it anywhere. It has a very stable design.

My neighborhood as had some suspicious activity taking place here and there, so I was looking for a camera that had a light to hopefully somewhat deter suspicious characters and offer light in those dark corners of the property. I checked the reviews on these cameras, and everyone left very high reviews, saying how easy it is to install and something about the technology… Blah blah blah. I don’t know all of the techie stuff people had mentioned, but here is my “good“ and “bad“ Reviews for the regular person who’s never had a camera like this before. GOOD: It was very easy to install the app and camera. The app pretty much walks you through everything and you can start looking at the live view immediately. GOOD: Each camera comes with 2 sets of screws and its own charging cord, BUT you will have to have your own base charger for each to plug into the outlet. If that’s an issue for you, then consider buying them. They’re pretty much charged at delivery, but I plugged them in just in case. BAD: The quality is okay. You can even zoom in, but the picture will be blurry. For example, if a car pulls up to my driveway, I will be able to identify the appearance of the vehicle, but if I have to zoom in for a license plate, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it out. BAD: I kind of thought you would be able to rewind the camera to see any video of the day you want.. nope. It will take a picture of something it caught in action (blurry or clear depending on when the picture was taken). That’s it.. UNLESS you pay for their subscription. It’s not super expensive, so that’s KIND OF A PLUS. You can purchase on a monthly or yearly basis and there’s different options. I just got the basic and it’s fine for me. GOOD: The basic subscription will take a short video of what it catches and a picture will appear on the alerts. You can review or download any of the videos/pictures to your phone if you want. It will stay on the cloud for 7 days, and then it will start all over again. So you have access for 7 days and then it will record over the previous ones. BAD: It only captures movements based on your settings, but you still can’t review the 24/7 video. It will only capture what it does. So if something happens across the street at my neighbors house, it may be too far off to capture anything and I can’t review the video to see who or how many, is that makes sense. KEEP IN MIND: You have to adjust the settings of your cameras individually. Like how far off into the distance you’d want to be alerted and how sensitive you want the capture to take place and how often you want it to take a picture/video of it and if you want the light to come on all night or just when the movements happen and how long you want the light to stay on. GOOD/BAD: I obviously wanted it to be sensitive enough to where it captures any kind of suspicious activity. But if it’s windy, or you have a flag on your porch, it will start taking pictures every few minutes because the shadows are moving or the flag is moving, and that’s kind of annoying because you get a lot of alerts and you have to go through all the pictures or videos to see that it was just that. But at least I know it’s working. And it’s just trial and error from there to adjust the sensitivity. GOOD/BAD: the battery life. Depending on how sensitive you make it, it will drain your battery faster. Since I have my cameras set at a medium to high sensitivity rate, the battery does go down a little faster, but I will say that it does last a long time. For example, after setting it up and having it capture movements for a week, it went down from 100% to about 66% so my estimate is that I’ll probably have to re-charge each of them every two weeks just to be on the safe side. And that may be an issue to some because you will have to get your ladder to reach those cameras to charge. The good thing is you don’t have to take everything out of the wall. The camera itself is screwed onto the mount, so you just have to twist the camera off, charge it, and then put it back on. But you will have to probably check the camera angle again to make sure it’s where it was before. GOOD: the light is good for a short distance and it has an alarm sound component too. It also has voice control, so you can talk into it. I didn’t mention this before, but you can hear the sounds on the live feed, and in the videos that it captures. You can set up the alarm and light function, so where you can turn it on and off like a switch or there’s an option on the settings where it can go off, if you wanted to if there’s ever any movement. The light feature can be turned on all night so that it gives you a better night view if it captures anything, or as I mentioned before, you can leave it set up so that it only turns on when there’s movement for up to 30 seconds, and then it turns off. OVERALL: these are good cameras for basic surveillance. I saw some reviews saying that it works great indoors, and I think they’re absolutely right because you would be able to see everything and everyone more clearly in a smaller space, but for outside I feel like it’s more basic. Like I said, if the thing that it captures is close by you might get a greater detail. If it’s farther away, it might be a little bit blurry, but I appreciate the ability to zoom in if I want to I think it’s worth it if you are a beginner, but if you’re more of an advanced techie person who wants all the bells and whistles, then maybe this one isn’t for you. This is more for the every day person , who doesn’t live in constant danger, but wants a little bit of reassurance to see what’s happening around their home.