Y-cam EVO Indoor HD Wi-Fi Security Camera (Pack of 2)

Product Information

Unlike other cloud cameras that charge monthly fees, every HomeMonitor camera stores unlimited recorded clips in to your online account for the last 7 days - no subscriptions required! Turning on Home mode sees the Hub belting out, “Y-Cam Protect Home mode armed.” It’s a little loud and could wake up anyone sleeping at home; a simple low-volume beep would be neater. Images are a little blurry and overly processed. Videos are compressed to small MP4 files, so a lot of the detail is lost. You can certainly recognise people you know, but it’s a struggle to make out a face clearly if the light is a little dim. That is unless you have some CSI enhancement magic to hand. This isn’t as bad as you might think, though. If you had no active recording plan active on your camera(s), then you will no longer be able to access your Y-cam account.

The Siren takes a bit more work, as you have to fit the battery into place and follow the pairing instructions. The Hub is the brains behind everything, also doubling up as a siren. Y-Cam has done a good job here, and the box feels tough and weighty. It needs to be plugged into the mains and via Ethernet into your router. You can also wall-mount the Hub; if you do, I recommend placing it high up so that it’s harder to tamper with. The HomeMonitor Indoor HD shoots, you guessed it, HD-quality video. It’s not 1080p Full HD – it records 720p through a wide-angle lens and, unfortunately, the quality isn’t great. See and hear your world in all its glory with our high quality camera loaded with fantastic colour representation, crisp night vision and fantastic audio clarity. HomeMonitor uses the latest and greatest in Wi-Fi technology available ensuring the fastest speed and widest range possible - letting you use the full power of your network.Its overall appeal is slightly let down by connection speed issues, which make accessing the camera’s live feed and stored recordings a bit of a faff. I can’t help but wish Y-Cam would open the Evo up and let me tie it to my home NAS Drive, or a separate cloud storage provider. I think the videos are rubbish. It takes such a long time to view in real time. And their decision to charge for recordings after promising for life. Well. When I have a replacement, I look forward to posting an image of my smashed up Y-can. That’s what I think of this company .👹

Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. Read our editorial mission & see how we test. Set up your HomeMonitor™ to match your lifestyle with the ability to easily customise when you want it to be active, with 7 days, 24 hour customisable schedules. In the mode panel select "Infrastructure" when using a wireless router. We will cover the "Adhoc" wireless mode in a future HOWTO guide.Upgrading to Plus is well-worth it. Home broadband isn’t hugely reliable and you’d be surprised at how often your Hub loses connection. With mobile data, you know that your home will remain protected and that you’ll definitely get alerts. And, once you’ve upgraded, you get the 30-days of cloud storage from your cameras, which largely negates the fact that Y-Cam withdrew its free cloud storage offering. I’m a little sad it doesn’t have the facial-recognition powers of the Netatmo Welcome, which lets the camera know to ignore registered, safe people, but its location recording powers partly make up for that deficiency. Location recording is an optional feature that lets you instruct the Y-Cam to start recording when you leave your flat and stop when you return, by using your phone’s GPS.

Wherever you fix it, you do need to bear in mind that power will be required. A 3m/10ft power cable is provided, but may need to consider an extension cord for extra reach. If a window/door sensor is triggered, the Hub starts to beep, giving you enough time to deactivate it if you’ve just entered the home. Motion sensors trigger the alarm immediately. The Hub is exceptionally loud, playing a siren that cycles between low- and high-frequency sounds. You also get a warning in-app, so you know that your alarm has gone off no matter where you are in the world. The external siren is even louder, attracting attention outside your home, too. Brilliantly, as it’s solar powered, you don’t have to worry about the batteries running flat.The Y-cam Plus subscription provides a whole host of additional benefits to help you monitor and secure your home. Y-cam Plus will record 30 days of video activity logs and fully managed 30 days video storage when using Y-cam indoor or outdoor cameras. It takes a coin to tighten the ball joint to stiffen the mechanism. It works but we would prefer if it tightened a little more to ensure the camera stays in position. The fact that this is an indoor camera, and therefore not subject to the elements, means this isn’t that much of an issue, though. This communication is effective from Friday 31 March 2023 and is to inform you that your Y-cam cameras have reached end of life. The night mode was a little more hit and miss. Faces caught with the camera in night-cam mode have a grainy quality and won’t be much help to police unless the thief was insanely close to the Evo – though being fair to Y-Cam, this is true of all the home-monitoring cameras I’ve tested.

As an example, our Netgear router is set to WEP 64bit strength using a HEX key "ABCDE12345" in the "1" position. The process didn’t go smoothly for me. The pre-release software I initially tested had a weird bug that meant the camera wouldn’t complete the final stage of the setup process when connecting to the Y-Cam cloud. The bug has since been fixed via a software update, which means consumers won’t have to worry about it. The only reason I mention it is because it let me experience one of the best features of Y-Cam products – the company’s stellar customer service. Every motion detected by HomeMonitor is immediately stored in your account ready for you to view and review whenever you need to, from wherever you are. The new Alexa skill is great to see. Using just your voice, you can set the alarm; and you can disable it, too, speaking out a PIN that you set. Inside your home, this feature is possibly less useful, and using the keyfob or app probably make more sense. But, if you’re using Y-Cam Protect for an external building (my garden office is protected with one), Alexa integration is a smart way of being able to turn the alarm on or off. Should I buy the Y-Cam Protect Alarm System? Since launch, Y-Cam has fixed the software issues that we had, and has added pet-friendly sensors and an external siren. That, combined with the Alexa integration, makes this a powerful and flexible alarm system, particularly if you upgrade your account to Plus. The only minor disappointment is that the Y-Cam Evo integration isn’t a little more flexible.The fact that you get seven days’ worth of free encrypted cloud storage for captured footage on the Evo is fantastic, and I wish more companies would follow Y-Cam’s example – all too often home-monitoring solutions, such as the SwannOne Smart Home Control Kit, place cloud storage behind expensive paywalls. Due to the nature of digital technology, there comes a point where a product or software can’t be developed any further and it is no longer possible to provide further support. This applies to most, if not all digital technologies including phones and apps for example. When this happens, in the best interests of our customers, we have to change the platforms we use. This unfortunately means that some of our Y-cam products have reached the end of their life and it’s no longer viable for these products to continue to operate on their existing platforms. You’ll obviously need a mount to place the camera in the appropriate position and the HomeMonitor HD duly obliges with a sturdy metal L-shaped one. Two screws hold it to your wall – two 1-inch screws are provided, but you’ll need your own wall plugs – and a ball joint allows you to rotate it to the optimal position. The camera and mount together are light, so the supplied screws are more than adequate.