Can Ion the Home really keep an eye on your home?
Hey, guys.
I'm Megan Wollerton for CNet Appliances here with a review of Ion Camera's Ion the Home Camera.
Now this brand has up until now been making action cameras.
That's the kind of thing you strap to yourself when you're biking or doing some other extreme activity, to catch point of view footage.
But now they've decided to move into the home and this is their first ever home security camera.
At first it has really good specs.
It's 130 bucks, it has 720p, it has night vision, two-way talk, a free cloud storage option, all of these things that make it a really solid entry level.
Option.
So at first, its specs seemed really solid and even better than its competition, like the $130 Belkin NetCam HD Plus that I reviewed.
But in practice, I ran into some problems that make this camera really difficult to recommend.
The biggest problem is that this camera doesn't currently support push alerts or email notifications.
That means that if you want an on the go security camera that you can check on your phone or on a web app, you're gonna be completely stuck.
You would have to literally watch this live feed 24/7 to catch any suspicious activity at all.
And if you did want to use this camera just for live monitoring not worry about alerts at all, you're also gonna run into problems.
When I rotated the camera to a horizontal orientation, the live feed was all scrunched up and really, really difficult to see.
Which is a problem because I use a horizontal orientation a lot on the apps to see things up close and more detailed.
So it kinda has me wondering why Ion even bothered.
Good with the app at all.
If you can't receive push alerts you can't check your email on the go and find out that something is going on what is the point?
The company claims that it is adding this functionality in the future but for now I really can't recommend this product.
Thanks for watching this video of ION's ION the home security camera.
Be sure to check out my full review on.
CNet.com as well as all of my other security camera coverage.
I'm Megan Wolverton for CNet Appliance.
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