Netgear VueZone VZSX2800 Wireless Camera Kit Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

Netgear’s VueZone cameras are available in a number of different kits as mentioned towards the start of this review, however I’m going to focus on the pricing of this kit for the moment. With the VZSX2800 hot on to the market we find a number of online outlets stocking the product with US pricing set at $229.99 from Frys and $199.99 from Best Buy. In the UK, Scan has the kit for £239.14 whilst Amazon UK has prices starting at £208.73. On top of the purchase cost of the cameras we find that out of the box you have little more than the ability to set up and view two cameras – no recording included in the free subscription.

Above the free access, there are two service plans available, the Premier Plan which supports one base station and up to five cameras and the Elite Plan which offers three times the number of base stations and cameras. The upgraded services can be paid for monthly or as an annual subscription and this is handled directly through Netgear. The premier pack will set you back $49.99/yr or $4.99/mth in the US and £34.99/yr or £3.99/mth in the UK. Upgrading to the Elite pack will see prices of $99.99/yr or £9.99/mth and £69.99/yr or £6.99/mth respectively.

Overview

When I take a look at the VueZone range of cameras and what they have to offer, I want to break things down a little to better air my opinions. Starting off with the base station and the general setup process of the VueZone system, Netgear are certainly right when they say it takes very little time. From the moment of getting everything unpacked to viewing the cameras online took around 20 minutes or so and that includes the time taken to register for the VueZone services. Pairing the cameras up was also very simple and with this I can see that see that Netgear have tried to make the system as user-friendly as possible. Having tons of wires to connect and a heavy management panel is only going to lead to a poor user experience and when we look at today’s users, we all want to spend the least amount of time as possible setting things up – for some it seems like a chore; for others it can be a potential nightmare.

The cameras themselves I rather like, although they are not without their flaws. On the plus side we have a unit that is virtually idiot-proof to operate and it’s very compact and therefore discrete. The magnetic attachment adds to the simplicity, allowing for quick adjustments to be made or a change of location entirely in a matter of seconds. On the downside though there is a price to pay for the wire free convenience. In order to maximise the battery life, the processor has to be tuned right down to minimise the power draw and consequently the image quality suffers considerably. pushing out a more 3fps at 640 x 480 to be honest is low quality by today’s standards and whilst you can get double the frame rate, the quality has to suffer even more by drooping the resolution right down to 320 x 240. At this resolution its easy to make out shapes and rough objects, but sadly the closest thing to high-resolution that you will get is a snapshot image which packs a higher resolution of 1600 x 1200.

Whilst the image quality is a bit disheartening, the nigh-vision mode is not that bad given the circumstances. The infra-red lamp lights up the area its in like a normal lamp would to the naked eye and fortunately there is no loss in quality when the night capable camera switches over to twilight operation. Also on the plus side is the motion trigger sensitivity. During my time with the VZSX2800 I ran the system with the motion sensors armed for a couple of nights and with the sensitivity left at its default level, the cameras were quick to pick up on the slightest bit of movement and videos were soon uploaded and my phone left popping up with alert emails to say a motion sensor had been triggered. From a security point of view in a building this is very good and I have to commend Netgear on this, although if you are using the cameras outside, I may advise turning the sensitivity down a little to save wildlife triggering a stream of alerts.

There sadly is one other issue that I had with this kit and this is the wireless range. Netgear list the system with a LOS range of 300ft and in a typical home an area of approx 2,500sq.ft could be covered, however I found the range to not be as good as I was expecting. Living in a property with solid brick walls everywhere, I know that wireless signals hate me, but even with the unit running at a flat 2GHz, the cameras soon went out of range and this could be at a distance of ~30ft with only a single wall in the way. Simply put if I had have bought this kit myself and discovered this, I would be taking it back because it is not suitable for my property. Now whilst I know how wireless signals operate and can blame an amount of this on the building, there is two parts to the tale. Whilst the base station may have a strong wireless power output, it is running on mains power and we have to remember that the cameras are running off batteries and this means the power consumption has to be as low as possible. Sadly wireless range is relational to the power output of the wireless signal so whilst the base station can send out its half of the message, which the cameras can probably receive, they don’t have the power to push out a strong signal back to the base station. The end result is a camera that appears to be out of range. To summarise the above, if you’re in a property with lots of brick walls, you may find yourself in a similar situation to what I’ve experienced here. Ideally we would all have open plan properties with plasterboard walls everywhere, but the world is not quite as ideal as we would like.

I can imagine by now you’re after my overall view on the VueZone system. When we take all the costs, wireless signal issues and the image quality out of the equation and look at the concept of the system, Netgear have caught onto something here. The principle of a totally wire-free camera system is, to be honest brilliant. It brings basic security and the peace of mind to a wide user base without the need to spend hours getting everything setup, plugged in, configured and running. I suppose you could almost say that it is plug-and-play. The simple fact of the matter is that whilst it is an innovative product, with technology as it is today I really do think that we should be getting a whole lot more in terms of image quality and wireless reception. If the batteries are built for six months use, why not drop this back to three with a rechargeable battery design in order to free up some power for a stronger processor and more powerful wireless output. I really would like to give the VueZone an award, but for the price and the downsides outweighing the good in my eyes at this moment in time, sadly an award is off the cards for now.

Pros:

• Wire-free camera system
• Very simple setup process
• Night vision capability
• Magnetic mounts allow for quick adjustments and positioning of cameras

Cons:

• Low image resolution
• Wireless reception heavily limited by walls
• Recording and email alerts require an additional subscription package

eTeknix Says: “In principle the VueZone wire-free camera system is a great product and it has the potential to go a long way, but with yesterday’s image quality and the potential loss of users due to wireless coverage, Netgear have got some tweaking and tuning to do on this product range.”

Thanks to Netgear for providing us with this review sample.