Latest news with #wifi
The Independent
15-05-2025
- The Independent
Ezviz H8x review: Is a motorised security camera best for you?
Since this is a wired outdoor camera, the installation is more involved than battery-powered cameras designed for use indoors. Location is key, since the camera needs to have a solid wifi connection and be within reach of a plug socket. The included power cable is longer than most I've used before, so that's helpful, and it's also thin enough to have a window closed on it. This means you don't need to drill a hole through a wall, or worry about how you'll feed the power cable out of your home. The H8x is designed to be wall mounted with four included screws and wall plugs. But since I'm constantly installing and removing cameras for testing, I've mounted the H8x to a planter on a first-floor windowsill. It's not the perfect solution, but saves me from drilling another set of holes into the wall. The camera comes with a template sticker to help you drill in exactly the right place. Remember to ensure the camera has space to fully rotate and tilt. The power cable has an integrated Ethernet socket for giving the camera a wired internet connection. This is a great option if your wifi network coverage can be patchy, but can be ignored otherwise. Naturally, installing an Ethernet cable will add more complexity to the setup process. Once secured with the four screws, the camera is ready to be plugged in and set up using the Ezviz smartphone app. And don't forget – if you plan to use local storage instead of Ezviz's cloud subscription, you'll need a small screwdriver to access the microSD card slot. The camera accepts cards up to 512 GB, but there isn't one included in the box. Camera The H8x has a 1/1.8' CMOS imaging sensor with a 2K (2560 x 1440) resolution and a wide lens aperture of F1.0. The lens itself has a 108-degree diagonal field-of-view, but this is enhanced significantly by the camera's ability to pan 340 degrees and tilt 70 degrees. There's also support for WDR, which stands for 'wide dynamic range'. This doesn't quite give your videos the full HDR (high dynamic range) treatment, but it's a useful addition nonetheless. I was reasonably impressed by the H8x's video quality. Its 2K resolution is a welcome upgrade over the 1080p offerings of many rivals – especially battery-powered cameras where a higher resolution isn't worth the drop in energy efficiency. But, as with the Ring Outdoor Camera Plus, which was recently upgraded from 1080p to 2K, the difference isn't night-and-day. Footage recorded by the Ezviz is bright and clear, with exposure automatically cranked up a little to lift the shadows. It might not win an Oscar but it's plenty sharp enough for a security camera. There's an option to lower the resolution to Full HD, which I found helped to iron out choppy footage caused by a poor wifi onnection, as my router was two rooms away. Features and connectivity The biggest feature of the H8x is of course motorised movement. You can move the camera manually using the app, but the best option is for it to follow movement whenever it's spotted. That way, it'll lock onto a person when they enter the frame, zooming in for a closer look and panning or tilting to follow them. It's a system that works well, but can also be a little frustrating. There's an option in the settings menu for creating a detection zone, where the camera will only alert you, record video and move to follow a subject when movement is spotted in that portion of its view. Creating the zone is more fiddly than it ought to be, and I found the camera would ignore it and alert me to movement from outside the detection zone. This can be annoying if you're trying to stop the camera from recording every time someone walks along the pavement. As is often the case with security cameras, a bit of trial-and-error is required until everything is working correctly. The camera uses 2.4 GHz wifi, missing out on 5 GHz. This isn't a deal breaker though, especially at the sub-£100 price point, and I had no problems connecting to the camera and streaming video to my phone. That said, the app could do with some improvement. It's stable enough, but can sometimes be a little slow to connect to the camera, and is littered with poorly translated English, making the descriptions of some features difficult to understand. Storage and subscription A microSD card slot means this camera has local storage. There's no card included in the box, which is a shame, but it's nice to see the camera can support a capacity of up to 512 GB, giving you plenty of space for hours of recordings. The card slot is concealed beneath a panel that's secured with two screws – so, while a thief or burglar could potentially remove the card without any force or specialist equipment, they'd be doing so right in the camera's view. Cloud storage is also an option with the H8x. There are three levels to pick from: silver, gold and crystal. These include 1GB, 5GB and 10GB of cloud storage respectively, and recordings can be accessed for seven days with a silver subscription, or 30 days with both gold and crystal. The three tiers are priced at £5.99, £10.99 and £19.99 per month, with discounts available if you pay for a year upfront. Cloud storage can be helpful, but I prefer to use a camera's integrated storage and avoid a monthly fee where possible. I like how, unlike Ring, Ezviz doesn't lock extra features (like improved intelligence) behind a monthly fee. If you go down the internal-storage route, the camera retains all of its functionality.
The Guardian
10-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Tim Dowling: Help! We have no internet and I really do have work to do
I'm sitting at my computer when a link refuses to load, leaving me with a white screen. I click on several of the 37 other windows I have open. None of them loads. I go and find my wife in front of her computer. 'Are you having trouble with the internet?' I say. 'Why yes,' she says. 'I am.' She doesn't seem as put out by the situation as I am. I go and look at the wifi router, which is pulsing with an eerie blue light – a sign that all is not well. I unplug it briefly, and let it reset itself. After shifting through many different shades, the blue light returns. 'That ain't good,' I say. It's not good because my internet provider's customer service is rated among the worst in the nation. If the problem proves to be their fault, I am in for a difficult day, or days. Also, I have work to do. I cannot afford to get obsessed with my lack of internet. My wife appears behind me, holding a shopping bag. 'Where are you going?' I say. 'Out,' she says. 'You mean you're leaving me here to deal with this?' I say. 'Yes,' she says. 'I am.' Using my phone, I access my internet provider's unloved troubleshooting guide. First, it checks to see if I have paid my bill. 'Typical,' I say. The troubleshooter then checks for outages in my postcode. Then it shows me illustrations of wifi routers flashing different colours, and asks me to choose. I click on blue, only to look up and see the box is now flashing red. The procedure ends with the problem unresolved, and the opportunity to book a visit from an engineer. The first available slot is for the following morning. This seems rash – the internet has been down for 20 minutes – but there is no less rash option, so I click. When I look up again, the box is giving off a steady white light. 'Are you kidding?' I say. My wife returns an hour later to find me still hovering over the router. 'There was a man out there messing with the junction box,' she says. 'Where?' I say. 'What kind of man?' 'A human man,' she says. 'I mean, like a cable engineer, or a vandal?' 'He said he was installing the wifi for next door,' she says. 'I asked him if he had anything to do with ours going down, and he said no.' 'He would,' I say. It is possible to access the internet by linking my laptop to my phone, but it's deeply unsatisfactory. That evening I try to tell my wife what a frustrating day I've had, but she refuses to engage with the technical details that bring the story to life. 'Periodically the wifi would come back on,' I say. 'Just long enough to reconnect to everything and break the 5G link,' I say. 'I have no idea what you're talking about,' she says, sitting down and grabbing the TV remote. The television displays a blank blue screen with a box in the middle saying No Signal. 'Wait, does this mean we can't watch telly?' my wife says. 'I'm afraid so,' I say. 'Do something!' she says. The next morning I'm in the kitchen waiting for the engineers. At 9am the internet starts working, like a rash clearing up on the morning of your GP appointment. At 9.15 the signal quits again, much to my relief. At 10 I check to see if my time slot has narrowed. I receive a message that says 'You do not have an engineer appointment.' 'What?' I say. 'Would you like to book an appointment?' the message says. 'This is why you are the most hated service provider in the entire …' The doorbell rings. I open the door to find two uniformed engineers on the step. 'This is weird,' I say. 'Is it?' says one. 'Come in,' I say. The two men are unfailingly polite and helpful. They quickly trace the problem to outside. One of them shows me the spot where the door between the front and back gardens has rubbed the insulation off the cable. 'So it's my fault,' I say. He smiles. 'We can fix that for you no problem,' he says. And they do, in about half an hour. One of them gives me his mobile number, in case I encounter any difficulties while they're working in the area. 'It was amazing,' I tell my wife later. 'They even put these slippers on in the house to protect the floors.' 'It's enough to restore your faith in humanity,' she says. I think: steady on.
