Imilab C20 Home Security Camera review: Pan/tilt pan on a budget
It has a killer feature that Wyze hasn’t touched yet: a mechanical pan and tilt system that lets you redirect the image via the Imilab Home app.
While inexpensive options are becoming more popular, so-called PTZ cameras have long been associated with hefty price tags and large, unattractive housings. However, the Imilab C20 is quite staid, a nice ball mounted atop a hockey puck base that fits into any of your existing smart home gear. The system does not have a battery and requires full-time power; A micro-USB cable and air conditioning adapter are included in the box, as well as wall mounting hardware. The blue LED on the front of the camera flashes while recording, but can be turned off in the app.
Setting up the camera and connecting it to a Wi-Fi network (2.4GHz only) wasn’t exactly intuitive, but it was fairly easy to muddle through things to get things started; The initial connection to my network failed, but a second attempt got everything up and running reasonably quickly. Imilab also doesn’t offer a lot of manual control when it comes to operation – once installed, the manual becomes mute – but it’s reasonably easy to use when it comes to exploring its features. For starters, there’s Live View, a crisp 1080p image that can be controlled using the four-way virtual joystick front and center in the app. The camera rotates silently horizontally through the full 360 degrees, although note that it cannot continuously rotate around and around; You will have to rotate back the other way once you get ‘stuck’.
Vertically, you have a 105-degree viewing angle to play with, and the capable night vision mode kicks in automatically after hours. It also supports two-way audio, so you can talk through the camera and get a response, all with the touch of a button on the app. Finally, the camera also supports Alexa devices with displays, so you can watch your video remotely (although I haven’t tested this functionality).
The camera provides two options for saving video. The camera’s microSD card slot allows you to save video locally, or you can opt for Imilab’s cloud storage service (which can’t be easily escaped). The cloud plan gives you unlimited storage limited by time:. You can also save still images directly to your mobile device via the app without any storage space, but you can’t store video this way.
The Imilab C20 can rotate 360 degrees horizontally and 105 degrees vertically.
One of the most interesting features of the Imilab C20 is its ability to detect and follow humans, automatically moving the camera as they move around the room. This worked well in my testing, although the camera was sometimes prone to moving away from the human in the room, panning away from the action to record video of the wall instead. Also, I often found the camera turning on its own when I pointed it outside, through a window, even though no one was in the frame. Automatic tracking features can easily be disabled in the app.
The camera is also designed to behave similarly when it detects a loud sound (so it can be used as a baby monitor, for example), but I couldn’t get the camera to respond at all to loud noises during testing. Another bug: The system is supposed to be able to send push notifications when it detects motion or sound, but I haven’t received any notifications of any kind, despite making sure both are turned on in the device’s settings.
Although the camera is generally responsive and the image quality is better than expected, my biggest frustration was the number of times it stopped responding, resulting in a “buffering” message that can last up to a minute. Other errors (“Playback failed. Try again later!”) were also common. These reliability issues are what prevent the camera from being suitable for serious security needs
