Guardzilla 360 HD Security Camera Review - Review 2022

Virtually indoor home security cameras requite yous a fixed view of specific areas of your house such equally doorways, foyers, and windows, unless you opt for a wide-angle camera such as the D-Link Full HD 180-Degree Wi-Fi or a mechanical-panning camera like the Zmodo Pivot. The $229.99 Guardzilla 360 Hard disk drive lets you monitor an entire room with its panoramic 360-degree camera, multiple motion sensors, and 2-style audio. Alas, it had problem responding to Alexa voice commands in testing, does support IFTTT recipes, and its dark vision image quality is subpar. If you can live without the 360-caste view, the Nest Cam IQ offers better operation and integrations.

Blueprint and Features

Every bit with the original Guardzilla, the Guardzilla 360 looks nothing similar a typical home security camera. Its pyramid-shaped enclosure stands three.vii inches tall and is 5.5 inches broad at its base of operations. The 1,712-by-i,712-pixel camera is nestled in the tip of the enclosure and is surrounded past an LED band that is carmine when the camera is armed (move detection enabled) and greenish when it is disarmed (move detection disabled). The camera uses fifteen infrared LEDS (five on each side) to provide upwardly to 18 anxiety of night vision, and contains 3 move sensors, a speaker, a microphone, an internal 100dB siren, and three Call buttons you can program to have the camera send a push notification to up to three users to initiate two-way communication.

When a motion sensor is triggered you can have Guardzilla ship an alert via SMS, push notification, or electronic mail, and audio the siren if enabled. If you use the costless storage programme the camera volition tape a five-2d prune of the outcome and store it in the deject for two days, but it won't tape audio. For that, you'll have to subscribe to the Enhanced Programme ($four.99 per calendar month or $49.99 per year), which too gives you xxx-second clips of the last seven days. The Premium Programme ($viii.99 per calendar month, $89.99 per year) gets you lot xxx-second clips of the last xxx days. Guardzilla also offers a no-contract professional monitoring service for $9.99 per month that will alert the local police force if you practice not answer within five minutes of a triggered warning.

Guardzilla 360 HD Security Camera

Ideally, the camera should exist placed in the middle of a room in order to take total reward of its 360-degree field of view, only in reality that'south not e'er then easy to do unless you happen to take an outlet in the heart of the room or if you place it on a kitchen island countertop. Otherwise, you'll have to deal with the power cord (and likely an extension cord) running across the floor to a wall outlet. A rechargeable battery option would exist useful here.

The app opens to a listing of installed cameras. Tap the room you desire to monitor to bring up the home screen which has half-dozen activeness buttons. The Status button shows the electric current status (armed, disarmed) and tin can be tapped to arm and disarm the photographic camera. The Monitor push button launches a live view that you tin can pan by swiping the screen or by moving your phone in any direction (it uses your phone'due south accelerometer). At the bottom of the screen are microphone, speaker, and snapshot buttons, and in the top right corner is a gear icon that launches a mini carte with a speaker book slider, effulgence and dissimilarity controls, a Show POV button, and a Prepare POV push. The volume slider worked well plenty, but the brightness controls simply worked occasionally and the dissimilarity controls didn't work at all. The POV buttons, used to select a target point of view for the camera, didn't work either.

Borer the Result History button displays a log of events such as when the camera has been armed and disarmed, every bit well equally motion events with thumbnails of recorded video. The Settings button takes you to a screen with six buttons; the Home Automation push contains a sub-menu with buttons for Nest, IFTTT, Alexa, and Google Assistant. You can gear up a Nest connexion using the Nest push button, but none of the other buttons actually does anything other than tell y'all to log in to the associated site and practice a search for Guardzilla.

The Professional Monitoring button offers data about how the service works and has a link to begin a complimentary 30-day trial, and the Car Arm push button is where you go to enable and configure geofencing, which will arm the photographic camera when you lot leave your habitation and disarm information technology when you return. Tap the Notification Settings button to enable electronic mail, text, and push notifications, and the Siren Settings button to enable or disable the siren and select a duration of betwixt 5 and 120 seconds.

Guardzilla 360 HD Security Camera 1

In the Other Settings menu you can manage account information, check the camera's indicate forcefulness, adjust movement sensitivity and picture quality, prepare upward Phone call button contacts, and chose an arming filibuster setting that determines how much time you have before the camera becomes armed when yous press the push.

The Guardzilla 360 volition set your Nest devices to Home or Away style when the camera is armed or disarmed. It is besides supposed to work with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa devices and support integration with tertiary-party devices via If This And so That (IFTTT) applets, but my test results say otherwise (more on this in the next section).

Installation and Operation

Setup was a bit more difficult than necessary. I started by downloading the Guardzilla mobile app and creating an account. I tapped Camera List in the main menu, and then Add Camera, and selected the 360 from the list. Following the in-app instructions, I plugged Guardzilla in and waited around 20 seconds for the LED ring to begin blinking blue, at which fourth dimension a digital voice informed me that the camera was initialized. I hit Next, selected my Wi-Fi name, and entered my Wi-Fi password. Within seconds the photographic camera emitted a chime, the LED ring turned greenish, and the digital voice told me that the connection was successful. I named the photographic camera and received an error message that the camera was non found and that I could retry or scan the QR code on the bottom. I reset the camera and retried the installation, simply received the aforementioned message. Finally, I used the QR scan option and was able to complete the installation.

Operation was mixed. The Guardzilla 360 delivered abrupt Hard disk drive video with rich colors and no noticeable distortion, and 2-way audio communication was clean with very lilliputian background noise. However, night vision video quality appeared dull and poorly lit, fifty-fifty with the brightness set to maximum. Lowering the setting made the paradigm too dark, and I was unable to tweak the contrast setting. The siren was loud enough to be heard throughout my one-story three-sleeping room abode and basement.

Guardzilla 360 HD Security Camera 3

Although I was able to pan effectually the room past changing the orientation of my phone, I found this feature to be more abrasive than useful every bit the video stream appeared shaky when moving the phone effectually. Swiping the screen to pan is a much ameliorate option; with a little practice I was able to land on a specific spot in the room with one swipe. Motion detection worked wonderfully, and I received text letters and push notifications immediately following a motion issue, simply electronic mail notifications never arrived in my inbox.

Getting the Alexa vox feature to work was hit or miss. Each fourth dimension I used the Alexa skill, "Alexa, tell Guardzilla I am leaving," I was asked for my PIN number and told that the system was being armed. Alexa even acknowledged with, "See you later." All the same, out of a dozen attempts the organisation simply armed itself once, and it never disarmed itself when I used the, "Alexa, tell Guardzilla I'm home," command, although Alexa did say "Guardzilla is disarming, glad you're back."

Additionally, I was unable to create IFTTT recipes for this device; an IFTTT search for the Guardzilla 360 came up empty, despite the visitor's claims that information technology's IFTTT certified. On the plus side, the geofencing feature worked perfectly, arming the photographic camera when I left my perimeter and disarming it upon my render, as did the Call button feature.

Also, the iOS app was buggy in my testing. In addition to the above-mentioned issues with the POV and contrast controls, the app crashed frequently while I was irresolute settings and viewing alive video. Afterward updating the app to the latest version I even so experienced crashes, although non as oftentimes, simply the POV and dissimilarity settings were all the same on the fritz and I began getting Connection Lost error messages that would pop upwardly briefly, even though the photographic camera remained online.

Conclusions

The Guardzilla 360 provides a precipitous, colorful 360-degree view of whatever room in your house, but it doesn't fare very well in low light. The camera'southward motion sensors did an impressive task of detecting existent move events alerts without whatever simulated alarms and generated text and button alerts in my tests, but I never did receive an email alert. The Phone call button feature worked like a charm and two-way audio was clean and loud, but Alexa voice compatibility was inconsistent and IFTTT support was nonexistent at the time of this writing. An unstable mobile experience made matters worse.

If reliability, interoperability with other smart home devices, and overall image quality are more important than a 360-degree field of view, consider a camera like the Nest Cam IQ. Information technology may cost a bit more, but it delivers very sharp daytime and nighttime video in 1080p, offers face up recognition and motion and audio detection, and works with a generous assortment of smart domicile devices, including other Nest products and devices that back up IFTTT.