Is this the smartest home security camera? SimCam Alloy Outdoor AI Camera Review

This is a high-tech outdoor security camera from a company called SimCam. What is unique with this camera is, that instead of using the cloud for AI processing it is done on the camera itself using an Intel Movidius processor.

And the benefit of this is it’s supposed to have a much faster response time without any latency. It also makes the camera more secure and will better protect your privacy.

This camera is sold on Amazon and as of right now when making this article it sells for about 120 dollars. And for full transparency to you guys, Simcam did send me this camera over for review however any opinions in this review are strictly my own based on my experiences using this camera. I will go over both pros and cons.

And you will find my affiliate links in this article as well if you are interested in buying this camera.

The camera records in 1080p and uses a 3.6mm lens. According to their website, the camera should record at 30 fps in 1080p but when I check the recording files it says only 20 fps and that would explain why the recordings are not 100% smooth.

The image quality isn’t the best and to be honest I was expecting a bit more from a 120-dollar camera.

It does come with a lot of features though, like Person Detection, Face Recognition, and Object Tracking and it also has a very loud 100-decibel siren. Everything is controlled with the SimCam APP.

You can easily take photos or upload photos for face recognition in the app and I have to say that the camera does a good job of identifying a person by face recognition.

The only problem I had was when I placed the camera too high up outdoors since it could only detect a face up to 5 meters. So if you are planning on using face recognition outdoors I would recommend you not to place the camera too high up, maybe at a maximum height of 3-4 meters for the best result.

The camera has 2-way audio so you can speak and listen through the camera. It also supports both 2.4 and 5ghs WiFi and I did connect to both without any problems. And according to SimCam, it should work with both both Alexa and Google Assistant.

It is made for outdoor use with an IP66 rating and it has a working temperature between -20 and 50 celcius. The camera by itself can get quite hot so if you live in a hot climate like I do where the sun can get extremely hot during the day you might want to place the camera where it has some kind of cover from the sun.

You can use up to 128 GB SD card in the camera. Ok, so what we get in the box is, the camera, Mount, Power Cable, Quickstart guide, 8gb sd card, the back cover, and a bag with screws, plugs, and a hex key.

The camera feels and looks like high quality and I do have to say I like the black color. So on the front of the camera, we have the microphone, light sensor, camera lens, and 8 or 10 infrared lights, and then a status light.

On the back, we have the speaker, power port, reset button, and the SD card slot. This camera is only using WiFi, so you can’t connect an ethernet cable to it.

To get the camera up and running is really easy. First, we should insert the SD card connect the power cable, and then close the back cover. Then download the SimCam APP from the Google play store or App Store and create a new user account.

When that is done and you have the app opened click on the + icon to add a new device and then add your WiFi and password. Now you need to point the QR code on your phone towards the camera lens and then you will hear a voice saying the camera is connecting and when the status light turns solid blue the camera is connected.

On the main screen in the app, we have access to the alerts and they are saved to the SD card. When motion is detected the camera will record a 15 seconds clip. Unfortunately, there is no setting to change that. In the Library, we can find snapshots and videos and they are saved on the Phone.

In settings, we can add, a sub-account and add an emergency contact number and then we have facial recognition settings where we take or upload photos for face recognition. You need 4 photos from different angles and you can add up to 200 profiles.

Then we got a Device list, customer feedback, Instructions, and AI life where you will find instructions on how to connect to your smart home. If we go back to the main screen we can turn the camera into private mode, turn on or off person detection and you can also access the face recognition settings from here.

And then we got the actual camera settings. Here we can change the camera name, adjust Video and Audio, set a custom work time for the camera, or have it monitored 24/7. Pedestrian tracking, turn on or off the LED light on the camera. change timezones, firmware updates. Nas hard disk configuration, format the SD card, and reset the WiFi.

That’s all the camera settings we got in here.

If we go back out again and then click on the camera screen and then click on full screen then we got some settings here as well. In the right top corner, we can change the image quality. Then we have on or off audio, take snapshots, record video, speak through the camera, set up object monitoring, and also set up area monitoring. And the red button is for starting the siren.

To see recorded footage please watch my YouTube video. I hope you liked this review and if you are interested in picking one up you can find the camera on Amazon.com!