D-Link promises to watch over much more of your home with its new Wi-Fi security camera. While it resembles other cameras like the Nest Cam and the Samsung Smartcam HD Plus in many ways, its 180-degree field of view is unbeatable. If positioned against a wall, the D-Link camera could watch over an entire room, leaving no hidden nook or concealed cranny. It's not priced badly either, at $179, but it comes with a few caveats worth considering before you decide to choose this camera over another.

Design: The bulging eye returns

SPECS AT A GLANCE: D-LINK DCS-2630L WI-FI CAMERA CAMERA RESOLUTION Up to 1080p FIELD OF VIEW 180 degrees INTERNET 802.11ac (compatible with 802.11n/g) LIVE STREAMING Yes NIGHT VISION Yes MOTION/SOUND DETECTION Motion and sound MOBILE APP Android, iOS, and Windows Phone SUBSCRIPTION None; can record locally on a microSD card up to 128GB microSD, but no card is included with the camera EXTRA FEATURES Two-way talk, activity zone selection, customizable decibel detection level PRICE $179

I don't know who decreed that home security cameras had to look like bulbous, singular alien eyes, but D-Link certainly got that memo. The DCS-2630L Wi-Fi camera has a large, circular head that's much bigger than both the Nest Cam and the Samsung Smartcam HD Plus, and it's wider, too. Its neck is a piece of U-shaped plastic attached to a flat, round base. You can bend the neck back and forth to adjust the vertical angle of the camera's view, but you can't spin it from side to side.

However, you can rotate the face of the camera (the front part of the circular head) a full 360 degrees to adjust the viewpoint. On the front of the camera lies the built-in microphone, the glass camera lens, the light sensor for switching between day and night vision, six infrared LEDs to support night vision, and two PIR sensors that detect infrared radiation so the camera can tell when someone walks by even in the dead of night. The back of the head is full of small holes for the device's speaker, and there's also a status light, a WPS button, the microSD card slot, and the microUSB port for power. A major bummer is that, unlike the Smartcam HD Plus, the D-Link camera doesn't include a microSD in the box; you'll have to buy one before the camera can save recorded clips locally.

D-Link didn't make a discreet camera—good luck hiding this on a bookshelf or behind living room decor. At least the Nest Cam is small enough that you could devise a number of crafty ways to conceal it, but it will be hard to do the same for the D-Link camera. Considering its 180-degree field of view, however, you'll want to place it strategically in your home so it can cover an entire room.

Like most Wi-Fi cameras, the D-Link camera's setup consists of a set of instructions on the My D-Link Lite mobile app. Once you plug the device into a power source and scan a QR code, you need to connect to the Wi-Fi network that's unique to the camera. Once you go through your smartphone's Wi-Fi settings to do that, you can go back into the app and reconnect to your home's network.

After that, you create a D-Link account so you can log in via the app or the website to see your camera's live feed and settings. My camera required a firmware update, making the setup process longer than it would normally be. Also, the app was a little wonky while I followed the instructions, sometimes ignoring my taps and not progressing to the next step of the setup.

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Image quality

Under the live stream in the app, there's a handy button that lets you quickly change resolution from 720p to 1080p. At first I thought this changed the recording resolution, but that's not the case. According to a D-Link representative, streaming at 720p will let users "save on data usage, battery life of the mobile device, or ensure reliable streaming in an area that doesn’t have strong Wi-Fi coverage." To check the live-stream diagnostics with the app, there's an information button that lists the current video resolution along with frame rate, bit rate, and general information about the camera.

After toggling between low and high resolutions, I didn't immediately see a difference in the live-stream quality nor in the screenshots I took of the video feed. All of the videos on my microSD card were saved in 1080p, no matter which resolution I chose for the live stream in the app. For reference, a 15-second video recorded at 1080p took up 2.1MB on the card.

Features: A wider scope with the same extras

D-Link's Wi-Fi camera is one of the few to offer a 180-degree field of view, and I could immediately appreciate the difference. It truly expanded the recording area of my small living room so that I didn't have to angle the camera toward the window to make sure all entrances were covered. For someone who lives in a tiny apartment (hello!), 180 degrees of vision is more about convenience than necessity, since a 130-degree field of view would likely get the job done in any room. But those with larger rooms and spaces with more doors, windows, and openings will likely appreciate the wider field of view.

D-Link broadcasts its live video stream to the mobile and Web apps. Similarly to the Smartcam HD Plus, there's a bar at the bottom of the stream for easy access to audio control, screenshot capture, video resolution change, two-way talk, night- and day-vision control, and information display. The night/day vision is an interesting feature, as it lets you manually activate the IR sensors that help make darker videos clearer. My living room doesn't have a lot of natural light pouring in all day, so the camera would often stay in night-vision mode. It's not a huge drawback, but you should turn on day vision if you want videos recorded in true color (night vision is all black and white).

While you can take snapshots of the live feed within the app, you can't record a video clip. Snapshots save to your smartphone's photo library automatically, but all of the video clips are only recorded by detected motion or sound and remain on the microSD card. And since the camera doesn't come with a card, it's just a live streaming device out of the box. Insert a microSD card, and you can then view videos on a computer.

Motion and sound detection is customizable as well: you can turn both features on or off individually, and you can set sensitivities for each. Activity zones help you narrow down which parts of the room you want the camera to focus on when sending you alerts, and you can set decibel level requirements for noises. Both of those features are really convenient since the D-Link camera is quite sensitive: during a normal day of me working from home, the camera would ping me dozens of times to alert me to my own walking and talking activity. Setting an activity zone around the door would remedy this, and setting the sound sensitivity to 80 dB would ensure my regular voice wouldn't trigger the camera.







Or you could just put your camera on a recording schedule. From the D-Link Web app, you can set a timeframe for the camera to record continuously. The first inconvenience about this is that it must be done from the Web app—there's no scheduling option in the mobile app, nor can you edit a schedule that you've already set. The second inconvenience is that you can only set one block of time: the scheduler is on military time and will not let you set two separate blocks of recording time each day like the Ezviz Mini will.

For anyone using the camera to keep an eye on their home while at work, this shouldn't be a big issue because you can set it to be on alert, let's say, from 8am to 5pm Monday through Friday. I wanted to set two blocks of time per day to cover the hours I'm asleep, typically from 10pm to midnight and then midnight to 6am, and I couldn't do that. You also cannot set different blocks of time for separate days, so if you have a work schedule that changes from week to week, you'll be better off manually putting the camera on alert from the mobile app as soon as you walk out the door.

I expected to receive alerts whenever the camera detected motion or sound during this period of constant recording, but that's not the case. Since the camera is constantly recording, you aren't notified of motion or sound. Video clips are still broken down by the hour in which they were taken in the playback menu of the mobile app, but you'll find many more clips since the camera is simply always on. I'd rather save the space on my microSD card, so I defaulted to manually turning the camera's motion and sound detection on when I left the house and disabling it when I returned.