When you think "Samsung," you think of smartphones, TVs, and maybe smart kitchen appliances if you're a foodie. However, it's not the first company to come to mind when you think "home security." Samsung has a range of Wi-Fi connected home security cameras, though, and the most recent addition to the family is the Smartcam HD Plus. With 1080p video recording, motion and sound detection, two-way audio, and customizable action zones, this camera wants to take the popular Nest Cam head on.

The Smartcam includes some of the best features of other home security cameras we've tried. There's a lot you can do with it, and if you can get past the annoying app experience, you can turn it into a smart watchdog for your home.

SPECS AT A GLANCE: SAMSUNG SMARTCAM HD PLUS CAMERA RESOLUTION Up to 1080p FIELD OF VIEW 130 degrees INTERNET 2.4GHz 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi LIVE STREAMING Yes NIGHT VISION Yes MOTION/SOUND DETECTION Motion and sound MOBILE APP Android and iOS SUBSCRIPTION None; Comes with a 16GB microSD card for local storage, supports up to a 128GB card EXTRA FEATURES Two-way talk, customizable audio messages, sound effects, motion zone selection PRICE $190

Design: This looks familiar...

To say that the Smartcam HD Plus looks similar to the Nest Cam would be an understatement. The small, glossy-black device looks nearly identical to Nest's watchful eye, featuring a bulbous head where the lens lies and a narrow neck that attaches to the base. The Smartcam HD Plus' base is bigger than Nest's, however, and the camera can be tilted back and forth easily. To turn the head from side to side, you need to loosen the screws at the base of the neck—which is inconvenient to say the least.

The microUSB power port is on the bottom of the camera's edge with the opening facing the base. The Nest Cam had its power source input here as well, and it was a little frustrating to connect properly. The Smartcam HD Plus' base has open space for you to thread the cord through so it will stand up flat when it's connected, which is a smart design feature. On the back of the camera's head is the Wi-Fi button, used during setup, and the tiny reset button. The microSD card sits on its side, and it's nearly invisible as the tiny slot blends in with the all-black body of the device.

Setting up the Smartcam HD Plus didn't take too long. Once I made an account in the Smartcam app, I set up the camera using the Wi-Fi option (the app lists a "connected Internet" but the Smartcam HD Plus does not have an Ethernet port like some other Samsung Smartcams). I had to go into my Wi-Fi settings on my iPhone 6 and select a Wi-Fi network that ended in the last four digits of my camera's serial number rather than my own personal network.

Once I did this and put in the generic password (provided by the app), I went back into the Smartcam app, and it brought me to a new page where I could select a different Wi-Fi network. This is when I could choose my apartment's network, sign in with the password, and complete the setup. It's not as tedious as other home security camera initial setups, but it was confusing at first.



















Image quality: As good as you want it to be

The Smartcam HD Plus records video at up to 1080p resolution, and you can change the video quality from within the live stream view in the app. There are low, medium, and high quality settings, and the differences between them are quite noticeable. The lowest quality was super grainy with little definition of fine lines in pieces of furniture or decor in my apartment. The highest quality was super crisp all around. Color accuracy and richness stayed the same throughout, though, and the lighting was true to life.

Medium quality is decent if you want to record a lot of video all the time on the SD card and don't want to take up too much space, but I kept mine on the highest quality setting. To put it in perspective, I recorded three 10-second videos of movement in my apartment during the day, one each at low, medium, and high resolutions. The videos took up 8.2MB, 14.5MB, and 23.4MB, respectively, on the SD card.

Features: All the essentials, and a lot of voice options

The Smartcam HD Plus detects motion and sound in your home, letting you know if there's a disturbance in the force. But what's more impressive is the number of features you can access from the live video feed within the app. The menu bar at the bottom of the video feed shows you all your options, the first of which lets you choose if you want to record a video clip to your smartphone or to the camera's memory card. There's a camera icon for you to take a snapshot of what's happening at that moment, and that image is saved to your phone's photo library.

Like the Nest Cam, the Smartcam HD Plus has two-way audio, so you can tell your kids to stop sneaking candy from the kitchen or scold your dog for chewing up your favorite armchair. Tapping on the dual messenger icon brings up a microphone icon at the bottom of the video feed—be sure to press and hold that icon before speaking, otherwise your voice won't carry through the camera's speaker. You can also record messages to the app and play them over the camera—let's say you're in a meeting and can't speak into your phone to tell your cat to get off the mantle. Instead, you can select and play a recorded message like "Down, Chester!" and that audio will come through the camera. (Just keep in mind that a disembodied voice might scare your pets and family members at first.)

The camera has you covered with more threatening audio tracks, too. The music icon in the menu bar brings up a selection of warning sounds: a police siren, an alarm siren, or the sound of a barking dog. This will come in handy if someone unknown is invading your home's privacy and you want to attempt to scare them off, but just keep your fingers crossed that intruders are in fact afraid of the disembodied bark of a menacing dog. Overall, I love the number of audio options the Smartcam HD Plus gives you, since having a way to communicate with your home when you're away gives you more power over what happens inside of it.

You can manage specific motion detection zones from the toolbar as well. Using your finger, you can draw boxes around certain areas of your home—maybe a window or the front door—where you want the camera to pay particular attention to. If any motion is detected in these areas, you'll get an alert to your smartphone. This feature is nearly identical to the Nest Cam's activity zones, however you don't need a subscription plan to take advantage of it on the Smartcam HD Plus.

Speaking of subscription plans: the Smartcam HD Plus doesn't have one. Your only options to save video are either on the microSD card (to which motion- and sound-activated events are saved automatically) or on your smartphone. When you record a piece of live video from your smartphone, it can only be up to 30 seconds long and it's saved locally to the app—it won't appear in your camera roll until you go into the app and download that specific clip. You can manually record video and save it to the microSD card, too, and it will appear in the "manually recorded" section of the app when you look back at past video clips.

Samsung couldn't give me an estimate as to how much video the microSD card could store, saying it depends on many things, including the resolution at which the video was recorded, the lighting in the room, and if it was day or night at the time of recording. But unlike the Ezviz Mini, where the microSD card simply acts as a host for encrypted video playback on your smartphone, you can remove the Smartcam HD Plus' microSD card, insert it into your computer, and view recorded clips on your desktop. Ezviz's system is arguably better for privacy (a thief can't just walk out of your home with hours of recorded video), but Samsung's is more user-friendly.

As far as motion and sound detection go, the camera is accurate, and you can change the sensitivity to both within its settings. Every time I moved around my apartment or coughed a little too loud, I'd get an alert to my smartphone. There's none of that 30-minute lag between notifications like there is in the Nest Cam either. From the camera's settings, you can turn off alerts, motion detection, or sound detection if you wish, giving you better control over what you want the camera to record and what you want it to ignore. I work from home most of the time, so I turned off event alerts but kept motion detection on. That way, the Smartcam HD Plus would record any motion in my living room, but it wouldn't bombard my smartphone with notifications about it. When I left to run errands or go to a meeting, I would turn alerts back on and enable motion and sound detection.

One thing the Nest Cam has that the Smartcam HD Plus doesn't is smart home capabilities. Nest Cam can act as a hub for other "works with Nest" products, including smart door locks, thermostats, and more. Samsung did purchase the Internet-of-Things company SmartThings recently, and its older Smartcam HD Pro can work with SmartThings hubs (Z-Wave- and Zigbee-compatible), however this feature isn't quite ready yet for the Smartcam HD Plus. There's no time estimate yet for the integration.