D-Link DCS-2630L
Going super-wide angle.
Avery cool-looking ‘eyeball’ camera, D-Link’s DCS2630L takes a different approach to covering a room. Instead of using motorised pan and tilt, D-Link put an extremely wide-angle lens into the camera, covering a full 180° with a single 1080p stream. This naturally results in a significant fish-eye effect, and even though the camera tries to de-warp the image, you still get images that are compressed at the edges and expanded in the middle.
The advantage of this over a motorised system is clear: you always have full coverage of the room without having to redirect the camera, which makes the camera much harder to dodge. On the other hand, you won’t get good stills of your kids’ playing.
We love the physical design of the camera, and with the flexible post and rotating camera ball you have the option to mount it on a shelf, wall, or ceiling. It has a two-way speaker built in (so you can talk to the people you’re watching, even remotely) and is the only camera reviewed here that supports both 1080p and 802.11ac wireless.
The software and web interface is also very good, with fine notification and motion sensitivity options and the capacity to ‘ black out’ parts of the image from motion detection. It could use a little sprucing up in the design department, but functionally it’s excellent.
But it comes with an excessive price tag. You’re paying a huge premium for Full HD, costing three times as much as most of the others reviewed here. It’s a very good camera, but not three times as good.