D-Link mydlink Pro
FRUSTRATINGLY, PLENTY OF GOOD THINGS BUT PLENTY OF IRRITATING QUIRKS TOO.
THIS ONE HAD us torn. On the one hand, it’s a well designed camera and hub combo, with a long-lasting battery, at a decent price. On the other, there are some big issues to look past.
To begin with, the picture quality is a tad questionable. Detail actually isn’t too bad, with an excellent level of sharpness when zoomed in, but when placed side-by-side the picture pales in comparison to its competitors here. It’s much more murky, both in broad daylight and at night. When it’s bright out, shadows burn through, while bright areas like sky bleach out – though thankfully we didn’t spot any significant blooming, so you should still be able to pick out a backlit intruder. With the lights off, its night vision reach isn’t the strongest, and it’s a gloomy, shadowy picture. There are no options in the app to adjust the exposure of the sensor, which is something of a disappointment – though we don’t think the colour depth would be enough to ruin evidential footage entirely.
That app is disappointing, too. D-Link has clearly tried to give it an attractive edge, and we have to give credit to its ability to show what’s going on from up to four cameras at a time. However, its combination of soft focus lifestyle backgrounds, clunky device wheels and poorly labelled controls makes it awkward and slow to use – and when it comes to security, you really need something immediate. Connecting to the camera for a live view is similarly languid and, at times, we found the app needed a restart to connect – not the most reassuring, particularly given that the individual cameras hook up to a central hub which should, in theory, be dealing with connection reliability.
That’s the bad news, but there’s plenty of good. That hub takes seconds to set up, and arguably offers more than Arlo’s equivalent, since it not only includes microSD backup of recordings (just like the Arlo), but also includes a USB port for hard drive recording. There’s a central 100dB siren (silenced by the top button) which could be helpful if your cameras are all mounted outside; doing so isn’t a problem, with each carrying an IP65 rating (which means they’ll withstand a jet from a hose) and the option of either a strong magnetic ball mount or a standard tripod screw, with a single adjustable arm included in the two-camera package.
This isn’t a bad investment at all.