Netatmo Welcome

A GOLDEN OLDIE.

WITH EVERY OTHER security camera trying to flog subscription plans in some way, shape or form, the Netatmo Welcome’s declaration of “no subscription fees” is a breath of fresh air. You can save video files locally to the bundled 8GB microSD card, store video footage in the cloud on your own Dropbox account, or save it on an FTP server of your choosing.

We do wish it supported microSD cards larger than 32GB, but given it only records video when motion is detected, even the bundled card is ample for everyday usage. Once the card is full, it writes over the oldest footage automatically.

Despite being three years old, the unusually-shaped Netatmo has done a great job of continuing to update the Welcome’s functionality. Since it’s original debut, the company has added Dropbox integration, a Facebook Messenger bot (which you can ‘chat with’ to see what’s currently happening at home) and Google Assistant support.

What’s most impressive about the Welcome is that despite its age, it boasts facial recognition, enabling you to create profiles for family members as well as get alerts when an unrecognised face is seen. If you connect it to IFTTT, you can do some cool things such as turn your Philips Hue lights on a particular colour or play a particular playlist when it sees a certain person come home.

But the Welcome also triggers a lot of false positives if the camera’s facing the window. While the facial recognition feature can be employed to ignore household pets, there’s no way to adjust the motion sensitivity or get it to ignore particular areas in the frame (a feature available in the Nest Cam IQ and Netgear Arlo).