This Ezviz C6 2K+ Smart Home Camera arrives in a really nice looking box. Inside, along with the camera itself, is a USB power cable, a USB power adapter, a ceiling/wall mounting plate, 3 screws (and wall plugs), a drill template and a Quick Start Guide.

Straight out of the box the camera looks and feels high quality and extremely well made. It is 10cm wide by 9.7cm tall, and is 10cm deep. On the front is the lens itself, a hole for the microphone, a status indicator and two IR LEDs. Pushing the lens section up reveals a cover, behind which is the microSD card slot and reset button. On the rear is the speaker grill, RJ45 network port and microUSB socket. On the base are slots for attaching the camera to the ceiling mount. Unfortunately there is no 1/4″ screw socket to allow you to attach it to other types of mounts and brackets.

The 3-pin USB Power Adapter has a single USB-Type A socket in its rear. Its output is rated at 5V 2A 10W. The USB cable is about 2.9m long.. It has a USB-A connector at one end and a microUSB connector the other.

The Quick Start Guide is extremely basic, just concerning itself with getting you to download to App. Thankfully a better User Guide is available within the App itself, or for download from the Ezviz website.

You have no choice but to download the Ezviz software in order to set up and use this camera. It was easy to find and download on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. However, the App gets off to a bad start by trying to install a tracking cookie, and giving you no choice but to set up a Ezviz account, which means giving out your e-mail address.

After this, setting up the camera via the App over Wi-Fi was fairly painless, although some of the on-screen instructions could be a little clearer. The camera can connect to both 2.4GHz and 5Ghz Wi-Fi networks, which is very convenient, especially given the increasing prevalence of 5GHz Wi-Fi. You are also meant to be able to set it up over a wired network connection, but for whatever reason, I was unable to get this to work. Also, during reviewing this camera, I had reason to reset it. Afterwards I was unable to get the camera to connect to my Wi-Fi again. It took many, many attempts over the space of several hours to finally get it to connect, even though I was following the same instructions each time and nothing about my Wi-Fi network had changed.

The camera has a 4mm F1.6 lens that has a 79 horizontal and 42 vertical viewing angle. The sensor has a resolution of 1440p (2560 x 1440). When viewing/recording you have the option to select one of four resolutions: Standard (768 x 432), Hi-Def (1280 x 720), Full HD (1920 x 1080), and Ultra HD (2560 x 1440).

Image quality is very good for a camera in this price bracket. The low light Starlight and night vision image quality was also very good. According to Ezviz, the sensor is said to have a maximum frame rate of 25fps, however whether recording live over Wi-Fi or LAN, or taking the video files directly off the microSD card, the frame rate seemed locked at a disappointing 15fps for all resolutions, except the lowest, which was locked at an even worse 10fps.

The video files can be recorded to either a microSD card (up to 256GB in size), to Ezviz’s optional cloud storage (which charges a monthly subscription), or direct to your Apple/Android device if you are recording live.

The software is very well made and has a great many features. It is designed to work alongside this camera as well as many other Ezviz devices. The user interface works well with both phones and the larger screens found on tablets.

You can view the camera via Wi-FI or over LAN using the Ezviz App. Disappointingly some features (such as the ability to talk through the camera from your device), are not available when using LAN). You can share your cameras live view with others. And you can also use the camera with Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant (although I was unable to test this). I was not able to find a way to connect to the camera using ONVIF or RTSP.

The App’s main camera screen allows you to watch the live video feed, record live video, take pictures, rotate the camera the camera, or talk through the camera via your devices microphone. You can also see a history of any events that were recorded on the SD card, or to the Cloud, and quickly and easily scroll through them and play the one you want. There is also a filter system that also allows you to search through these clips either by specifying a certain date and/or by how the event was triggered (Human Detected, Pet Detected, Hand Waving, Abnormal Sound), which is very handy.

Delving into the settings and there are many useful features here, including the ability to:
– Set which “Intelligent Detection” options to use (Image Change, Human Shape, Pet Shape, Abnormal Sound and Gesture Recognition)
– Set whether to allow the camera to zoom in and track human movement as well as whether you want it to follow that human around.
– Set whether to record to the SD Card continuously 24/7, or just when events happen.
– Ser whether or not you want the video to be Encrypted.

It was good to see that the camera gives the ability to encrypt the video feed, to add a layer of security. It is just such a pity that whilst it does this, on the other hand it tries to install a tracking cookie on setup, and (on my iPad at least) repeatedly tries to gain access to ALL of my photos, even though it already has permission to use a specific folder to save its video and photos to.

The speaker on the camera is loud and clear and being able to use the microphone on your device to talk through the camera is useful.

The Pan and Tilt system works reasonably well, so long as you have a good network connection. Even on the best connection, there can be a couple second delay between pressing the ‘joystick’ and the camera responding when the camera is set to its highest resolution setting . If your network connection is poorer than this, then the response is longer and it can even cause the camera to get stuck and reboot. Dropping the camera down to a lower resolution makes things run more smoothly and respond quicker, but obviously makes it a lot less convenient to use. A really nice feature is that instead of using the pan and tilt ‘joystick’ controls to move the camera, you can take a 360 (horizontal) picture. You can then tap anywhere on that picture, and the camera will automatically turn to face that exact position.

The cameras AI and motion detection worked very well, and went a long way to cutting out the false positives you often get with such security cameras. The gesture detection also worked well. Having the camera track and follow people and pets was less successful though. Whilst it did a good job picking up the person in the first place, the camera would often move back and forth, even if the person was stood still. It was also easily fooled by someone changing direction, even when moving at quite a slow speed. Whilst this isn’t so much of a problem if you are stood in front of the camera (as you can tell when the camera has lost you and you can either wait or move position to get it to catch up), it is a problem if you are hoping the camera will follow a child or pet around the room.

The notification system also worked well, with notifications usually received within 5 seconds of the trigger event. There are plenty of options as to how you want notifications handled, including setting a schedule as to what times through the day you want to receive them.

One frustrating issue with watching live, is that after about 10 minutes, the app puts up a pop-up asking if you want to continue watching. You have 5 seconds to respond to this, at which point the feed is cut. I understand this might be a useful feature for some, but for those wanting to monitor their camera over a long period of time, having to constantly interact with the app every few minutes is very frustrating. There should be an option to keep the feed live continuously.

Another negative is that there is no way to download the files from the SD card remotely. You either manually have to remove the microSD card and copy them to your computer manually, or you have to use the App to play back the recorded files back and as they play, use the App itself to record them in real time, before transferring the resulting file to your computer. This makes it very frustrating if you are wanting to archive or edit your footage.

Something else that will reduce how useful the camera is, is the fact that you can’t disable the IR Lights. The manual states the option should be in the software, but it isn’t, even though I have the latest firmware release. This means you can’t use the camera at night, to look out through your window, because the IR lights will reflect off the glass and blank out the image.

Another niggle is the fact that there is no way to remove either the Ezviz watermark or time and date stamp from the video. I understand why it is there, but the option to remove these would be beneficial to some.

In conclusion, this is a really good looking and well made security camera. The image quality is excellent and a big step up from the 1080p resolution cameras you often find in these types of cameras, as is the quality of the AI system for detecting humans, pets and gestures. It also has a lot of features s that make it stand out above the competition, such as the ability to use 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks as well as LAN, the motion tracking, fully features software. Etc.

However, whilst I love this camera, and do recommend it, it does have some annoying issues that for me prevent it getting the full 5 stars. Locking the frame rate to 15fps is disappointing on a camera with this level of image quality and that is (in part) being sold as a camera to watch fast moving children and pets. Making it so that the user has to interact with the app every few minutes or else the feed stops is also extremely frustrating. The pan and tilt responsiveness is too slow, and on anything less than a perfect network connection, likely to cause the camera to get stuck and reboot. And whilst it might not affect as many people, the inability to use ONVIF, turn off the IR lights, or to download files remotely from the microSD card will limit the usefulness of this camera to some.

I love this camera and really hope that many of these issues will be solved over time with software updates. But for now sadly, I must give it 4 stars.

[Amazon asked me to review this product and to give my honest opinion about it. If you found this review at all useful, I’d be grateful if you would click the “Helpful” button below. Thank you!]