Ezviz Home Security Camera Review

Unboxing and Setting Up Our Cameras

Now that you have a better idea of what we’re looking at, back to the boxes. Or more specifically, what’s in the boxes. Both of our Ezviz cameras connected to our home Wi-Fi, and both had power cords provided. This means we were free to install the cameras wherever we liked, as long as they were close to a wall outlet.

Now you might read that and think “Great!” or “Ick!” How your cameras are powered is a matter of preference. Some folks like the ease of plug-and-play since you never have to worry about charging up the cameras and you don’t have to deal with bulky battery packs, but some folks like the cleaner look of not having wires running down the walls. If you find yourself in that latter category, we have a guide to the best battery-powered cameras for you.

Ezviz C3N

That said, we tend to find ourselves in the battery-powered camp. A power cord can be restrictive and can make installation tricky in other ways – especially if you don’t have lots of exterior wall outlets (we only have one). So, before we dug out our drill to start mounting our outdoor camera, we decided to use an extension cord as a temporary placeholder and run it outside, as discreetly as possible. You’ll want to keep this option in mind.

Ezviz wired outside

Having the cord exposed is not the prettiest setup, but it does allow us to test positions and angles, get to know the Ezviz app, and learn all of the camera’s features before committing to a permanent location.

Before pivoting to the Ezviz app, though, let’s break down some quick stats on Ezviz:

Ezviz Camera Features

Now, let’s get into the app.

Getting to Know the Ezviz App

Early on in our setup process, we downloaded the Ezviz mobile app from our app store. It’s available on iPhone, Android, and desktop, but we chose the iPhone route.

Ezviz app connection

From there, the setup was pretty intuitive. We typed in our Wi-Fi password, scanned the QR code on the camera with our phone … and voila. We could see both cameras from our app and explore all of Ezviz’s features with ease.

Ezviz live view

And wow, the features here are impressive. From the clear-as-day 1080p video quality to advanced features like color night vision1, person detection, and motion zones, we admired the wide range of coverage we got from these cameras both inside and outside our home.

At this stage, Ezviz was starting to remind us of the Reolink cameras we’ve tested in the past. Like the C3N, Reolink’s outdoor model boasts a rugged, durable exterior and an attractive body design. But as far as video quality goes, we have to give that nod to Ezviz. We found both the crispness of our Ezviz playback videos and live views, as well as the efficiency and user-friendliness of the Ezviz app, to be a noticeable improvement over Reolink.

Now it was time to explore each camera a little more deeply.

Our Experience With Ezviz C1C

Ezviz indoor cam

This one’s got an eye for detail! C1C is one of several Ezviz indoor models, standing at a compact 4.06 inches tall and 2.52 inches wide. The camera’s sleek, small design and durable construction gave us a lot of flexibility in placement and installation.

For our purposes, the camera fit perfectly among the organized chaos that is our living room. We knew that, whether we were home or away, this camera would put its laser-sharp technology to work for us, protecting creatures great, small, canine, human, or otherwise.

While this camera doesn’t offer us that extra-wide field of view we’d get from, say, the Zmodo Sight 180 C camera, we found that with all the customization and hardware adjustments offered on our C1C, the difference in field of view (that’s 180 degrees on the Sight versus 130 degrees on our Ezviz) was negligible.

Ezviz dog camera

Case in point: Our camera caught this little furball in all sorts of precarious acts, from stealing not one, but both pairs of our slippers; jumping on the coffee table, a big no-no; and trying to knock down our DVD tower.

And through it all, our camera did great work recording all those moments of joyful delinquency and helping us keep more eyes on him, and the rest of us, pretty much all the time. So if you’re like us in constantly trying to wrangle your mischievous pet to prevent him from destroying your worldly possessions, you’ll appreciate this flexibility.

Ezviz playback

Motion Zones

Throughout our tests of the C1C, Ezviz’s app made it really easy to play back recordings from all that activity any time we wanted. And in order to make sure we’d be able to focus on the “right” kind of motion, the app let us draw over areas we didn’t want the camera to trigger, just like that.

Ezviz motion zones

We have to say, we really like this grid style. It’s a lot smoother than the motion zoning experience we had when we unboxed Ring’s Stick Up Cam: You can tap on the screen to block out zones in Ring’s app, but you can’t get as precise without a grid like Ezviz has.

Person Recognition

Our Ezviz cameras boast AI person detection. Sounds cool, right? Right, but with a note of caution: While our camera does tell us when the motion detected is the human kind, it just kind of ends there. If an animal passes through the view, the camera thinks it, too, is a human.

We don’t know too many humans with four legs. But we understand. These are, after all, relatively inexpensive cameras; while Ezviz’s motion detection technology handles exceptionally well, it doesn’t perform at the level we’ve seen in Google Nest Cams, which have leapt boldly into A.I. facial recognition, literally reading our faces to learn who’s familiar and who’s not. Nest cameras, you’ll note, are pricier than our Ezviz, starting at $179.99 for their battery-operated indoor/outdoor camera. You can read more about that in our Nest Security Cameras review, though.

What we will say, though, is that not too many other cameras can stack up to Ezviz in both price point and advanced features. As with so many security cameras these days, you tend to get what you pay for.

Two-Way Talk

Ezviz two-way talk

“Attention, students. It is now time for lunch.”

Here’s the thing. During the fall of 2020, which was right around the 7th month of the COVID-19 pandemic,2 we began spending lots of time at our little house in the Midwest. Our children, both sixth-graders, had started attending school online.

And we parents?

We were stretched just a little thin. Sometimes, we needed to be in two places in the same house at the same time. Other times, we needed an extra set of hands.

Most times, though, we just needed to keep those lines of communication open. And if it took using our Ezviz C1C as our very own intercom system, using our big, booming voices to usher our youngsters through their daily class schedules, reminding them of tasks to finish before the day’s end … we’d gladly oblige.

Ezviz bookshelf placement

That said, our young scholars were kept on task throughout the day thanks to our camera’s Two-Way Talk feature. We used it to check in on their progress from time to time while still keeping up with our own daily activities, even when those activities took us outside the house. Remember, you’ll have smartphone access and controls with Ezviz cameras.

Finally, we felt like productive humans again!

Our Experience With C3N

Ezviz pano

After spending some serious one-on-one time with our C1C for our tests, we were eager to see what tricks our outdoor camera, the Ezviz C3N, would have up its sleeve. Here are some of our takeaways.

Video Resolution

For the majority of our testing protocols, we enjoyed a full week of sunny, beautiful late-summer weather (a rarity in Ohio). The Ezviz camera captured those days very well, showing us impressive detail in its playback, and delivering clear 1080p images with little interference.

Ezviz outdoor drive-by

Durability

Mother Nature is no match for this camera! The hefty C3N is made to withstand weather, with an IP67 dust and water rating3. We believe that’s weather-speak for ”this thing can handle anything.” Maybe you live in the northwest and get hit with those Arctic blasts. Or maybe you deal with extreme heat in the southwest (we know… it’s a dry heat). Either way, we think the C3N will be able to withstand just about any weather condition.

While this is a helpful asset in any security setup, most outdoor cameras in the biz these days have some degree of weather protection, so Ezviz isn’t necessarily bringing anything new to the table. What does stand out with the C3N, though, is how tough it looks on the outside. In our experience, cameras like this have an intimidating presence that’s meant to deter criminals, or at least give them a reason to think twice.

Night Vision

Before we even opened the box, we knew our Ezviz C3N was equipped with some serious night vision technology. Rather than the standard infrared night vision we’re accustomed to, this one’s got color night vision – and we were keen to test it out.

And we’ll say this: When night fell after our first day testing this camera, we were met with a pretty all-consuming halo effect from one of our light fixtures. We realized that we had positioned our camera so that the light was directly in front of our view. Oops! So this is something to keep in mind.

We know, from our previous tests of dozens of other security cameras, that this is a no-no, for one key reason: It could cause the light sensor to malfunction, meaning we could miss important motion. We quickly solved this problem by positioning our camera a little farther to the left, and all was well again.

Alarm Notifications

Did we mention all the fun we’ve been having customizing our alarm notifications on this camera? Just one peek into the Settings menu on our C3N, and we knew we could truly make these cameras perform exactly the way we wanted them to. And customizations are important to us.

Ezviz Alarm Notifications

When we wanted to change our motion detection so that the only shapes our camera detected were human, we could check that box.

Or, if we would rather be alerted every time the camera detected a change in motion, we could check that box instead.

When it seemed like the camera wasn’t picking up the motion it should, we adjusted motion sensitivity using this handy-dandy tool:

Motion detection sensitivity

And then, just like our indoor C1C, we were able to go in and block off the areas of motion we didn’t want monitored. Be careful doing this, though; you don’t want to block out too big of an area and end up missing crucial activity!

Motion detection live view

CloudPlay Subscription

To subscribe or not to subscribe? That is the question, and we’re here to answer it once and for all: Yes. If you don’t already have local storage (a Micro SD card or your own self-monitoring) with your Ezviz cameras, you’ll want to buy a subscription for CloudPlay, Ezviz’s cloud storage network.

For what it’s worth, we’re seeing subscriptions almost across the board as an option for video storage. For that truly smart home we’re all shooting for, with multiple cameras sending all of that data back and forth at all times of the day, we know it’s important to have a secure place for it to live. CloudPlay delivers that, but be warned: It’s not without a price.

There are two plans to choose from — standard and premium. They both offer the same features, but the former will only support one camera, while the latter will support up to four. For comparison’s sake, their prices are pretty much on par with bigger names like Ring or Google Nest. Here’s what that pricing structure looks like.

ClouldPlay Breakdown

Smart Home Integration

Everyone’s favorite little smart assistant, Alexa, has a skill for Ezviz4, making it a good choice for home automation (for more choices, visit our complete home automation guide). As we have with previous smart home products, we went to work setting up that skill for our Amazon Echo Show so we could use voice commands to display our Ezviz cameras, arm or disarm them, and enable two-way talk, among other actions.

Pretty straightforward so far, right?

Wrong. When we thought we’d had it all buttoned up, we said, “Alexa, show me my driveway.”

Ezviz on Echo Show

Alexa said, “OK.” Then, she paused, and the three little dots began to crawl across the screen. Alexa, in a much meeker-sounding voice, said, “Sorry, your cameras are asleep.”

We were confused. We didn’t see any indication on our end that our cameras were “asleep.” We consulted our palm-sized instruction manual and saw nothing in the steps about this. After several misfires that had us scratching our heads, we turned to an old buddy: customer service.

Our Customer Service Experience

Who hasn’t, at least once in their lives, experienced bad customer service? We have – more times than we’d like to admit – so we’re always a little wary about calling customer service. What if we have to wait a long time to talk to an agent? What if we take all that time and our problem still isn’t solved?

So, we did what any self-respecting Gen-Xer would do.

We “chatted” our way out of our problem!

In-app customer support

Using Ezviz’s Live Chat function, located on the support page of their website, we explained our issue and waited for a response. It was swift, and within a couple of minutes, “Karen” was on the line.

What was the issue, you might be wondering? That would be something called image encryption5. In order to use these cameras with Alexa, Karen told us, we had to go into our camera’s settings and turn off our Image Encryption setting.

This is great information, and it definitely solved our problem. We could now use Alexa to see our Ezviz cams, hooray! But we were left with one lingering question after our chat with Karen was over:

Why couldn’t we find that little nugget of information when we were setting up Alexa with our cameras in the first place? Perhaps this is an oversight within Ezviz’s smart home functionality. This isn’t something we’d dock major points for, but to us, it’s a sign that Ezviz’s software might need an update in the near future.

Pricing and Subscriptions

Now that we’ve laid out our full experience with these Ezviz cameras, we have one confession: We did not purchase our cams directly from the company website. That’s because we couldn’t. No one can; Ezviz is one of just a few brands in the industry that doesn’t sell its products directly to customers.

Among the retailers that do sell Ezviz products, prices still vary, even among the same cameras. Our C1C camera cost $25, but we also saw it for sale on another retailer’s site for $35.

This was disappointing. but not surprising. Night Owl Security, another outdoor-ready system, sells their products through multiple retailers, and while it’s not as neat and tidy as other brands like Blink, it’s not necessarily a disadvantage for users. Personally, we prefer buying direct. But that’s just us.

Here’s our breakdown of Ezviz’s camera pricing, keeping those price variations in mind:

Final Words

At the end of the day, we really enjoyed testing, living with, and using Ezviz cameras. They’re durable, easy to use, and their list of features is nothing to scoff at. Add to that Ezviz’s powerful cloud-based network, and we saw our C1C and C3N cams perform smoothly from alert to playback, deliver top-notch images in 1080p HD and color night vision, and serve as a reliable layer of protection for our home. While they might not be the most popular cameras out there, they can definitely protect your home.

Ezviz FAQs