REVIEWED: Philips In-Sight M120 Home Monitor
Paranoid about your home’s security while travelling? This HD-quality Wi-Fi cloud camera with night vision gives a clear view
Position the diminutive In-Sight M120 anywhere your house and download the In.Sight+ app to your iOS or Android device to watch live, streamed video – or even a motion or sound-detected highlights package from the previous 24 hours – wherever you are in the world.
Easy set-up
Physically, the 114x65x65mm, 187g In-Sight M120 can be placed on any surface, with a 240cm micro USB cable and USB wall charger supplied to keep it powered, and a separate wall mount included, too. It’s smaller and more discreet than most cloud cameras. To link to a Wi-Fi network, it’s necessary to download the app, create an account, enter your Wi-Fi network’s password. Then, the app produces a QR code on your smartphone or tablet; hold it up to the camera and it connects to your Wi-Fi network in under a minute. Clever stuff.
Great app
That In.Sight+ app is best viewed on a tablet, but, either way, it’s superb. Well designed and easy to use, it puts the feeds from multiple cameras – if applicable – on the left-hand side and the live feed from the selected one on the right. Live recordings are actually about five seconds delayed, though it’s possible to both conduct conversations through the In-Sight M120.
Impressive images
Settings can be fiddled with easily, though it’s the 1280×720 HD-quality picture that’s most impressive. There are also supposed to be options for 640×480 and 320×240 pixel videos, but we couldn’t find any option to downgrade – and why would you want to? Image quality at night uses infra-red, and the visibility is excellent despite a significant drop in detail.
Push notifications
The In-Sight M120 also has a motion and sound detection system. For instance, during our test it flashed-up a message on our iPad – ‘ Sound detected in hallway’ – that came from the app. The message appears whether the app is being watched, or dormant in the background. There’s also a push to talk option whereby a 14-second recorded message can be sent to the In-Sight M120 to playback (though as it’s played, the microphone picks it up, so it can all get a tad confusing/repetitive).
Edited highlights
Are you going to sit in a hotel room on the other side of the world watching a live feed of your front door or your cat’s favourite sleeping place? probably not, which is why Philips wants to let In-Sight M120 use its motion and sound detecting skills to film all the action from the day and store it in your cloud account for daily highlights.
Pricey plans
Though it wants to keep motion and sound-triggered recordings on a time-line, it’ll cost yer. Press the ‘Add cloud recording’ button and you’re whizzed-off to Philips’ website, where three options are available. Access to your In-Sight M120’s live feed is always unrestricted on the free-of-charge Basic service, which comes with the ability to share access with four other people. Silver (€99/year) membership adds the possibility of watching recording events (anything triggered by motion or sound) from the last seven days, with Gold (€299/year) increasing that to 30 days and adding sharing with 16 people.
Best yet
Cloud cameras come at a cost, though the subscription fees for the In-Sight M120 – the Silver option should cover most people’s needs – aren’t too high. Easy to set-up and with a superb app, the In-Sight M120 is one of the best cloud cameras yet.