A few of years ago I’ve bought my first pan/tilt IP camera. These devices have come considerably down in cost, and now you can pretty much cover your entire house with decent surveillance equipment for just a few hundred dollars. However, managing these devices is still tricky, and I would not recommend it to people who are a bit more technically challenged.

The trickiest thing about this IP camera is, just like with every other IP camera I’ve ever worked with, the setup. I am one of those people who tend not to read instruction manuals when setting up a new piece of equipment, but when it comes to IP cameras, you absolutely MUST read and follow all the instructions very, very closely. I re-learned this fact with other IP cameras that I’ve used and set up, and have held onto it religiously ever since. It is a very good rule of thumb, and it has helped me avoid several potential pitfalls while setting up this camera.

One of the things that I really like about this camera is that it’s software is compatible with all major web browsers, and hence it’s (at least in principle) accessible on any device from anywhere. For the full functionality you still best off if you use Internet Explorer on a Windows computer. This includes the two-way audio and the video recording. I am predominantly a Mac user, and this is a bit of a setback for me. Fortunately, though, I still have an old Windows machine lying around, which I use exactly for these sorts of situations.

The pan and tilt work perfectly, and without a glitch. The web interface is very responsive, and the camera changes its position almost instantaneously when I use the motion controls.

The resolution and the picture quality are OK for the basic surveillance purposes. However, the picture can be a bit blurry, especially in the low light and compared to what we are accustomed now from our basic mobile devices.

This is the first indoor monitoring video camera with 720p video that I have tested. The picture quality is noticeably better than my old VGA cameras. I can see many more details in the room that I am monitoring. But keep in mind that if you are recording your surveillance video you will also need a lot more room on your hard drive to accommodate the higher resolution.

The reason that I am giving this product five stars despite its few small shortcomings is that it’s still the best IP camera with this functionality that I’ve tested. I currently own and use a Motorola baby monitor camera, a D-Link camera, and a Foscam camera. They all have pan and tilt, two-way audio, remote access, night vision and basic VGA resolution. D-Link and Motorola have tried making the camera setup more intuitive and streamlined for the average user, but have instead made a mess of things to the point that under certain configurations you can’t even use their products. Neither one of those cameras is very flexible and reliable when working with a wide-variety of web browsers. Foscam cameras, on the other hand, are pretty close in quality to this HooToo camera, but I still think that the HooToo camera has noticeably better picture quality, both in terms of clarity as well as the lack of spherical distortions.

This is not quite the perfect home surveillance camera, but in terms of its price and compared to most of its competitors, I think that HooToo camera is the best option for most regular users.

**** Product provided for review purposes. ****