‎Outdoor Camera Review | SimpliSafe Support Home
 

3 Messages

Thursday, May 19th, 2022 10:10 PM

Outdoor Camera Review

I’ve been a SimpliSafe customer for years and was really looking forward to the outdoor camera when I finally bought two this year. I have been comparing it side by side to a Ring cam on my system for a couple months now and I’m ready to send the SS back. This camera should not have been shipped to customers, IMO. I’m not an engineer but the camera responds way too slowly, it doesn’t connect half the time despite it being 10 feet from a router, and it’s UI is inadequate. Does it even have an adequate processor for video streaming? And the video quality in daytime is way over-exposed compared to my Ring. It actually offers better video quality at night than during the day. I have zero issue pulling up my Ring (which is 2x farther from my router) every time and getting fairly true colors and decent clarity. I’m bummed.

This post was created from this comment on different post

Community Admin

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5.7K Messages

3 years ago

Thank you so much for your feedback, @gussentementes . Our engineering team continues to work on improving the Wireless Outdoor Camera, and further updates are already on the way. We hope that you bear with us in the meantime, but we thank you for giving the Outdoor Camera a chance.

3 Messages

@davey_d​ thanks for your response. How can I take advantage of these updates? Are the software updates automatic? Honestly, SimpliSafe should invite its buyers to send back their cameras and get a heavy discount for a version 2.0 (if one is being developed). I can accept an inadequate user interface, but the performance, picture quality, and speed is below expectations relative to market peers. 

Community Admin

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5.7K Messages

@gussentementes , camera firmware updates are indeed automatic. Performance is definitely continuing as a major focus for future updates. Stay tuned.

5 Messages

@gussentementes​ I said the suggested thing when I was bamboozled into buying a second indoor camera which I then had to buy an outdoor kit because they were unclear about the release date if any for the outdoor camera. Their support team is horrendous and didn't do anything to rectify the situation. I 100% agree, Simplisafe should rectify releasing subpar products and make it right for existing customers and especially when customers spend over a $1000+ on their systems and continuing monitoring.

1 Message

2 years ago

After waiting years for SimpliSafe to come out with an outdoor camera they completely dropped the ball. The camera records even when the system is off! Don’t go skinny dipping in your pool or hot tub if you have a camera overlooking the patio.  Even if the system is off, the camera will record everything. 

this has got to be the absolute stupidest thing ever.  The correct and expected behavior is to have the outdoor camera on when the system is in “home” or “away”, and off when the system is “off”.

this is a serious blow to your credibility in my eyes, and probably others once the word starts to get out. 

I will be returning my camera. 

Community Admin

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5.7K Messages

@skerman37​ we understand we're you're coming from, and we've already forwarded multiple similar requests to our engineering team. But please keep in mind that just like all of our cameras, the Outdoor Camera is locked down so that only you are able to view recordings from it. We strongly agree that privacy goes hand-in-hand with security.

Of course, if and when we push out an update for the camera to add this feature, I will let you know.

13 Messages

100% agree with this.  The Indoor Camera has different settings for Off, Home or Away.  But the Outdoor Camera does not.  Why is that?

Honestly, even Off, Home or Away is not enough.  Why not add a fourth or even fifth mode that can be user customizable?  Off, Home, and Away are the bare minimum.... why offer the bare minimum?  People like options.  I would love it if you could add a User 1 and even a User 2 custom preset.  That would be super helpful.

1K Messages

2 years ago

You could just do like me and if you are going to be outsfor a period of time just go in the app and turn them off, if you had a full blown wired POE camera system that records 24/7 you would be in the same boat and I have mine on always unless I'm outside working for awhile, now maybe give people a choice in the app then yes 

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