Foscam C1 IP Camera Review

Rating: 4/5

Pros:

Decent video quality in day and night
Automatic IR night mode
Easy to sync and view with the android app
Excellent motion detection with reliable push notifications
Once set up, the web interface for modifying camera settings is quite straightfoward

Cons:

Poor quality microphone
Android app lacks some basic camera settings
Accessing advanced camera settings requires jumping through many hoops
The browser plug-in needed to view the camera from a computer isn’t compatible with Chrome.
Micro SD doesn’t record constantly – only when motion is detected

Conclusion: The Foscam C1 has decent video quality and all of the features that an IP / Security camera should. Once set up, the camera has performed flawlessly, however getting to this point has been a challenge. There were many hoops to jump through to access basic features, such as syncing time with my smartphone (for example, by default the C1 wouldn’t sync time in the evening because the camera was set to ’24h time’ and my phone was set to ’12h time’). I consider myself quite good with technology and I still had to contact Foscam support to figure out how to access the web interface. If you are the type of person who likes toying with technology and fiddling to get things work, this camera will be great for you. However, if you’re the kind of person who expects ‘plug and play’, I would avoid this camera for now.

Author’s note: Cloud recording is a paid feature, however it is possible to record video to Micro SD, phone, or locally on a computer network.