An Unremarkable Entry In Indoor Security
SwitchBot’s newest Pan/Tilt Cam Plus 3K is another simple entry in a market filled with simple indoor security cameras. It’s black and white. It can be mounted on the ceiling or on any flat surface. It has app control and motion detection. It has all the features you’d expect from an indoor security camera these days. But overall, it’s about as attractive as a smoke detector.
Pricing and availability
The Pan/Tilt Cam Plus 3K retails for $70. It’s available exclusively through Amazon, and SwitchBot’s website also takes you to its Amazon store.
How can the design be so boring
Despite SwitchBot increasing the resolution from the previous model, the Pan/Tilt Cam Plus 3K still somehow gets lost among other cheap pan/tilt/zoom (PTZ) camera offerings. Even the name of the device is boring.
At 3.1 × 3.1 × 4.2 inches, the Cam Plus 3K is a fairly useful unit. It’s physically small enough to fit on a windowsill, and yet it offers a full 360 degrees of horizontal pan and 115 degrees of vertical tilt. Viewing angles are 107 degrees diagonally, 81 degrees horizontally, and 43 degrees vertically. The unit weighs 6.9 ounces or 197 grams.
The security camera is powered via a 5V, 2A USB-A to USB-C connection and doesn’t have an internal battery. This means you’ll need to place it somewhere where an outlet is available nearby. The stock connection cable is also a little over 6.5 feet (2 meters), which is a bit short for the 10-foot ceilings in my living area.
Currently, SwitchBot’s website lists a 2K resolution for this camera; However, it looks like this may be a typographical error on the company’s part. On the box, the camera is listed as a 3K unit. There’s also a slight discrepancy between the diagonal viewing angle listed in the owner’s manual and the information on SwitchBot’s website.
In addition to high-resolution daytime images, the Cam Plus 3K offers both black and white and color night vision. The black and white night vision is powered by a 940nm infrared LED. SwitchBot indicates that this IR LED is useful for capturing clear images in the dark while minimizing ambient light generated from the unit.
The Pan/Tilt Cam Plus 3K will also connect to the SwitchBot Hub if you’re using other devices within SwitchBot’s ecosystem. Alexa and Google Home are also supported, but HomeKit support isn’t on the menu. You also won’t find Real Time Signal Processing (RTSP) capability or 5GHz network capability in this unit.
In my opinion, this camera’s design lacks fun and sophistication. It’s similar in look and features to almost every other PTZ security camera on sites like Amazon. Plus, the white body and glossy black “eye” are the only available colors. That makes this security camera about as exciting as a bowl of cold oatmeal. But if low-key utilitarianism is your thing, maybe this little unit is right for you.
Great camera but inexcusable audio issues
The main feature of this camera is the 3K resolution. And the Cam Plus 3K image is really good. It delivers both bright colors in the daytime and pin-sharp details even in black and white night mode. However, the color night vision is a bit gimmicky. When enabled, I found the image had a high level of image noise with a surprisingly warm tone.
However, the camera does what a security camera should do: it gives me a general idea of what’s going on in a particular area of my home. Photos are also captured every few seconds when the camera detects movement, and if you have a SwitchBot subscription, you can save photos and videos to the cloud (more about subscriptions in a moment).
Alternatively, if you want to record videos and store them locally, the camera will accept micro SD cards. I would recommend this option as micro SD cards are fairly inexpensive and will cost less than a subscription over the lifetime of this unit.
The audio performance is pretty poor, however, making visitors sound like they’re speaking through mud. I’ve added a video of this performance below. In it, you’ll see that even when only a few feet away, clarity issues and poor syncing plague the Cam Plus 3K. If you’re looking for an indoor security camera that will give you great audio detail, this unit won’t do.
Subscription-based software rubbish
Also, the weakness of the Pan/Tilt Cam Plus 3K is the SwitchBot app. Its design is useful for basic tasks like adjusting tilt and pan, recording, and even turning on features like motion detection. But the software is flimsy at best, and every time you view your camera you see an ad asking you to subscribe to SwitchBot’s cloud storage service. It misidentified my cat as a human about 15 times, and occasionally ignored attempts to save videos.