Y-Cam fans will immediately recognise the Eye – it’s essentially a black, rebranded version of the Y-Cam Evo. That’s no bad thing: as you can read in our in-depth Y-Cam Evo review the camera is one of the smallest and easiest to use that we’ve seen.
Humax Eye review: Price
The Humax Eye costs the same as the Y-Cam Evo at £129.99 direct from Humax You can buy cheaper Wi-Fi security cameras, but none are as good as this. And unlike the (more expensive) Nest Cam, there are no subscription fees to pay. Once you’ve bought the Humax Eye, you get free 7-day rolling cloud storage for clip recordings. Clip is the operative word here: unlike the Nest Cam, the Eye doesn’t record continuously. It only records when motion is detected, so if it misses something (a rare occurrence in our experience) then you won’t see it either. An alternative if you want continuous recording but no subscription is the Spotcam Eva (which also has motorised pan and tilt).
Humax Eye review: Features and design
We won’t repeat here what we said in our Y-Cam Evo review as the Humax Eye really is identical. Suffice to say that it’s quick to set up on your iPhone or Android phone thanks to Bluetooth, and the small dimensions – 52 x 52 x 28mm for the camera only – means it won’t be too noticeable wherever you place it. It needs a power supply, so you’ll have to mount it reasonably close to a socket, although the USB power lead is nice and long. It will also need to be within Wi-Fi range of your router, and note that it doesn’t support 5GHz. That’s not likely to be a problem, though. This is purely a camera for indoor monitoring, and while you can point it out of a window, this will work only during daylight as at night the infrared LEDs will reflect off the glass and prevent you from seeing anything.
Humax Eye review: Apps
Rather than design its own app, Humax relies on Y-Cam’s app, so you’ll need to download that (or go to the Y-Cam HomeMonitor website) to sign up for a free account before setting up the camera. The interesting part is that you can launch the Humax Eye app on Humax’s PVR-4000T Freeview box, or its new H3 media streamer. Logging into your Y-Cam account with the on-screen keyboard is fiddly, but you can tick the box to stay logged in. The screen shows a snapshot from each of your cameras, and it isn’t just the Humax Eye that’s supported: all of Y-Cam’s HomeMonitor range will show up if you have any. At the bottom you’ll see a timeline and you can select any day from the last week to view a list of recordings. You can filter by camera and watch recordings full screen. Really, there are no advantages or disadvantages of opting for the Humax Eye over the Y-Cam Evo, unless you specifically want a black – rather than white – camera. Both work with the Humax Eye app, as well as the Y-Cam mobile app. The only criticism of the cameras concerns motion detection. First, you can only choose two rectangular areas for motion detection and we’d still like to see this changed to a Nest-style setup where you can draw any shape. Second, there’s no intelligence to decide whether the motion is worth alerting you about. Unlike some other systems, which can detect if it’s a person, animal or vehicle, the Humax Eye will notify you of any movement, and all you can do is to change the sensitivity. This means you’ll need to exclude any areas with leafy bushes or trees which could move around in the wind. Jim has been testing and reviewing products for over 20 years. His main beats include VPN services and antivirus. He also covers smart home tech, mesh Wi-Fi and electric bikes.
