Hive View camera review

The Hive View is Hive’s second safety digital camera. The unique, dubbed the Hive Digital camera, appeared like a typical dwelling safety digital camera however this time Hive needed type in addition to perform. Designed by industrial designer Yves Béhar, the View ought to simply fulfill even probably the most design aware of dwelling house owners – however it gained’t final for lengthy.

Value & availability

The Hive View digital camera is now not in the stores within the UK from Hive itself, though you might be able to get one from one other retailer. Hive has made the choice to finish assist for present Hive View cameras on 1 August, 2025. Which means that you probably have already purchased a Hive View digital camera, it would now not work from that time on.

You could find options in our round-up of the very best sensible safety cameras we’ve examined.

Design and construct

The Hive View is available in well-designed packaging with all equipment and a mini fast begin information. Although the setup could be very straight ahead, we advocate studying the information first.

You get a prolonged slim micro-USB cable (3m to be actual) that powers the digital camera and a really trendy trying steel stand (in both champagne gold or brushed copper) which could be positioned on a flat floor or put in to a wall or ceiling with the included fixing screws. As the bottom is magnetic, it may be connected to any metallic floor in your house – fairly helpful if you wish to keep away from making holes in your wall.

The digital camera itself is a tiny 56mmx56mm mild plastic dice, obtainable in two color choices: White or Black. The general construct high quality of the digital camera and stand is kind of an enchancment over the unique Hive Digital camera, providing one thing that appears slightly extra high-end and bespoke.

One aspect of the digital camera has a magnetic connection which connected to the stand. This holds the dice in place and permits for simple tilting of the digital camera. It’s additionally used to energy the View through wi-fi charging when it’s connected to the stand. Which means that the USB energy cable could be plugged on to the stand, making for a cleaner trying set up.

You possibly can, after all, select to not use the stand, however that might restrict the viewing angles. With that being mentioned, the digital camera’s 130-degree huge angle lens (which sits behind a black glass entrance) captures a really huge picture.

Organising the Hive View digital camera

In case you’re already a Hive person, you’ll almost definitely have the Hive app put in in your smartphone or pill. That’s excellent news, because the Hive View isn’t supported through Hive Dwelling in an internet browser, so you will have to make use of the iOS or Android app solely to attach.

The excellent news is that set up takes only a few minutes. Utilizing the Hive app, you faucet ‘set up a brand new gadget’ and faucet on the Hive View icon. So long as you could have Bluetooth enabled and the View has energy, the app will discover the digital camera and information you thru the setup.

It took us 5 steps and we had the digital camera up and operating – not unhealthy in comparison with some overly-complex sensible safety digital camera setups.

Options & app

The Hive View shows its personal icon on the Hive dwelling display subsequent to the Hive Energetic Mild and Hive Heating (these gained’t seem if you happen to don’t have them your self).

Nevertheless, aside from the flexibility to view and management Hive-branded gear in a single app, there isn’t a different integration with the opposite Hive units. It will have been helpful, for instance, if the lively lights could possibly be triggered to return on when the digital camera senses an individual within the room. Hive has reassured us that this performance can be obtainable in February although, so we’ll revisit this as soon as the replace is launched.

The digital camera features are fairly easy. You may select to watch the dwell video feed or re-play occasions which are recorded to the cloud through TLS switch, which Hive claims is protected with AES-128 encryption, at any time when the digital camera senses motion. Alternatively, you’ll be able to simply disable monitoring altogether and entry the dwell view within the app at any time when required.

Within the Settings menu, you could have numerous choices together with the flexibility to vary the decision from 720p to 1080p (though you’ll want a good web connection for the latter). Admittedly, we tried each however didn’t discover an enormous distinction in image high quality as each have been greater than clear and crisp sufficient to see what was taking place. Nevertheless, we did expertise playback stutter in dwell view mode with the extra demanding Full HD video setting.

The primary characteristic of the View is that it may be indifferent from its base stand, and because of the built-in 2100mAh Li-ion rechargeable battery, it may be re-positioned elsewhere in your house to rapidly monitor one other location with out messing with the unique setup. The difficulty is that the digital camera solely lasts round an hour on battery energy, limiting the makes use of when not linked to the stand. It’s an attention-grabbing idea and one which could possibly be helpful occasionally, however the severely restricted battery life means you’ll be able to’t pop it subsequent to the cat flap whilst you’re out all day (for instance).

You might have choices to rotate the video picture 180-degrees if you happen to connect the digital camera up-side-down. You too can decide to make use of night time imaginative and prescient, which works fairly effectively, that may be left on auto or disabled utterly. 

With a dual-core processor, the View has a number of sensible movement detection choices. The headline detection characteristic is that the View can distinguish between a human and a pet. Sadly, we’re a pet-free household and couldn’t absolutely check the declare, however we discovered that when selecting to detect individuals solely, the digital camera wouldn’t be triggered by lights being turned on or off or by outdoors vegetation shifting within the wind.

The digital camera can even detect sound within the room, and each this and the movement sensitivity could be adjusted from low to medium or excessive relying in your setting. You too can resolve whether or not to report audio when movement is detected because the View includes a built-in microphone.

The View additionally provides numerous methods to inform you when it does detect somebody within the room. These embody push notifications and emails, and whereas SMS notification can be an possibility, it’s unique to those who decide in to Hive’s £4.99 month-to-month subscription (which additionally supplies 30-day video storage in comparison with the usual 1-day providing). Unusually sufficient, we couldn’t discover a means within the app to enroll to this – and that’s a lot the theme of the Hive View.

There’s additionally a built-in speaker that can be utilized for two-way discuss.

Initially, the digital camera launched with out the flexibility to obtain recordings through the iOS and Android apps, however that has now been added.

If you end up spammed with detection notifications, chances are you’ll wish to decide in and arrange a schedule. That is helpful if you understand precisely when your own home is empty every day, though it doesn’t appear sensible for busy households which are continually coming and going. A greater possibility could be a set off utilizing geo-location utilizing your telephone’s GPS: as quickly as you allow dwelling, the digital camera would routinely activate. It’s a characteristic on different similarly-priced cameras, so we’re slightly stunned it’s not supplied right here.

Hive recommends an web connection of a minimum of 1.5Mbps, and a 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi wi-fi router, to make use of with the View. We’ve got a reasonably fast fibre broadband at dwelling and we discovered that dwell playback of the recording was tremendous at 720p, however greater 1080p recordings had a little bit of a delay.

When away, and utilizing a slower Wi-Fi or on our 4G mobile connection, we struggled to get dwell playback for longer than a number of seconds – even when capped at 720p. This isn’t the fault of the View, however it does make it very irritating to make use of, except you do have a stable, dependable dwelling web connection.

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