Foscam R4M 4MP Indoor Security Camera, Dual-Band WiFi, Pan Tilt, Human Detection, Night Vision, 2-Way Audio, SD Card Slot - Works with Alexa & Google

First off it's a great quality camera. My only issue is that Foscam have given up on their web interface completely. Not really a terrible move since it did require some pretty poor plugins to be installed, but this does mean you need to camera app or their software installed to do anything with the camera.Our usage was to connect to synology camera server. Once configured it works great and synology even suggests some settings to change on it, but again having to use their software on the out of box experience was frustrating.

Having used Foscam products for years and found them to be more reliable and well built than others I have used, I have recently upgraded some of my older cameras to the latest product line from Foscam, I have found these to be a real leap ahead from the older models with well thought out and considered improvements.The R4M is one of the first cameras to feature dual band Wi-Fi and this is a real bonus if you have a busy 2.4 ghz network giving you faster connection on the 5ghz.The unit has the usual high quality finish that I have come to expect from Foscam and the new packaging is much nicer than the previous type.Set up is easy and I have it up and running in under a minute via the wireless method.The image quality is really good with the HDR able to deal with high contrast situations that other cameras would struggle, the lens has a very wide field of view with only a very slight fisheye effect.The night vision is excellent and sufficiently illuminates the whole room.The human detection seems to work very well virtually eliminating false alarms over standard movement detection also the sound detection is a bonus as you can use this to trigger recording before movement ie when an alarm sounds.Operation is very easy and the app clear and well laid out, a bonus is being able to pan and tilt via swiping the screen of your device rather than having to use a separate control.Having the option of recording directly to a SD card (you will need to purchase one) is a good option and also means you don’t need to pay for recording.In short a high quality camera in a neat compact package at a great priceI have put up a picture of it facing a bright window to show how good the contrast is and one with a iPhone SE to show how small it is

I have a few internal cameras to augment my mostly external CCTV system and as part of that had two R4M cameras for internal use since they came out.However I purchased a couple of these same models recently and they both have the same issue that randomly during daylight hours the whole image will change to have a had a very green hue. This happens all of a sudden and as I record all cameras 24x7 on a local server I can easily review exactly when this occurs.This is not the 'pink' hue issue that some Foscam cameras have due to the IR filter not retracting, and no amount of adjusting the camera's settings will restore it without a reboot of the camera. There is nothing that occurs at the time this happens, it just switches in an instant.These latest cameras both came with a recent new system firmware in addition to a newer application firmware. The former cannot be downgraded to see if that is the issue and I tried a couple of application firmware's but that made no difference and the probably persists every one to two days which makes them unusable.As I've install a few hundred cameras in my time, some thoughts on these (when working):1) They are only 3.5MP (2304 x 1536 max) and the higher resolution options such as this are not 16.9 but much squarer format which for many applications is not ideal.2) Low light sensitivity is good and hence night vision with IR.3) Colour accuracy is very poor and most daytime images appear over saturated and no tweaking to image settings will work at all times.4) The all import WDR feature appears next to useless and there are no other options (BLC, HLC) to improve scenes with very mixed light levels.5) Even in the non WDR mode the image is poor in terms of details in less lit areas, much more so that their C2 cameras and the older R2M.6) As a user that has a dedicated NVR type system, the setup of these is a pain. No option to connect by direct network cable from a laptop using a default static IP. Instead they have to be allowed to join a network (locked down VLAN in my case) and then use another PC/laptop on the same network subnet/VLAN with the Foscam search utility to find it get around the issue of random default passwords that aren't provided with the device. Professional equipment often forces users to enter a password on first connect which is so much simpler and if the Foscam tool can read default passwords from devices they're hardly secure to begin with.

The camera was easy to setup out of the box, looks like R2D2 :)I did however it did take a few attempts to upgrade the firmware, now up and running and connect to my Foscam NVR ive had no issues at all, if you use the app you can also talk which is sent to the camera which has a built in speaker, PTZ is easily controllable via the app as well.very good !