Reviews: WansView Security Surveillance Waterproof Detection W4 2PACK

Review kenneth pfeifer say Easy to setup and install with great features.

The set up to get an image was easy and took less than 10 minutes including time to download app. The app is very intuitive to use. In settings you can invite family members, set time zone, turn on or off motion alert. In motion alert you can also adjust the sensitivity of motion detection and schedule the time you want motion alert on. In advanced setting you can rotate image, adjust camera microphone and speaker volume. After I got an image from camera on my smart phone, I disconnected power to camera and mounted the camera.
For height of front house camera, I chose the top of outside wall right under soffit. For location I chose the corner of garage door next to front door entrance. In this location I could mount camera screws in wood versus brick and see cars in driveway and people walking to my front door. Using the drilling template included and a 3/32” drill bit I drilled the 3 mounting holes. Since I had no 115 volt outlets on the outside of house I drilled a 1” hole in center of drilling template and pulled the camera wires to my garage inside where I had 115 volt outlets. Then I mounted the camera with 3 wood screws (included) and chalked the 1” hole with Latex exterior chalking.
The visual clarity of camera in daylight and nighttime is excellent. I like the capability of cloud storage for this camera to use as a security camera. I chose the 7-day cloud storage plan where you can have 3 cameras under one cloud storage plan. You can easily go back to a certain time and day to view motion alerts in the app and then download, delete or cancel them.
The Price, features, ease of use, delivery and quality of this outdoor camera is excellent, and I recommend this camera to anyone wanting a security camera.

A review Big Bruin said Great Value - Works Well.

Overall, these cameras are great. I have been using a few Wansview W2 outdoor cameras for a few years, and decided to try these new W4's when they came out to see if they were the right fit for expanding my coverage.

The first thing I noticed is that the cameras are really small. They have the same general shape of the W2 and other typical bullet cameras, but they are about 1/2 to maybe 2/3 the size. Pretty cool to me, since it will make installing them in more locations possible and they will be a bit less conspicuous.

The image quality, motion detection, and night vision are all as expected, and pretty good. The night vision does have a hot spot at the center of the field of view, but it is not overwhelming.

The price is very impressive, as $80 for two cameras is quite a deal for this quality. I would pay more, and was about to with the purchase of a single W2 at about $55.

The Wansview Cloud app works well, and found the cameras quickly. Overall, the interface looks and works much like the Wyze camera app, which is pretty good.

The main downside to these cameras is that they only work with the Wansview Cloud app. I have a local server managing my cameras with Blue Iris, and while the W2's work fine with that, these will not. So, in the end I will not be using them at my house, but this will be the right choice for my Mom's house where she doesn't have any cameras and isn't tied to a local server, but could use a couple cameras and a cloud service would be fine. The other downside to these is that there are no cheap / free options for the cloud service. After your free 30-day trial, you are paying a bit for coverage. The basic plan (for up to 3 cameras) is $6.99/month or $69.99/year, and there are more expensive options to choose from, but none cheaper.

A review Josh T. tell us Insane quality. 2 for the price of 1.

Amazing quality! Wansview has yet to let me down. Their newest camera, a waterproof outdoor camera, is exactly what I need on my garage to keep tabs on my mailbox. The two pack is a great value as well!

Tested it inside in dim light and total darkness and it’s performing flawlessly! The kit has plenty of screws and anchors for mounting and a convenient template for drilling holes into stucco, wood, or metal.

Rainy here this week, but will be adding it to my garage this weekend!

Great product! I love how I can see the cameras on the cloud app—I have two Wansview cameras already which makes keeping tabs on my house simple with looking at just one app!

Another customer Lukasz Talk Excellent quality cameras!.

I've been playing with these cameras for about a week now. I also own Arlo Pro's so my findings are based on what I like/dislike compared to those.

My findings:
-The build quality of these cameras seem very good. The housing is sturdy and metal not cheap plastic.
-The wifi range is excellent, however, if you are on the limits of the range you will get poor results as would be expected. See suggested software improvements below.
-Video quality is excellent in day and night
-Motion detection is great but limited when not on cloud. Pretty much have to get cloud subscription to make these cameras useful as security/video capturing cameras. Also not sure about how much on board storage is in these cameras. See software improvements below.
-The power cable is a bit bulky/hard to hide. It's nice that there is an ethernet connection option which is why the power cable is so bulky but I wish there was a good way to hide it. Maybe an optional larger mounting plate?
-The power cable is a bit short, about 6ft. Since it's an AC adapter plug it's hard to modify or get longer cable. Would have been better as a USB power plug that you could buy long lengths of (I used 20' for my arlo's).
-no microphone on camera so no audio recording or listening while watching live view
-No speaker function so can't speak to people while in live view

Overall, the hardware is excellent, the software needs improvement.

Software improvements that would make this a top of the line camera:
-Separate alert(phone notifications) and motion sensor. I'd like to turn on the motion sensor to capture the video but do not need alerts/notifications sent to my phone every time
-The non-cloud based motion captured video has a limit of 11 seconds, not until the motion has stopped! So it only records 11 seconds of video, even if the motion continues and does not make a consecutive 11 seconds video. So if the motion, such as a burglar, is moving in front of the camera for 1 minute, you would only get the first 11 seconds of that video. We need the option to record more than 11 seconds/until motion stops similar to cloud based. Also unsure how much memory is in this camera?
-Cloud videos don't have 11 second limitation but are hard to review. They should be the same format as the "alert" section. They are shown as a time table instead of video clips so you have to know what time frame the video you want to view was or go through each captured event to find the video you're looking for. Would be much more user friendly to show thumbnail images of the motion captured with the time stamp beside the video, exactly like the "alert" videos are.
-The wifi signal strength needs to be shown for each camera. How do I know my wifi connection is good enough /reliable? I set one of the cameras up far away from the router and it connected fine but it would stop working after some time. A power cycle gets it working again but it randomly stops and does not record any video. It shows "online" but I can't get it to play any live video.

Another customer Nathaniel C. experience Useless product, worse documentation.

First, I am a computer engineer and regularly integrate obscure hardware across multiple platforms, so this type of setup isn't new to me. These cameras refused to connect via WIFI to my 2.4ghz network. I don't have cheap equipment in my house, either. I thought these were great for the price, but ended up just being a hassle and returned. I could get an IP address, ping them, but couldn't connect via either the Wansview app or through other 3rd party methods and protocols. This is what you get for trying to save a few bucks; Chinese junk.

My friend GDR said only works with their app.

They sell this as an IP camera but there is no access to the IP and only works on their app or software. Disappointing.
I lowered this to 1 star. They have not put in the information of what is not supported in the listing. seems like they are trying to trick people into signing up and paying for their app.

A review Ryan Ward said Great security cameras, I'd never say cheap though because they compare to high dollar cams!.

These are very nice, high-quality cameras that provide reliable viewing.
They have options for both cloud and non cloud cameras so purchase wisely based on your use case.

Personally, I'm finding a solid use for both. I have certain cameras that I want to save the footage on myself and use a a local network storage device for said footage where as other cameras (puppy cam) where I just need to view it and recording it isn't of the utmost importance.
Personally I think these could be the same cameras with different options for the ultimate flexibility but obviously companies come up with products to match their business models.

My only major complaint about these cameras would be that they aren't POE. The fact they have a RJ45 port that isn't powered is very frustrating. I have no doubt the price point would have to be higher with said technology though.

I have worked with everything from home consumer cameras such as Zmodo all the way up to Ubiquiti and corporate solutions, While in cameras aperture always plays a factor, these are great quality cams. Nightvision is pretty impressive up to the distance you'd want it to be .

Setup of these is an ultimate breeze to the point where I wish there was a slightly more technical way :P The holding the camera for the QR code read is annoying but does function well.

I wish the cameras used something other than wireless g though. Its frustrating to see how many of these home devices use it. My smart thermostat is wireless g as well so its not unheard of.

The software is easy to use and the cloud services are cheap if you opt to go with the cloud storage. Unless you're planning on investing in some local storage options you'll likely want to take the cloud option as its so much easier.

All mounting hardware is included and these are set up so just put your hole in the wall, and the cable feeds through it.

A review Paul H Chiang say Good Camera. Easy to install..

My old security camera broke due to the defective hard drive. I didn’t want to buy a replacement hard drive and the camera was 7 years old. The picture quality was low standard. So I left the camera there as a dummy to deter any unwanted attention.

I heard from a coworker about WiFi security camera and that they were cheap. It doesn’t need any hard drives, easy to setup and easy to install. He recommended me the Wansview and he was correct. It is easy to install as I was using the hole on my existing wires to install the power wire for the camera. The setup was a breeze and the camera app was easy to use. Only thing I wish it could do is keep the recordings for more than 2 days. Otherwise, overall it is a pretty good camera.

As Joel tell us Poor sensors, doesnt record video properly, bad costumer service.

I was looking for a compliment to my security system with these cameras, the sensors have horrible to no sensitivity at all, this triggers the video to record late, in other other words the camera sensor doesn't trigger the record within enough time to capture whats happening in front of the camera, therefore useless for security. Contacted costumer service about the issue, they got back to me the following day saying and update might be needed (I had updated these cameras before I installed them) the camera setup walks you through an update during installation. They said they'll send the replacement cameras if I didn't return these, so I agreed to that with them. I waited and waited for an answer after my last email to them, so far I've heard nothing. No one got back to me to help nor to make good on their word. Returned the cameras 4 days after I last contacted them with my answer.

As Kendra Martinez said Worst purchase ever.

Piece of crap. One didn’t even work. Never again