Conclusion:

I have to say that as a device, the Canary is very attractive and well designed. It looks great, seems to be very well built, and it should be capable of great things. The 1080p HD video looks very good in bright light, and is still quite acceptable in low light / no light with the night vision lighting in use. The environmental monitoring features are novel and very useful, and I find myself wishing that I could do more with this information by tying it in to my HVAC or other devices. At this point though, I just can't say that the whole package is ready to be relied on as an alternative to other home security measures. A couple minor annoyances, plus a handful of more significant issues, have me thinking that more work needs to be done to get the entire Canary infrastructure working properly.

Browsing other professional reviews (for example) and comments at places like Amazon.com and the Google Play store shows that my experiences are not unique, but I just don't know how many individual users experienced the multitude of issues that I did. To summarize, the main issues experienced were that the audio cable was not able to sync the first two phones I tried, live video could not be played back on the first three phones I tried, and once I had a phone that could get past the first two obstacles I discovered the worst glitch which was that a "live" view was apparently a frozen image from an earlier time. My phone is not the latest and greatest, but with Android 4.2.2, a quad core processor, 1GB of memory, and plenty of storage space it has been more than capable of handling every other task thrown at it to date. It did fine with Dropcam's interface, and it can interface with my multiple IP cameras with ease using things such as Blue Iris, Synology's Surveillance Station, and TinyCam Pro. A bonus to things like Blue Iris and Surveillance Station is that there are web interfaces, so all the work doesn't have to be done on my phone, and a PC screen can make setup much easier.



The Canary uses a secured cloud based system to store your video clips, with plans ranging from free to $149.50 per year (presently half price from $299). The free plan might be your best bet as a new owner, but with just 12-hours of recorded footage you may find yourself wanting more rather quickly. The prices for the plans are rather competitive, as the price of their 2-day, 7-day, or 30-day plan are quite inexpensive compared to other services. 7 days might be the sweet spot for me, as $49.50 for a year isn't than bad at all.

Shopping around finds that whether you buy the device itself directly from Canary or from a variety of online stores, the price is just under $250. Compared to comparable devices, the price is very competitive, but will you get something you can rely on for that price? Plenty of reviewers report having no problem with their Canary, but enough have experienced some sort of problem that tells me this might not be the best investment just yet.

Pros:

» Very good quality HD video
» Environmental monitoring is a novel, and very useful feature
» Device is unobtrusive, but stylish
» App has a nice layout and flow
» Can be connected wired or wirelessly
» Variety of plans available, starting with one that is completely free

Cons:

» Setup and normal usage wasn't possible with multiple, fairly modern Android phones
» Found it could falsely show no activity
» Had a hard time eliminating alerts for things like sun light or shadows moving
» Can't seem to delete locations or devices from existing locations
» Free plan is really limited with just 12 hours of recorded video storage

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