Gadget Review - Nooie 360 Security Camera

By @edent · camera gadgets IoT ip cameras review · 550 words · read ~396 times.

The good folk at Nooie have sent me their 360 WiFi camera to review. Cost is usually £50 - but check the bottom of this post for a discount code.

The design is gorgeous - and award winning. It's a sleek unit and, surprisingly, feels nice in the hand.

It can store videos on an SD card (not included) or via the cloud. The app - which is pretty nice - also lets you view the camera when you're away from home.

Let's tear straight into it!

Standard image

Night Mode

In low light, the Infrared LEDs turn on.

Night mode works pretty well.

Video

This is the video quality when streamed from Android.

It's basically fine. Resolution is fine, frame-rate and sound aren't great though.

App

One really nice touch is the way it handles WiFi sign on. The app generates a QR code - hold it in front of the camera, and it automagically connects.

There's an in-app tutorial when you boot up.

It's all pretty self-explanatory. Swipe the screen to move the camera.

There's a range of options where you can play with motion tracking. You also receive alerts when it detects motion.

Finally, there's 2-way audio support. You can hear what's going on in the vicinity - although it's fairly low quality mono feed. You can tap a button on the app and broadcast your voice to the camera. Good for scaring off burglars.

Cloud Services

I have mixed feelings about this. €170 per year feels a bit much - but it depends on what price you place on security.

Hopefully that price includes regular firmware updates. If you don't want to pay that price, you can record videos to the local SD card. There's no option to specify your own server, sadly.

Security

Whenever you invite a 3rd party into your home, you place trust in their security. The Nooie has a sensibly written privacy policy and ToS. All data is stored on AWS, rather than a Windows Vista box under a developer's desk in China. All the connections to AWS were correctly secured, as far as I could tell.

The camera doesn't respond to common port scans.

The first thing the app asked me to do was update the firmware - which removed the FTP Daemon to increase security.

There's no 2FA on the app - but that may be overkill for a consumer device. It does let you create guest accounts, so your household don't have to share a single password.

This isn't a full and formal analysis of the product - but it is a hell of a lot better than the security on most IP cameras.

Final Thoughts

It's a good looking camera. The video and audio quality are fine - but nothing special. Two way audio is handy. Firmware updates and cloud functionality really round off the package. All-in-all, it's excellent value for money.