I’ve been in the market for a good IP camera for a while now and as it was not very easy to find something good enough for my requirements, I will share my findings with you.
My requirements are the following, and the camera that best matched them in a budget of not more than 150 EUR / 200$ is Foscam FI8918W:
| nr | requirement | description | compliance | Comments |
| 1 | must have | to be usable in Surveillance Station (Synology DiskStation) so you can record / motion record | partial | no audio |
| 2 | must have | to be usable in low light or even better, in no light – with most cameras you can see almost nothing at dawn | YES | night vision |
| 3 | must have | have as much of an wideangle as possible (for indoor use I see a 75-80 degrees angle view optimal so you have almost 100% coverage of the entire room if placed in a corner). | partial | 67⁰ |
| 4 | must have | resolution of 640 x 480 or better | YES | 15 fps at 640 x 480 |
| 5 | must have | stealth – be quiet when panning / tilting and being able to turn off front leds | YES | |
| 6 | nice to have | have WiFi so no data cables are required (just plug it in the air-conditioner wall outlet) | YES | b/g |
| 7 | nice to have | use compression so storage and bandwidth requirements are not high and | NO | MJPEG only |
| 8 | nice to have | pan & tilt | YES | |
| 9 | nice to have | easy to use web gui – not important if connected to a surveillance station (Synology DiskStation) | partial | many clicks to authenticate, no remember password option |
| 10 | nice to have | have not expensive apps for smartphones | YES | for iOS and Android |
| 11 | nice to have | to be able to disable WiFi when connected by wire | YES | |
| 12 | nice to have | be able to upload motion detected video with sound by FTP so you have a backup if the recording server is not working / not available | NO |