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Built from tough plastic, the camera body is reassuringly solid yet lightweight and in terms of form factor rather reminds me of a small handheld GPS device. The front houses the lens, a hole for the microphone, and a small power indicating LED. Round the back, things are a bit busier with a long-lasting metal screw mount for the mounting bracket, an RJ-45 Ethernet port, power socket and aerial. There's no terminal block for triggering external devices but again this is unsurprising for a basic camera at this price. Finally, hidden on the right edge is a small, recessed reset button.

As you can see, care has been taken to give everything a symmetry and elegance which, although of little consequence when the camera is hidden in a corner somewhere, is still very welcome.

Little provision is made for mounting the camera outdoors as no compatible enclosures seem to be available. This is hardly surprising given the camera's home user emphasis; however it's still something that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

For mounting indoors, a small bracket is provided that screws onto the back of the camera. It uses a simple ball and clutch mechanism that enables you to aim the camera anywhere within a range of 180 degrees horizontally and 90 degrees vertically from the angle of the bracket. With an appropriate mounting position, this should give you plenty of freedom to aim.

A power adapter is also included, along with a length of Ethernet cable, but the cable is quite short at about a metre long, which could cause problems if you plan to mount the camera on your ceiling and the plug socket is next to the skirting board. Assuming this isn't a problem, though, the power adapter is actually rather nifty. It has fold out North American plugs but then also comes with a number of small attachments that convert the plug to UK and European standards. It's a very simple and effective system, though I can't help but wonder whether simply selling models with different plugs for different areas would be more sensible.


The lens is completely fixed so objects passing close by will be out of focus and, as the encircling writing suggests, zooming can only be achieved via image-quality-destroying digital zoom. If you want the specific numbers, it's 2mm wide with a focal length of 2.5mm, which gives an effective viewable angle of 53.4 degrees horizontally and 40 degrees vertically. This isn't particularly wide angle, and is roughly equivalent of the lens on my Sony Ericsson k800i camera phone, but it produces a wider angle image than many other cameras we've looked at. However, it still produces a large amount of barrel distortion which greatly degrades picture quality.

Image quality is as good as I would expect for a relatively low resolution camera of this type. The auto exposure copes well with a variety of high and low light levels and even high contrast situations look decent. In particular, the sensor noise filtering makes even very dark images acceptable.

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