EZVIZ HB90 Dual 3K Kit - Double the Video for Less

I've made my feelings about home security cameras pretty clear in the past; it's all very well having a camera with all the latest features but if most of them are hidden behind a premium subscription, you could end up paying more than you budgeted for.

At the very least, I don't think it's too much to ask for your camera - the one you paid good money for - to be able to store what it records somewhere you can easily access. Surely that should be the minimum expectation from any home security camera and yet many make you pay a monthly fee to do just that.

So it's hardly surprising other common features like pre-roll footage and package, person or vehicle detection are often subscription-only too.

I hate it.

In fact, I hate it so much, I've gone so far to suggest I'd pay more for a camera up front in order to get some of that stuff for free.

Before we even get into what the EZVIZ HB90 does and doesn't do with or without a subscription, we need to cover off some pretty cool things about this camera I haven't seen before.

Firstly, this isn't one camera, it's two. The top, wide-angle lens offers a 96° horizontal view, with the ability to tilt at 10° and pan through 220°. Meanwhile, the lower cam tilts up and down through 90° and can basically rotate all the way around, panning through 324°.

So to be clear, both cameras can pan and tilt completely independently from each other. That gives you the ability to monitor two areas at once. For example, if you mount the HB90 at the corner of your house, you could potentially set one to point down the side of the property while the other keeps an eye on what's happening out front.

Alternatively, there's another way to use them; in concert. And this is so clever, it's exactly what I'm doing at my place.

Once you've set up the HB90 using the EZVIZ app, you can set each camera to monitor specific zones by default, then, when the wide angle lens spots a vehicle or a person, the other camera swings into action - literally - utilising its superior manoeuvrability to track the moving subject, resulting in a far more useful video of the event.

The other crucial part of the HB90 equation is the 8W solar panel, included in the kit.

This is a monocrystalline solar cell - if you haven't come across one before, they don't have a smooth, glassy finish as you might imagine a solar panel to have, which is good for you as that kind of surface can quickly become dirty, clouded and less effective. Instead, the HB90's panel (approx. 27cm x 19cm)  has a stippled, matte surface that I've found to be much harder wearing out in the weather.

There's a very versatile mounting arm included in the box and the 3-metre USB-C cable is long enough to give you a fair amount of flexibility when it comes to mounting both your camera and the panel.

The mounting bracket for the camera itself is simple, yet effective, with a choice of screw holes so you have the option to wall mount, ceiling mount, or even post/pole mount. Remember, because it runs on solar, you're not restricted by access to a power point or somewhere you can easily reach, to regularly swap out batteries. (Think up a tree, or perhaps high, under the eaves of the front wall of your house)

As long as it's within Wi-Fi range, there's essentially nowhere you can't put it.

What worked out well for me is the possie I selected out front is under a small overhang that meant I could just lie the solar panel on the roof, directly above the camera, pretty much concealing the power cable so everything stays nice and tidy.

There are plenty of screws etc in the box for all the mounts, with the HB90 unit sliding securely into place.

There's also a 16GB microSD card included in the kit, which is significant because this goes to the first thing I hate about subscription-based cameras; paying for storage. You still can - EZVIZ offers a range of CloudPlay storage plans from as little as NZ$89.99 a year. And to be fair, keeping your footage in the cloud is the most secure option.

However, not only am I cheap, I'm also reasonably confident the majority of would-be, opportunistic porch-pirates who might be considering targeting my front doorstep are unlikely to be resourceful enough to consider tampering with the camera itself, in order to snatch the microSD card any incriminating video is being saved to. That's assuming the sight of the camera itself isn't enough of a deterrent to keep them away in the first place. In keeping with that idea, you can even set the HB90 to flash red/blue lights and sound a loud siren if the bad guys get too close.

The included card is a long-life model with super fast read/write speed - making it ideal for use in cameras like these. Just a wee note; I opted to install a larger card so I could store more video and I found it quite finicky formatting it using the EZVIZ app. It wasn't until I turned the camera off and back on completely that it was prepared to recognise my bigger microSD as a correctly formatted device.

However, once I'd dispatched with that small hurdle, the rest of the setup proved pretty straightforward. The EZVIZ app gives you access to a lot of settings and customisations - perhaps a few too many. Given you're effectively initialising two cameras at once, it's easy to get bogged down in one menu when the the setting you're trying to change is somewhere else. I wonder if the interface could be streamlined and simplified a little.

I've found setting up the default detection zones to be particularly fiddly. As the camera (or cameras, plural) are facing out from the front of my house, they take in the street and two footpaths as well. I'd rather not be notified every time someone passes by - either on foot or in a car - but I still need to set up zones that will capture any vehicles or people coming onto my property as soon as possible.

Luckily, you can set the HB90 to Always-On Video mode, a low frame-rate, constant recording state that means you get a few seconds of lower-quality pre-roll footage before the detected event recording kicks in. Yet again, this is exactly the kind of feature you usually have to pay extra for. But not with EZVIZ.

Another such feature is Human and Vehicle detection. The HB90 can tell the difference and will notify you accordingly, without charging you more to make the distinction. There's also a "Beta" feature called Familiar Faces. The idea here is the app will notify you if someone you know has arrived at the house. Of course, you need to train the camera to do this using pictures of the the people who are likely to turn up, which I have. And it doesn't work. Not yet, anyway. Maybe it's just more Beta than I thought and it will improve in a future update.

As you would expect, picture quality is excellent and I'll demonstrate just that in the video below. If both cameras are pointed in the same direction, you'll unlock 4x zoom functionality - which should be more than enough to recognise faces or read number plates, even from quite a distance. And the HB90 works just as well at night - the two spotlights help provide full-colour after-dark footage, with another setting called Balanced Image Exposure ensuring you won't miss any important details, even in more shady areas.

Ultimately, what we have here is two cameras in one, that never need charging, that can physically track people who enter your property, even recording their movements before they're detected. And that footage will be stored locally, all requiring no further payment than the initial cost of the camera. A lot to love and none of my pet hates.

     

Click here for more information and pricing on the EZVIZ HB90 Dual 3K Kit.