Avermedia Eyes Pro review

Verdict:

Review Date: 21 Feb 2006

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Eyes Pro is the cheapest of AVerMedia's surveillance products, and it's also the least expensive card in this test.

Like the Swann and Voltek cards, it has four BNC network connectors for cameras. The back panel also holds a 15-pin connector that allows you to link up external motion sensors and relays.

Setting up the Eyes Pro is a little more difficult than the Swann or Voltek cards as you must install the drivers first. On running the software for the first time, we were disappointed to see an ugly, dated-looking interface. Installing a newer version that we downloaded from the AVerMedia website spruced it up significantly. The software runs only at a screen resolution of 1,024x768 pixels. According to AVerMedia, Hyper Threading must be disabled if you are running Windows 2000. Computers with Via, SiS or ALI chipsets are not supported.

We first plugged in a single camera to make sure everything worked properly. Unfortunately, this produced a white screen with interference. According to AVerMedia's website, this was because we had enabled all four camera inputs but installed only one camera. This seems rather a security risk: if three of four cameras were to fail, or an intruder were to disconnect them, the one remaining camera would be incapable of recording useful video.

The Eyes Pro software interface includes all the same options as the Voltek and Swann cards, so you can set cameras to record according to a schedule or when they detect motion. The interface is clunky, though, and it took a while to find all the submenus we needed to set up our recordings. The playback tool that Swann and Voltek include is far easier to use than this one.

Eyes Pro is cheap, but we recommend that you spend a little more and buy the Swann or Voltek cards instead.

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