Smanos IP6 review

The Smanos IP6 is a tall, vertical camera, in contrast to the dome shapes of most of the IP cameras we see. It comes in a white finish, and we liked its unfussy, squared-off design. The IP6 attaches to a rotating, pivoting and tilting base that you can mount to a wall with the included screws.

Although the tilting mechanism had enough resistance to hold the camera at the desired angle, it couldn’t quite cope with the weight of the power cable, which means the camera might rotate when you don’t want it to if you have the camera mounted on the wall at an awkward angle.

You use the IP6 app for iOS or Android to configure the camera, but we found it overly fiddly. For example, when putting in your Wi-Fi details you need to type in your Wi-Fi SSID manually, instead of selecting it from a list. It also took a few attempts before we could get the camera to connect to our wireless network successfully.  

The Smanos IP6 has a microSD card slot, so it’s easy to save recorded footage locally. However, there’s no cloud storage option, so if a criminal spots your camera they could easily take the microSD card, and the stored footage, away with them. Saving to the cloud is typically an optional extra requiring a paid subscription, but the option is certainly nice to have for peace of mind.

Cloud storage is usually tied into motion or sound detection, as such events make a network camera start recording. This is an area where the IP6 falls short of its rivals, as it lacks any sort of detection. This means that you need to manually access the camera from your smartphone or tablet to begin recording, which will be a problem if you intend to use the Smanos IP6 as a security camera. The chances that you decide to view the camera’s footage at the same time as an incident is occurring are likely to be slim.

Annoyingly, there’s no way to tell the camera to save only to the installed microSD card. Instead we found the Android app would simultaneously save recordings and images to both the Android device and the microSD card. You can at least delete the duplicated recordings from your connected device to free up space if needed.

If you’re only in need of a camera for remote monitoring, such as checking up on pets or maybe an elderly relative, the Smanos IP6 works well enough. There’s not much in the way of video delay, with live footage only a fraction of a second behind reality.

There’s no way to view the footage full-screen when watching it live; instead it’s relegated to a window within the app. This video is perfectly viewable, but we would have liked the option to have a larger view. The app also doesn’t rotate to landscape with your phone. You can at least watch videos saved on the handset in full-screen mode.