Yale Smart Indoor Camera review: A quality indoor security camera with local storage and a great app

There are no prizes for guessing this is a smart indoor security camera from Yale. It’s mains powered, records in Full HD and has useful features like person detection, infrared night vision and a speaker and microphone for two-way communication via the free Yale Home smartphone app.

Like many other smart home security products, Yale offers a subscription service for adding extra features. However, unlike almost all other similar systems, this camera can be used without paying monthly.

In fact, the Yale camera stores two days of recordings locally, ready to be viewed on your phone, with no ongoing cost. Instead, paying the £3.50 monthly fee increases that time span to 30 days and enables AI features, like the ability to distinguish humans and pets from other types of movement.

Yale Smart Indoor Camera review: What do you get for your money?

The Yale Smart Indoor Camera is, as you might expect, strictly a camera intended for indoor use, as it is mains powered and has no form of weather resistance or waterproofing.

It’s also a self-contained camera. By that, I mean it doesn’t connect to a hub and there’s no requirement to own any other Yale products or services. It simply connects to the internet via your Wi-Fi router, and is set up and administered using the free Yale Home app.

The camera can be set to record in 1080p (Full HD) or 720p resolution, with options to adjust the brightness and set motion or privacy areas. Motion sensitivity can be adjusted to prevent false positives and there’s the option to have infrared night vision come on automatically or not.

You can also adjust how long the camera records for when it senses movement (anywhere between 10 and 60 seconds) and how long it waits after one detection before allowing itself to be triggered again (zero to 60 seconds).

In short, there are plenty of settings to tweak but it never feels overwhelming. The app is laid out neatly and everything is explained clearly; it feels like a great option for buyers who are new to smart home security.

A power adapter and USB-C cable are included in the box, along with an attachable wall mount, screws and wall plugs if you choose to fix the camera in place. The camera can’t be detached from its mount, but there’s a good amount of adjustability and the video footage can be flipped 180-degrees to cater for mounting upside-down.

Smart-home owners will also be pleased to know the camera works with both Google Home and Amazon Alexa. This means you can ask your assistant to show a live video feed from the camera on a compatible smart display, like an Amazon Echo Show or Nest Hub .

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Yale Smart Indoor Camera review: What does it do well?

Installing and setting up the Yale Smart Indoor Camera is easy. The whole process takes just a few minutes and the application is intuitive to use. Everything is clearly labelled and each setting or menu item is described in a way that makes it easy to understand.

It’s powered by USB-C, which is another good thing. It means you can use your own power adapter or cable if you prefer – if the included cable isn’t long enough for your needs, for example.

The camera’s stand offers loads of adjustability; changing the position of the camera is easy, but it always remains securely in place. It’s also very compact and I like how the included wall mount clicks into place securely. Anyone with a drill and the most basic of DIY skills will be able to fit it to a wall in minutes.

Once installed, the Yale camera is simple to use. Video quality is good and there are several brightness options to ensure the picture is suitably lit. I especially like how the levels of brightness are explained using words instead of numbers; not everyone will understand plus and minus exposure values. I fitted the camera in a small hallway with limited natural light and had to crank the brightness up to its maximum level. This slightly overexposed the walls but meant the faces of passersby (ie, burglars) were correctly lit.

It’s powered by USB-C, which is another good thing. It means you can use your own power adapter or cable if you prefer – if the included cable isn’t long enough for your needs, for example.

The camera’s stand offers loads of adjustability; changing the position of the camera is easy, but it always remains securely in place. It’s also very compact and I like how the included wall mount clicks into place securely. Anyone with a drill and the most basic of DIY skills will be able to fit it to a wall in minutes.

Once installed, the Yale camera is simple to use. Video quality is good and there are several brightness options to ensure the picture is suitably lit. I especially like how the levels of brightness are explained using words instead of numbers; not everyone will understand plus and minus exposure values. I fitted the camera in a small hallway with limited natural light and had to crank the brightness up to its maximum level. This slightly overexposed the walls but meant the faces of passersby (ie, burglars) were correctly lit.

Smartphone notifications arrive quickly, too: usually between three and five seconds after the camera has spotted something. This often isn’t quick enough to catch a passerby in the preview image of a notification, but the camera starts saving footage as soon as movement is detected, so you can easily open the app and find the relevant recording. I found the camera was reliable at telling humans apart from other types of movement, but for how I was using the camera, I don’t see the need to pay £3.50/mth for this extra intelligence.

On the other hand, if I had a dog or cat, I might consider paying up to enable pet mode. With this enabled, the camera ignores pets walking by and only records when other movement, or specifically a human, is spotted. Speaking of ignoring things, the camera can be set to only record when movement is detected in a certain area of its view.

Again, Yale has done a great job here of making the process simple and reliable. I’ve used too many security cameras where setting recording zones (or privacy zones) is a fiddly and frustrating process. Not so here.

Instead, you get a grid laid over the camera view and you simply tap on the portions of the grid where you want motion to be detected. And if you want to block certain areas from view – a neighbour’s window or garage, for example – selecting those areas works in a similar way.

Infrared night vision is standard-fit on pretty much all security cameras these days and it works well on the Yale camera, turning on automatically when ambient light levels fall and creating a nicely detailed greyscale view.

Finally, I love how this camera works without a subscription. The AI-powered human- and pet-detection features are nice, but for many buyers they won’t be needed. Similarly, the free two days of storage should be enough for most people. If the camera has detected something serious – a burglar, for instance – then you’re very likely to access that footage and download it within the 48-hour limit. That said, £3.50/mth isn’t a huge price to bump that two-day limit up to 30, and the subscription can be cancelled at any time.

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Yale Smart Indoor Camera review: What could it do better?

There’s relatively little to pick fault at. However, on a couple of occasions the app failed to show a live video feed and instead gave the message “Camera unavailable”. This was a little frustrating but quickly resolved by closing and reopening the app. So far as I could tell, this only affected the live view and the camera still recorded video correctly.

A higher video resolution such as 1440p, or the option for HDR, would be a nice bonus, but I appreciate at this price point 1080p is still the norm.

Yale is a bit vague on the camera’s storage capacity. It says it can store between two and four days’ worth of footage, depending on how often the camera is triggered and whether you have set it to record at 720p or 1080p. I suspect not giving a gigabyte figure is part of Yale’s strategy to keep things simple, but I’d still like to see the stat somewhere – or even better, have the ability to expand storage with a microSD card. But, of course, that would rob a selling point from Yale’s subscription service.

Yale Smart Indoor Camera review: Should you buy one?

This is a well-priced indoor security camera that doesn’t just tick all of the boxes – Full HD video, two-way audio, nice design, intuitive app – but it does so with a real sense of quality. It’s clear Yale has put considerable thought into exactly how the product is presented and how the application works. Setting up security cameras is sometimes a frustrating process, but Yale couldn’t have made it easier.

Not requiring a subscription – and not hiding key features behind a paywall – is also a great reason to buy this security camera over alternatives from Ring and Nest. Great design; easy setup; good quality video; free local storage; a great smartphone app and reliable recordings. If you’re shopping for an indoor security camera at an accessible price and from a trustworthy brand, look no further.