D-Link DCS-932L review

The DCS-932L switches from day to night mode automatically depending on light levels, or you can force it to stay in full-colour day mode or to always use its infra-red LEDs for black and white night vision. We found this did an amazing job in a pitch-black medium-sized room – everything in the room was recognisable, and we could make out most details on a person, such as height, clothing, hairstyle and whether they were wearing glasses, but true facial detail was only discernable at around two metres.

The web interface also lets you set up to 25 blocks of the screen as motion-detection areas. You set the threshold of tolerance from 0 to 100% to determine how sensitive the camera is when detecting motion, and it can email you snaps or upload pictures to an FTP server when triggered. Unfortunately, although setting the camera up to email us was easy enough using Google’s SMTP server (see FAQ) we found the pictures usually missed the subject they were trying to capture. This is because the camera can only be set to email six frames, and would trigger with a shadow falling across the doorway and run out of frames before the culprit reached the door. Upon seeing the camera he would scarper again, and avoid being captured. No matter how much we fiddled with the sensitivity we couldn’t get the camera to ignore the shadow and take corporeal shots.

To record video from the camera you’ll need to use the D-ViewCam utility. This supports up to 32 cameras, but we found it clunky to use. It couldn’t find our camera on the network so we had to enter the IP address manually, and the application is full of confusing icons and is generally unfriendly, especially compared to the slickness of mydlink.

When the mydlink service works, it makes Dlink’s DCS-932L the easiest IP camera to view remotely we’ve seen, and the iPhone app works brilliantly. It also has a logical web interface and clear night vision mode and is good value. It’s a shame mydlink is so temperamental, and the tricky motion detection setup and unfriendly PC software mean the Compro IP70 coupled with its optional wireless adaptor is still our top choice for an IP camera.