Review: Kodak CFH-V15 IP Camera

Review: Kodak CFH-V15 IP Camera

Planning to get an IP Camera? The Kodak CFH-V15 is a 720P camera that streams and saves video to the cloud for anytime / anywhere access. It comes with the ability to pan 350-degrees left and right and tilt 105-degrees up and down to give you full control so you can see more of what matters. There’s two way audio, and also automatic night vision, for excellent daytime images and powerful night vision performance.

Through the bundled app, you can receive motion-triggered notifications that are automatically sent to your mobile device for real time alerts, allowing you to stay on top on the situation. Another unique bit about the CFH-V15 is that there’s no SD card slot. It stores all videos to cloud, and you can view your recordings for the last 24 hours. If you require longer storage, there’s premium plans for 14 or 30 days cloud storage, with smart detection features.

Another useful bit is the integration of a WiFi extender into the camera itself, as well as internal antenna for expanded coverage.

Videos captured were crisp and clear. The algorithm is a little aggressive in choosing night vision mode, it would switch to night vision even in the day, when light conditions start to drop. However, overall quality was still above par and images captured were crisp and clear. The ability to pan 350 degrees horizontally and 105 degrees vertically is useful, although the vertical motion is more of a upwards panning only.

The CFH-V15 does away with the SD card, and uploads content to the cloud. There’s definitely a security concern, and the usefulness is debatable. It will only work in WiFi-enabled areas and it does consume bandwidth in uploading the videos to the cloud. Plus point is that even if people tamper with the camera, and remove the SD card, the videos are all saved in the cloud for you to retrieve. The camera uploads in 10 second chunks so you would be able to retrieve your video even if someone yanks it off its cord or disable the WiFi.

However, the basic free plan only comes with 1 day of recording, and you would have to subscribe to a monthly plan for a longer duration.

  • Smart Detection $2.99​/month
  • 14-Day Cloud Storage with Smart Detection $9.99​/month
  • 30-Day Cloud Storage with Smart Detection $19.99​/month

Smart Detection uniquely integrates computer vision technology to intelligently filter alerts either by “Activity” (reports moving objects ranging from a rolling ball, vehicle in the driveway or family dog) or “People” (reports only human movement) to reduce false alarms by up to 98%.

Since there’s no in-built SD card, the camera uploads video on motion capture, so you would be limited to what event it detects, and it would then add the pre-recording buffer and upload the said video to the cloud. That said, the detection algorithm seems to be up to par.

The app (iSecurity+) feels rather cumbersome. I used the Android version. Panning controls were laggy, and the app was generally unresponsive. There are times when the video lags, and that affects the talk back feature too. Everything just seems rather laggy. Under the events page, you would have a long list of videos as every captured event is listed. Most events range from 10 to 11 sec and the search function (which only allows selection of dates), doesn’t work! Since all the video are stored on the cloud, it takes time to retrieve the video and it makes the whole searching and playback experience rather cumbersome.

The web interface on https://app.isecurityplus.com/ is much better. It offers an easier way to select the videos from a timeline, and navigate across different dates / times etc.

isecurityplus-web

Price and Availability

The KODAK CFH-V15 retails for SGD$171 (on discount now! – usual $195) on Lazada. Link here: http://www.lazada.sg/kodak-cfh-v15-hd-wi-fi-video-monitoring-security-camera-with-pan-tilt-zoom-and-lifetime-1-day-cloud-storage-black-4525078.html.

Conclusion

Good hardware but let down by poor software on Android. iOS users might fare better. Pricing isn’t too straightforward with the subscription plan (it’s almost 10% the price of the camera!), but the smart detection feature can be rather useful.

One Reply to “Review: Kodak CFH-V15 IP Camera”

  1. Hi GadgetReactor,

    Thank you for doing a review of the Kodak V15 camera.

    As per the issues you encountered, wanted to let you know that those are known issues
    a) the lagging performance of the Android app will be improved in the next release
    b) the date function not working, this is a known issue and will be addressed in the next release.

    Hopefully, with the next release, your experience will be enhanced!