Expert's Rating
Pros
- Excellent video quality
- Person detection
- Pan-and-tilt
Cons
- Sound detection is hit and miss
- No color night vision
Our Verdict
The Blurams Dome Lite 2 is a versatile camera that can be used for most home or small business scenarios.
Price When Reviewed
$49.99
Best Prices Today: Blurams Dome Lite 2 (model A31)
Blurams has set a standard for delivering budget-friendly cameras with great video quality and high-performing AI detection (Blurams has a background in providing intelligent imaging technologies). The Dome Lite 2 (model A31) continues that mission with 2K resolution, person detection, and 360 degrees of coverage for just $50, making it a great option for first-time Wi-Fi camera buyers.
The Dome Lite 2 gets its name from its spherical camera housing. Overall, it has a generic design in line with Blurams’ other indoor security cameras that makes it easy to hide in plain sight. The tennis-ball size module contains a 2K camera with a 109-degree viewing angle. That’s augmented by motorized pan-and-tilt (355 degrees of pan, 95 degrees of tilt) to provide full-room coverage. The lens is ringed with eight infrared LEDs that provide up to 22 feet of illumination in low light. The camera also includes a built-in microphone and a speaker for communicating with family, and a 110db siren for warding off intruders.
This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best home security cameras, where you’ll find reviews of the competition’s offerings, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product.
The camera offers a few different video storage options. You get 24-hour loop recording with storage in the cloud for free for a lifetime. You can bump that to a 7-day loop for $5 a month, and you get one month free with the purchase of the camera. Fifteen- and 30-day video history plans are also available as in-app upgrades for $59 and $149 a year respectively. If you don’t want the added cost of a cloud subscription, you can save video locally to a microSD card (up to 128GB, not included). Whether or not you have a cloud subscription, the Dome Lite 2 will record a 10-second video clip any time it recognizes a human and save it to the cloud for 24 hours.
The camera’s motorized pan-and-tilt provides full room coverage.
Michael Ansaldo/IDG
The setup is simple. The camera depends on a wire for power, so placement will be dictated by access to an electrical outlet. It comes with a six-foot cord, so you have some flexibility. When plugged in, it immediately powers on and is recognized by the Blurams app. A series of screen and voice prompts walk you through the process of connecting the camera to the internet. You can set the camera on a table or shelf or mount it to a wall with its accompanying hardware.
Video recorded during the day in my test was clear and sharp with vibrant colors. Resolution defaults to a “normal” setting, but you can raise or lower it in the app settings depending on how much internet bandwidth you can afford to use. The camera automatically switches to night vision in the dark (you can change this in the app settings as well), and it provided enough illumination to light up my downstairs level with great clarity and contrast.
You control the camera’s pan-and-tilt with a virtual joystick in the app. The camera moves smoothly, and the motor is exceptionally quiet; I could only hear a faint hum when I was sitting right next to it. The app allows you to set waypoints and generate a panoramic image. For the latter, it sweeps the room taking pictures at regular intervals.
The Blurams app gives you full control of the camera’s features and your video footage.
Michael Ansaldo/IDG
The Blurams app is well-designed and provides intuitive camera control. When you launch the app, you’re presented with a recent still shot from the camera’s live view, along with controls for sharing camera access with family members, opening camera settings, and turning on/off the camera’s privacy shield. You tap the still shot to open the camera’s live view. Here you’ll find most of the camera’s controls including tools for capturing video and screenshots, a microphone trigger, and the pan-and-tilt controls. You can scrub through your video loop by scrolling through a timeline—events are noted as blue and orange lines—or access event-triggered video clips on a dedicated tab.
Motion detection and human recognition were reliable and accurate in my testing, but as with the Blurams Dome Pro sound detection was hit and miss. On the default normal setting, which is supposed to pick up loud noises such as a dog barking or a phone ringing, the camera was unresponsive to sounds, and even when I pushed the detection sensitivity to “high,” which should alert you to conversation chatter, it only responded to a loud cough.
That bug aside, the Blurams Dome Lite 2 proved to be a pretty reliable and easy-to-use camera. It’s versatile enough to be used for light home or business security or as a pet or nanny cam, and the price allows you to consider multiple cameras for more comprehensive coverage.
Best Prices Today: Blurams Dome Lite 2 (model A31)
Author: Michael Ansaldo, Freelance contributor
Michael Ansaldo is veteran consumer and small-business technology journalist. He contributes regularly to TechHive and PCWorld.