Canary first flew onto the smart home scene in 2013 when it was just another Indiegogo campaign hoping to become the next big thing. Now, two years and nearly $2 million in backing funds later, Canary is a full-fledged home security camera.
When it originally debuted, Canary retailed for $249, which is a steep price to pay even with its HD video recording and automatic night vision. But now that it's a bit more affordable at $199, Canary is stiff competition for Nest Cam, Netatmo's Welcome, and other smart home cameras. With a few unique, useful features, Canary hopes to win households over by being not only a good surveillance camera, but a solid security device as well.
SPECS AT A GLANCE: CANARY CAMERA RESOLUTION 1080p FIELD OF VIEW 147 degrees INTERNET 2.4GHz Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n),connected Ethernet LIVE STREAMING Yes NIGHT VISION Yes MOTION/SOUND DETECTION Yes MOBILE APP Android and iOS SUBSCRIPTION Canary plans: $5, $10, and $30 per month plans PRICE $199 OTHER PERKS 90dB+ siren, ambient light sensor, temperature, humidity, and air quality detection Design
If you saw a Canary on a shelf in someone's home, you might not know what it was at first. About the size of a can of spray paint, Canary is a tubular black device wrapped in a satin metal finish—mine was silver, but you can get Canary with a white or black finish as well. The camera lens is positioned where the silver wrapper meets, and the bottom of the device glows with a faint reddish-yellow light when it's active.
On the back of Canary is a microUSB port that connects to its power adapter, an audio jack that is only used to securely connect the device to your smartphone during setup, and an Ethernet port. While I set up Canary using my Wi-Fi network, I appreciate the addition of the Ethernet cable because you could get a stronger Internet connection if you place Canary within reach of your router or modem.
Setting up Canary isn't difficult, but it does take longer than the Nest Cam. Once you download the free Canary app for Android or iOS, you plug Canary into a power source and open the app to begin. It'll ask you to allow location services and then ask you a few questions about your home, including your address. It might seem weird for a security camera to know your home address, but this helps Canary automatically pull local police and medical services phone numbers and add them to your emergency call list.
Like the Nest Cam, you indicate which room Canary will be surveilling and then proceed to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Then, Canary asks you to plug in the yellow cable it came with to that third port in its back, and plug the other end into the audio jack of your smartphone. Once it has established a secure connection, you're nearly done: Canary had a firmware update, so I had to wait an extra 10 minutes for the device to get up to speed.
Canary is a security camera you might want to show off—inconspicuously. It's elegant enough to blend into modernly designed homes, but small and nondescript enough to go unnoticed by passersby. It's not as lithe or tiny as the Nest Cam, but Canary wasn't made to be hidden or to stealthily disappear in between bookcases.
Image quality
Canary records video at 1080p, which the same resolution as both the Nest Cam and the Netatmo Welcome. The live video feed had about a seven-second delay when I viewed it from my iPhone 6, but the audio was loud and clear. I was impressed with its night vision recordings as they seemed slightly sharper than those of the Nest Cam. Objects, both moving and still, were crisp and even things further away from the camera had some definition. Night vision automatically comes on during the evening, or when it's just super dark in the room.
Valentina Palladino
Canary weighs only .87 pounds, so it's light enough to be moved anywhere in your home.
Valentina Palladino
Canary weighs only .87 pounds, so it's light enough to be moved anywhere in your home.
Valentina Palladino
Canary's design is simple yet elegant; it has the potential to complement home decor.
Valentina Palladino
The bottom of Canary, featuring its speakers from which the 90+ dB alarm sounds.
Valentina Palladino
The lens of Canary's camera sits on the top portion of the front of the device.
Valentina Palladino
The back of Canary, with its Ethernet port, microUSB port, and audio jack.
Features
Like most home security cameras, Canary's main job is to let you know when unexpected movement or sound is detected in your home. The device recognizes motion and sound, and depending on the mode it's in, Canary will notify you via smartphone alerts. Canary has three modes: Armed, which detects and records motion and sound, alerting you immediately; Disarmed, which records motion and sound but doesn't notify you; and Privacy, which turns the camera and microphone off completely.
Disarmed is the default mode, and I rarely switched out of this even when I was home. For those who don't want Canary recording all the time, Privacy mode is perfect, but you'll have to remember to go into the app and switch modes often. Much like my experience with the Nest Cam, I often forgot to switch from one mode to the next, resulting in random alerts to my phone when I entered my apartment and face-palms when I realized I had been out all day and didn't set Canary to Armed. But even if you are similarly forgetful, you can change Canary's modes at any time, from anywhere in the app. I also appreciated that alerts were sent to my phone almost every 10 minutes—an improvement from Nest Cam's 30-minute frequency.
While there's no two-way audio in Canary like there is in the Nest Cam, it does have a manual alarm you can trigger from the app while you watch live video. It's a 90+ dB beep that plays until you disable it—when I tested it from inside my apartment, I immediately shut it off because it was a louder, more aggressive sound than even my smoke alarm. If you're ever in the situation where your Canary senses a disturbance and you see a thief on your live feed, the alarm could be enough to scare the thief off or, at the very least, startle them. If you'd rather not be so conspicuous about it, you can call your emergency contacts from the live video feed as well.
A peculiar extra feature of the Canary is HomeHealth. This makes use of the device's temperature, humidity and air quality sensors to tell you more about the state of your home. Temperature and humidity are fairly self explanatory, and knowing these measurements could help you adjust rooms in your home for children or pets that are sensitive either factors.
Canary's air quality sensors scans the air for pollutants including carbon monoxide, cigarette smoke, cooking odors, hydrogen, and methane. The air quality chart spiked a bit when I was cooking dinner, so it's sensitive enough to detect pretty minor differences. While this sensor will in no way replace something like a carbon monoxide detector, it is a cool way of knowing what might be going on in your home's ecosystem that you would be otherwise blind to.
Morning footage shot by Canary. Canary mobile app Further Reading
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Canary's mobile app is where you can view live video, your video timeline, save and download videos, and change your profile settings. Unlike Nest, Canary doesn't have a desktop version of its software so you'll only be able to access your account through the mobile app. On the homepage is a blurred-out image from Canary's feed and a button you can tap to watch real-time video. Right below that are small icons representing temperature, humidity and air quality, and if you tap them you can view line graphs of Canary's three HomeHealth sensors.
At the bottom left corner of the homepage are three circles: one for your account, one for you to add familiar members for Canary to recognize, and one to change Canary's current mode. The mode circle lets you manually switch Canary from armed to disarmed or privacy, but you can go to settings by tapping either icon at the top corners of the homepage and turn on Auto-mode switching in mode settings. This tells Canary to automatically switch to Armed when "members," or persons you've registered with Canary, leave the home. When any one of the members returns, it will go back to Disarmed mode automatically as well.
However Canary didn't always recognize when I wasn't home. I kept auto-mode switching on the whole time I used Canary, and when I left to go to the gym in the mornings, Canary would stay Disarmed the entire time. A Canary representative suggested uninstalling the app, restarting my iPhone, reinstalling the app and make sure location services were enabled for Canary to remedy this issue. More often than not, I defaulted to switching modes myself on the homepage most of the time. I would have liked to see a schedule option like the Nest Cam has, which would let you set start and end times for the camera to be on alert for disturbances and send you notifications.
When you want to view past recordings, the Timeline at the bottom of the homepage shows you all the motion or sound activated events Canary captured. Each clip is broken down by time and you can tap on any to play them back. You can also tag videos to categorize them by what they contain (i.e. people, pet movement, sunlight, shadows, etc) and you can bookmark them to easily find them later in your bookmarks folder.
The Canary mobile app
The Canary mobile app
Setting up your account
Begin connecting Canary to your account and setting it up
Enable location services so Canary can tell when you're home or out.
Where you can input your address
The app shows you how to connect Canary to a power source
When it has power, Canary's bottom will glow
Tell the app where Canary will be placed in your home
Choose Ethernetor Wi-Fi to connect Canary
This yellow cable is used only during setup
Use the cable to securely connect Canary and your smartphone
Setup takes about 20 minutes in total
This shows you Canary's three modes: Armed, Disarmed, and Privacy
Once Canary has internet, it's almost ready to use.
Canary may have to install a firmware update right out of the box.
The Canary app homepage
The timeline shows you past clips of activity.
HomeHealth shows the room's temperature, humidity, and air quality levels as measure by Canary's environment sensors.
Tap "Request Download" to start saving a video clip.
This is the pop-up window that indicates your clip is downloading.
Depending on the subscription you have, you can download video clips from the Canary app to your phone. Since videos live in Canary's cloud, you must request a clip first and then it sends you a notification when it's ready to download. While it takes only a few seconds for a request to go through, I was perplexed when I tried to download an 8MB video clip when it didn't do anything. A pop-up window appears in the app when the video starts downloading, but my video never showed up in my camera roll. A Canary representative told me this was due to a bug that prevents Canary from exporting videos to iOS devices. The company is aware of the issue and already has an app update submitted to Apple which should fix the problem. Android users, however, can download clips with no issue.
Subscriptions
Out of the box, Canary gives you access to the last 12 hours of video and up to five bookmarked videos that are stored in Canary's cloud, but no downloadable clips. Paid subscriptions come in three tiers: $5 per month for a two-day timeline, 25 bookmarked videos, and unlimited downloads; $10 per month for a seven-day timeline, 100 bookmarked videos, and unlimited downloads; $30 per month for a 30-day timeline, unlimited bookmarked videos, and unlimited downloads.
I really like the cheapest option not only because it's the least expensive, but also because it's a good way for someone thinking about paying for home surveillance to get a feel for it before they invest more money. Nest Aware, Nest Cam's subscription plan, only has $10 and $30 per month plans, so Canary gives you a bit more affordability and flexibility with your money.
Overall, Canary delivers as a security camera rather than just a glorified baby cam. It has the basics down—HD video, crisp night vision, and motion/sound detection with frequent mobile alerts—but Canary really stands out with its loud alarm and emergency contacts integration, making it easier to intervene if you ever see someone intruding in your home. Bookmarking videos is another useful feature, because even if you don't put for a Canary subscription, you can bookmark up to five videos to view later.
Unlike the Nest Cam, however, Canary has no smart home protocol, which means you cannot connect it with a smart door lock or other device to have them work together. If Canary added this feature in the future, it would only make a strong product stronger. Canary's only current downfalls are the small bugs that made downloading clips and automatic mode switching complicated. Thankfully Canary already knows about these issues and can continue to make app and firmware updates to address them. Considering Canary provides more security features than other smart home cameras and has a few affordable subscription plan options, it's a solid investment for anyone looking to keep a more watchful eye on their home.
The Good
Canary's chic design lets it double as a decorative piece as well as a home security device. Sharp 1080p video recording, and especially good night vision. Alarm is super loud, super annoying, and super terrifying. Lowest tier subscription plan is just $5 a month—that's less than Netflix or Spotify. The Bad
Setup process is a little long and tedious. Location services can be buggy, not recognizing when you're home or away. No two-way voice feature, limiting your interaction with those on the other end of the camera. The Ugly
No smart home protocol means Canary is closed off from third-party devices—not good if you want to add it to your existing smart home ecosystem. Source:
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