French smart-home-gadget maker Netatmo today (Nov. 2) debuted the Presence, an outdoor security camera that's meant to not look like a security camera.
Instead, the Presence is a modern-looking, motion-activated weatherproof lamp, 8 x 4.3 x 2 inches, that mounts onto a standard outdoor lighting fixture. It just happens to have a full-fledged security camera, complete with microphone, night vision and Wi-Fi connection, discreetly tucked into the base.
The Presence is a bit steeply priced at $300, especially compared to the $199 Nest Cam Outdoor and the recently announced $199 Canary Flex.
But unlike with those two, you won't need to pay for a cloud-storage subscription — the Presence stores video either on the customer's own Dropbox account or on an internal microSD card. (A 16GB class 10 card is included, and the Presence supports cards of up to 32GB capacity.)
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The Presence's camera has a 4-megapixel CMOS and a 100-degree field of view that delivers up to 1080p video resolution. Its 12-watt floodlight is dimmable, and its night vision is good up to 50 feet from the camera.
The lamp/camera is powered by the house wiring available in the outdoor light fixture, and the camera's electronic innards have been coated with the waterproof material HZO.
Customers can program the Presence and watch live or recorded video through the Netatmo mobile app on iOS (8 and up), Android (4.3 and later) and Apple's watchOS, or from a desktop browser. The Presence supports 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz band, but won't connect to public networks.
Like its older sibling, the Netatmo Welcome indoor security camera, the Presence supports IFTTT "recipes" to interact with other gadgets and software, and also works with Netatmo's "tags," battery-powered door and windows sensors.
But unlike the Welcome, the Presence's motion-detection can't recognize faces to distinguish one individual from another; instead, it simply tells whether a moving object is a person, animal or vehicle.
We're currently testing the Netatmo Presence and will have a full review shortly.
