SimpliSafe 7 Piece Wireless Outdoor Camera System

I’ve given this system time and troubleshooted placement to make it better. Here’s the breakdown:
Recordings: the camera takes so long to “wake up” that it usually only captures a leg leaving my property. I’ve had instances where I know someone was at the door on the camera & the camera didn’t start up to record or took so long that I have no evidence of the crime. Specifically, a neighbor asked if they could have a few cans I had on my porch. I said no. I was gone a couple days later and when I returned, the cans were gone. Going back through the recordings (cans were centered on the frame), cans are there and then 5 hours later, cam pictures wildlife and cans are gone. No evidence of the theft; the wildlife didn’t take em.
Another issue with recordings is that it drops off before the action has stopped. I’ve recordings of people coming up to the door and knocking, then the camera stops recording— did they get in? Knock again? Leave? Idk. Camera doesn’t record more than a few seconds!

Battery life: less than a week. Takes hours to charge fully. Camera doesn’t record on backup while charging. Super annoying to have to charge camera batteries every week or two. Replacing the battery often doesn’t line up with the app and takes several tries of battery placement to wake it up and get it re-set in the Simplisafe app.

Mounting/placement: janky. The knob only quarter turns on the mount, so will often come loose when adjusting the camera if you’re not careful.
If mounting outside (as these are outdoor cameras), needs to be within about 20ft of the wifi router or it won’t work. Not a good feature when you have a place over 20sf lol. This means I couldn’t mount the second camera where it actually needs to be because it won’t connect/record/motion sense. It’s a waste.
The camera is also designed to only sit upright, so you can’t mount on an wave or roof, basically just a wall and I don’t want my cameras reachable for others, so it limits the options. Camera picture doesn’t rotate view at all.

Image quality: the night vision is a joke. Needs to be mounted in a well lit area and still doesn’t have good enough quality to pick up faces when aimed directly at the past 2ft.

Motion sensing: camera takes approximately 30-120 seconds to “wake up” and start recording. Action is usually gone by that time.

I have it pointed at my mailbox and yet, it NEVER picks up Mail Drop off or anybody at the mailbox-even me.

The security system itself is just fine. I only got these cameras because I already had Simplisafe as a security system and the wired cams I had went kaput after 6+ years. I should’ve posted this review back when I got it, but I wanted to give it a chance, and like, life. I wish I’d never made this purchase and got a Ring camera system instead.
Do not recommend Simplisafe outdoor security cameras.

Overall, I love this system. Higher upfront cost, but lower monthly cost than other companies systems. I bought this kit (keypad, sensor, base station, 2 outdoor cameras), plus a doorbell camera, 12 door/window sensors, a siren, a glass sensor, and a motion sensor.

Mounting:

Everything was extremely easy to install. Everything has the option of screws or command strips. If you use screws, everything has a removable mounting plate that you can remove, screw to the wall, then mount the product to the plate. Or you can just use the included sticky command strip mounts. You literally cant mess it up.

Setup:

Setting up each device is extremely easy. The app has a really good UI for it, this is what I recommend using to set it up. But you can also do it without the app using the included keypad. All you need to do is press the button on each device, and add it in the app. Its extremely easy and intuitive.

Cameras:

The cameras mount to almost everything and swivel freely, and also can be mounted upside down. I knew in advance that the camera battery life would be bad, and I wanted the cameras to have high sensitivity, so I ran power cables for them. I highly recommend planning this in advance, and doing it, as you never have to worry about them again if you do this. If you have an attic, just mount the cameras near an attic vent on the roof overhang, and then running the cables is super easy.

Camera connection:

My house is about 1700 sq ft single story, and I had one wifi router near the middle of the house. It was able to reach all the cameras with the 2.4ghz signal, and it worked well enough actually. That said, the connection quality for the one of the cameras wasn’t the most stable, as it was in front of the garage door. To fix this, I ran a cat6 cable to the garage and put a secondary wifi router in the garage (“poor mans mesh wifi”). Make sure to set it up properly so the 2nd router bridges to the first. Now the camera has a great signal. If I had a bigger house and more cameras, it would be a simple process to add more routers for the different cameras.

That said, I do wish that at least the cameras and base station had options for ethernet hookup. I have cat6 cables running all over my house, and I could easily run more cables if needed. It would be nice if I could have a stable power-over-ethernet setup that would never drop connection. The base station wifi connection is fine, but again, having a hard wire connection for the base station would be nice as extra insurance. I believe the older model base stations do have an ethernet port, and Im not sure why they removed this on the new ones.

Ease of use:

The whole thing is stupid easy to operate. You can control everything from the keypad, app, and key fob. I keep the key fob in my bedroom as its 1 button to turn the alarm on if I forget to earlier. No need to even open the app. If Im at work and I forget to turn the alarm on, I can do it easily from the app. Literally no complaints here.

Alarm:

One thing thats cool is for 3 days after you set it up, theres a trial window where you can mess around with the alarms and trigger them without having SimpliSafe call you or the cops showing up. Because of this, I was able to test the loudness of the system. The base station is decently loud on its own, however its located pretty far from where I want the alarms to be the loudest. Its probably 100% usable on its own, but I wanted something louder, so I also got a siren. The siren is extremely loud and I had to cover my ears standing near it.

Price:

Initial setup cost is high, and will probably be higher than most other security systems out there (ADT, Vivint, etc). My whole setup cost a bit over $1000. But it will cost less than a professionally installed power-over-ethernet CCTV setup, or even a DIY kit for that. That said, you get a LOT of stuff for that much money, and other systems might not have things like sensors on every single window and door for example. But then theres the monthly cost. You can run this for as low as $0/month, without professional monitoring. With professional monitoring, and all the other options, it maxes out at $30/month. Other companies will have lower initial costs, but then will sell you the cameras on a loan for a higher cost per month. One company quoted me $75 per month with like $100 initial. Id rather buy it all outright and not pay as much per month. All Im paying for with SimpliSafe now is for them to monitor it. And theres no contracts or anything.

Another thing I should mention is that because of the modularity, you can buy what you can afford now and add more devices as you go. This kit is one of the more expensive kits (because of the cameras), but there are others that cost a lot less. And then you can add some more sensors here or there, and eventually end up with a complete system. Because of this, Id recommend SimpliSafe to anyone. Maybe not this exact kit, as not everyone will want cameras, but any one of the kits that someone may want.

I’m sure this product would’ve been perfect, it gets great reviews and is in the top 5 best security systems. However, I also ordered the doorbell not realizing it is not wireless. So I had to return the entire system.