Hive View review – in pictures
Is the smart security cam with the detachable head a proper rival for Nest and co?
ROOM WITH A VIEW
As party tricks go, the ability to remove your own head and place it somewhere else would be a pretty cool one – if not necessarily that useful. The Hive View security camera is capable of much the same trick: you can snap off its main camera module and stick it on a shelf in another room, without having to go through the faff of reconnecting it all. It’s a neat trick that’s guaranteed to spark gadget envy in anyone with a more traditional smart cam. Whether it’s quite useful enough to make up for a few shortcomings elsewhere is a different matter, though.
CAMERA CUBED
The camera unit consists of a black or white GoPro-style cube, which clips magnetically on to the arm-and-base combo. Lift it off and it immediately goes wireless; there’s no delay or need to reconnect, so you can literally pick it up and put it down somewhere else. The 60- to 90-minute battery life when used in this way slightly spoils the fun, but there are plenty of ways in which this feature could come in handy. It’s not just the camera that’s impressively flexible, either. The arm part pivots about on the base to give you complete control over the angle it sits at, and the base itself is magnetic. You get a metal mounting plate in the box, meaning you can fix that somewhere high up on a wall but still easily attach and detach the base simply by snapping it in or out.
SUPER SETUP
One of the best things about the Hive ecosystem is how simple it is to add new devices. I’ve tested and installed dozens of smart home gizmos and it’s generally not a process I’d wish on my worst enemy. Install a hub; download an app; connect to Wi-Fi; move the device closer to your router; update the app; re-type your password; try again; turn round three times, touch your toes and say the magic password; give up and go down the pub. There’s none of that with the Hive View, though. So long as you already have the Hive app installed, and so long as it’s updated to the latest version, you simply plug it in then click ‘Add new device’ within the app and Bob’s your uncle. If you don’t already have a Hive product you’ll need to install that and set up an account, but there’s no need for a hub and very little fiddling around.
BACK TO BASICS
The fact that you can pick up the camera and move it to another room really is pretty cool. In practice, though, I can’t see myself using the feature too often. Security cameras are most useful when you’re out or asleep – and in either of these cases that hour-long battery life is not going to cut the mustard. It’s a nice extra, sure, but not quite essential. Outside of the removable camera, the Hive View is disappointingly humdrum. All of Hive’s smart home products are based around simplicity, and the View is no exception. It will monitor its surroundings for movement and noise, then fire off a notification to the app or your email address when it detects something it shouldn’t. But that’s about it.
PERFORMANCE MATTERS
Video quality is fine. You can choose between 720p or 1080p, and the latter in particular is fairly sharp, with decent contrast and that excellent 130-degree field of view. It’s certainly good enough to make out faces. I did experience lots of buffering when playing it back, though, and the picture also suffered from blocky artefacts. Still, motion detection works well. You can also tweak the sound sensitivity, again with good results. What’s more, the Hive app is excellent. It gives you an attractive graphical interface to choose between the View and any other Hive products, then gives you one-button access to almost anything you’d want to do: arm or disarm the camera, access your schedule, play back a video clip and so on.
WORTH CONSIDERING?
The Hive View has two things going for it: firstly, it’s far more attractive visually than most similar devices, and secondly it’s a lot more flexible in use than most (but not all) rivals. These are both things to commend it for. It’s about time someone made more of an effort to create a truly distinctive smart security camera, and on looks alone it’s definitely the one I’d want on display in my house. The fact that you can detach the camera and place it elsewhere, meanwhile, is a nice extra to have. Most security cams can’t do this, and if you think it’s a feature you’d regularly use then it’s worth considering. But I wouldn’t consider it for too long, because elsewhere it falls short of the best. Until the promised update arrives and integrates it with Hive’s other smart devices, or it gets Alexa support, it feels distinctly standalone and old-school.
