 The original DropCam took the home monitoring market by storm, and the DropCam Pro claims to be even better. Maybe it's as amazing as they say. Maybe it's designed to prey on people with more money than sense. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between. Watch on to find out. The Jazz Mini phone and tablet stand from Cooler Master is now available in a variety of cool colors from these great retailers. Click now to learn more. The unboxing experience for consumer-friendly products from smart brands is always good. And was actually kind of fun in this case, because other than hearing ads on the radio, I did no research on the DropCam Pro before buying one to do this review. The camera comes pre-installed in a simple aluminum mount. There's a quick start guide that I'll be using to test their 60 second setup claim. There are some screws and a wall mount that the base clips into. And then I was a bit surprised to find out that it's powered by a long, thick micro-USB cable on a wall wart, instead of something thinner, easier to find sensible places to plug in, and more durable. Let's go back to the camera though. At the front there's an all-glass 130 degree wide angle lens. Not good for a cinematic look, but definitely useful if you want to monitor a large area, since there's no support for pan and tilt. And behind that lens is a new high sensitivity third inch sensor. That's about two times the surface area of the older HD model, making it better for low light situations. You can't see them now, but around the lens are some unexceptional IR LEDs that it uses for night mode. And then at the bottom we find the micro-USB plug for power or setup, if you decide to use a PC. Finally, internally we find a speaker, as well as a little microphone port for two-way voice, a dual band wireless end setup, and Bluetooth low energy for setting up with a smartphone or tablet, if you choose to go that route. Now on to setup, but first story time. Now I'd heard of Dropcam, but I never really cared about it, because I've been burned by subpar consumer grade network cameras so many times, that I was just over them as a category. All the ones that you're looking at now, I was given for free, and still never bothered to use, because they were just too useless and horrible. And it was always the same issues. Complicated setup, flaky apps, rubbish image quality, and worst of all, feature lists that were so short, it was almost like the manufacturer was intentionally nerfing the product, to avoid cannibalizing the sales of a higher-end offering, in spite of the fact that many of these companies didn't even have higher-end offerings. Anyway, the thing that made me say, maybe there's something to this, was the fact that Nest, owned by Google, acquired them. And then I knew I had to review it, when I saw their claims of 60-second setup. Did they really find the holy grail of networking product development? Was it that easy to deploy? The answer is, actually, yeah. It takes a lot longer than a minute, and their own website seems to have been updated to reflect that, even if Amazon's hasn't. But for PC setup, you plug it in with a USB cable, and follow the on-screen prompts. And for smartphone setup, you pair it via Bluetooth, install the app, and follow the on-screen prompts. But they guide you through creating a DropCam account, connecting to your Wi-Fi network, and placing the DropCam within Wi-Fi range, somewhere that it'll monitor something useful. So, not the inside of your petlery drawer. Then, once it's configured, the simplicity keeps on coming. Using a browser on a PC or the app, you can monitor the camera live, you can zoom, you have two-way voice communication with people or pets on the other side, albeit with a significant delay, and you can categorize repetitive events, so that DropCam will either notify you when a certain important thing happens, let's say, whenever the front door opens, or ignore it when uninteresting things happen, let's say, when the cat jumps up onto the bookshelf. This is cool, because these events also enable you to much more quickly scrub through saved footage in the PVR, or, sorry, CVR feature, where it marks them on a timeline. So, finding out when little Sally came home last night is super easy. Too bad this functionality is let down by a couple of small problems. So, first, it's still beta, and there are some kinks to work out. Basic stuff's okay, but the more complicated classifying things on its own is a little bit rough right now. And second, CVR stands for Cloud Video Recorder, a subscription-based service that you need to pay for monthly in order to do anything other than monitor the DropCam live. Yeah, after your pathetic 14-day trial of CVR to make the, let's face it, not-that-special plastic camera that you already paid $200 for, useful for anything other than live streaming, you need to pay $100 a year for your first DropCam, and $50 a year for each subsequent one. And that's if you only want the last seven days of saved footage. 30 days costs triple. There is no hardware reason that DropCam can't store footage on a drive or a PC on the same network, which would save bandwidth from your monthly data cap and improve the quality of your internet use experience, since constantly uploading 720p video will affect your network speed, especially if you start adding more than one camera. And while I'm aware of the feature that turns off video recording when you're at home, that's kind of ridiculous to me. I mean, what if a couple robbers team up for the classic, you make sure they stay in the garden while I empty out the house strategy? I guess I don't need footage of that when it comes time to report it to the police, right? No. So in conclusion, while DropCam solves some of my original complaints about network cameras, yeah, those ones, it really is amazingly easy to use. I mean, here, look, I'll log into it right now. You can go from not being logged in to being logged in and live monitoring your camera or reviewing your DVR, CVR, excuse me, in that much time, zoom in, zoom out. It's really easy to use. Sadly, it's yet another device designed to deliver as little functionality as it can, unless you're willing to fork out what I really think is an unreasonable amount of money for the subscription. But honestly, I don't blame DropCam for any of this. For over a span of, let's say, three years, charging each customer $500 to maintain seven days of recorded video from a camera that isn't weather resistant, is powered by USB for some inexplicable reason, and becomes nothing more than a fancy baby monitor the instant that they stop paying for the subscription. DropCam saw customers paying $30 to $50 a month for much less useful home alarm systems. They delivered a better product, saw amazing success, and got bought out. Good for them. No. The one that I blame is the other consumer networking and video surveillance companies who had years to get their act together and deliver something that works half decently and couldn't manage to do it. So now we have this. It works. I just think it's too expensive. Speaking of things that work half decently and aren't too expensive and let you watch videos, Hulu Plus. That was, wow, that was a terrible segue. Anyway, the plus part of Hulu Plus is key. Compared to regular Hulu, this gives you access to all current season episodes of a bunch of network TV shows on your own schedule and lets you stream videos on pretty much any device you already own, like your iPad or Roku. Hulu Plus gives you access to more obscure stuff like Korean dramas, kids shows, and Criterion movies, so you can be watching an anime like Sword Art Online, then switch over to the latest episode of a network TV show like Bones, all within the same service. You'll also get access to originals that you can't get anywhere else, like The Awesomes created by Seth Meyers and Mike Shoemaker, an animated comedy about a misfit group of superheroes. All 10 episodes of season 1 are available now, and season 2 premieres on August the 4th. So guys, be sure to check out Hulu Plus using my link, huluplus.com slash linus, to get a free two-week trial. It costs only $7.99 a month once you're done with the two-week trial, and if you use the link in the video description, again, that's huluplus.com slash linus, you get that extra week free, since they actually give you a one-week trial for free no matter who you are, even if you sign up without a code, but two weeks is better than one week, right? Yay! Unless it's community service for that time that you... Anyway, I... what was I talking about? Thanks for watching the video, guys. Like if you liked, dislike if you disliked. Leave a comment, tell me, am I being unreasonable? Is $10 a month totally fine and making you pay more with each one? I mean, is it just a matter of well-winessed? It's that much better than everything else, so, you know, that's why I'd love to hear from you guys. Do you have a DropCam? What do you think of it? Let's just leave it at that. There's a support us link in the video description where you guys can buy a t-shirt, give us a monthly contribution, or change your Amazon bookmarks to one that gives us a little kickback whenever you buy, I don't know, DropCams or whatever else you're buying on Amazon, and I think that's pretty much it. As always, don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already.