TeNda Cp7

I’ve reviewed plenty of security cameras in the past and most of them seem to suffer from one fault. They are either localised storage only with a cabled power source that can be easily cut or they have external storage via a cloud service that you have to pay for. Well, this thing provides both so I can’t really complain about this one can I? A micro SD card up to 128 Gb can be used or there is the Cloud which is free for the first 3 months.

It’s designed for indoor use so is less of a deterrent to burglary and more of a way to keep an eye on your household while you’re not there. It has all the usual things you would associate with a security camera these days – Human Detection with Smart Tracking, night vision (good up to 12 metres – who lives somewhere with 12 metres indoors!?) and a warning siren with lights as well as noise. You get 2 way communication via the app so it can be used to have a conversation with your nearest and dearest while you’re not able to be home.

One handy feature I quite like is the automated alarm system taking a picture as soon as it is triggered and sending it to your phone while it sets the alarm off, hopefully encouraging the intruder to leave! As the image is in 4MP Super HD, it should come out nice and clear, making identification that much easier. The almost 360° horizontal pan and the 155° vertical pan along with the ability to leave it ‘on patrol’ constantly scanning the area should cover most situations. The one thing that makes this camera stand out from all the others is the fact that it allows you to record up to 3 messages to play depending on what happens. I like this – a personal touch to your home security.

Wi-Fi and router technology is constantly growing and we’re learning more and more as we go on. This router (WiFi 6 by the way) seems to come out swinging with so many bells and whistles, I hardly know where to start, but start I must! The processor in the router is a Dual-Core 1.6GHz (good enough for most laptops to give you an idea of its capability) and the software uses this processing power to basically ‘package up’ the information flowing through your Wi-Fi. Multiple devices connected to the router have their info combined in to one data packet which allows each device to receive data simultaneously rather than one at a time, ensuring better connectivity for all devices.

To better facilitate this, those funky looking antenna serve a pretty important function. They are omni-directional and 6dBi (less likely to get blocked by physical objects) and so the signal gets through intervening walls and obstacles with ease, which is a good thing as, if you have young children running around, putting those pointy looking antenna out of the way next to a wall is no longer a problem! The TX9 Pro also utilises BSS Coloring (If there are other signals in range then the router will switch its ‘colour’ to a different one, effectively cancelling out the other signal) to ensure no interference from other devices and also has a healthy number of IP addresses to cater for more devices.

You also have features available such as setting up a guest network, parental controls, a timer and the ability to set up a blacklist of sites you want to bar access to. Finally, it also has a USB 3.0 port for a storage device that allows you to then create your very own Cloud storage that you can access from anywhere.