Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsCeyomur CY95
Reviewed in Canada on November 29, 2023
I'm just in early acquaintance mode with the camera but believe it to be of excellent quality and value for the money. A key feature was its ability to communicate with a mobile phone. The operating instructions covered off all the features but could have benefitted from some examples of what parameters each of the features might be set to for certain planned photo shoots. Experimentation and excellent client support helped me work through this and my contact committed to refining the operating instructions accordingly. Although we are in a suburban area, we are visited by a surprising number of different birds and mammals. The camera handled itself commendably. Its field of view equates to a very wide angle lens on a normal camera, so one must understand that images further away will be small. This may not be a problem, as the camera has very high resolution and one can pick amongst choices of higher resolution. I used the lowest resolution for my application but choosing a higher resolution would allow one to crop the picture afterwards, probably still retaining good resolution of the final edited photo. For night shooting, the motion detection feature seemed to work flawlessly. As for illuminating nighttime subjects, the camera's infrared strength can be set amongst a number of choices of intensity. I've only used it for a subject distance of 20 feet but there are at least 2 more brighter choices for much more distant subjects. The camera unit itself seemed quite sturdy and weatherproof and had 2 modes of attachment, namely, built in loops for employing straps to tie it to objects plus a small camera tripod-like bracket for screwing to trees or manmade objects. One can view the photos saved on the camera's SIM card, using a mobile phone and delete unwanted ones. Actual downloading of the photos requires retrieving the SIM card and using a USB connection to your computer device to either mass download or selectively. I tried that and it worked fine. The only real issue that I had was that the App for the phone can only communicate with the camera, through the camera's built in Wi-Fi when the Wi-Fi is operating. Given that one would normally program the camera to shoot at certain times of the day, when that period is over the camera switches to "Off" and the Wi-Fi connection is cut. If you were using the mobile phone during the live Wi-Fi and did not exit from the App before the Wi-Fi closed, the next time you tried to access the camera through your phone, the App opens to the last page used and will not navigate back to the opening page where you would reconnect to the camera's Wi-Fi. This is easily overcome by ensuring that you use the App's "Exit" selection. This way, the connection screen on the App will be displayed the next time you open it for connecting to the camera. I've shared these observations with the Ceyomur support staff and they sound sincere in reviewing this issue - likely through adding more elaboration in the operating instructions. Regarding battery power, the unit is equipped with a solar powered rechargeable lithium battery. It can be charged initially using a USB connection and then maintain a charge if placed in a sunny area. My chosen location was in partial shade but the lithium batteries seemed to hold up well. Nonetheless, the unit has 4 AA batteries as backup for when the lithium battery is nearly drained. Overall, despite some angst in dealing with the communications issue, I believe the CY95 to be of excellent quality and value.