Furbo Dog Camera Review (vs iPhone Baby Monitor)

I have a German Shepherd called Barkley he's generally well behaved as long as he's had his day's exercise but when I was out in the evenings I'd be concerned about him being ok.


Given that I have a spare iPhone that I use when I'm abroad so I can buy a foreign SIM and not pay EE's extortionate roaming charges I decided to use that.

I downloaded a baby monitor from VIGI



This was a pretty good solution - you install on your spare phone and connect as the "baby unit" for the dog and install and connect as the "parent unit" on your normal phone.

Now admittingly I didn't realise they also had a pet monitor at the time (or maybe they hadn't yet released it) but that's available here. I can't imagine there's much difference between the two.

PROs
  • You get to use your existing devices

  • It's very cheap at around $5.99 (about £5.00)

  • It has basic light functions (in that you can remotely get the iPhone's screen to light up to illuminate the room).

  • Picture quality and latency is good.

  • Apparently the pet version (I haven't tried with the baby version) has the ability for other people to access the app from their phone so your partner can check on the dog from their phone (if you can't get your girlfriend to free up enough space on their ancient iPhone to install the app).

  • Two way audio so you can talk to your dog.


CONs
Most of the cons come down to the Apple device rather than the software.
  • Apple works on the premise they own you rather than you owning the device so when you plug in your spare phone to monitor the dog your iPhone REFUSES to turn on until it's decided it's ready which can be between 5 minutes and 20 minutes by which time the taxi has arrived and you have to leave the dog unprotected.

  • The iPhone camera is not designed to take in a whole room so you have blind spots.

  • The iPhone isn't very good at being propped up - once it's deigned to permit you to access your phone you then have to open the software and balance the iPhone in the kitchen either propped up or I dangle it over the worksurface and put something heavy on it. Luckily Barkley doesn't jump and grab stuff when he's left alone and generally just sleeps.

So I got quite annoyed with this (mostly the iPhone refusing to turn on) and decided to buy the Furbo



This is a dedicated device that comes with some built in functionality however some of the more advanced functionality requires a subscription to the cloud based nanny software.

PROs

  • The device looks nice like a ceramic jar and fits well in the kitchen.

  • The power cable can be left plugged in and the device can be left sat there but powered off.

  • Unlike the iPhone you turn the device on and it immediately starts up and is soon online and you get a notification the device is active on your phone.

  • It can toss treats

  • Barking alerts

  • The camera is wide angle and the device actually rotates.

  • The device has proper night vision

PROs (nanny subscription)

  • Advanced dog activity alerts and advanced barking alerts

  • Cloud recording / doggy diary

  • Smoke alarm detection (it detects the noise of your smoke alarm it's not a smoke alarm as far as I can tell)

  • Cloud recording

  • Doggy diary

CONs

  • It's expensive

  • I got stuck in a firmware upgrade loop when I bought it that took ages to get out of.

  • They are all in with Amazon and I can't stand Amazon and won't buy from them unless it's impossible to get the item anywhere else.

  • They use the same "buy with a subscription or we'll overcharge you" model that GOPRO use so you end up having to take out the subscription.

  • The features split between nanny and built in are a bit arbitrary.

  • You can only delete the video clips ONE AT A TIME and there can be hundreds. This is ridiculous and means you have private video inside your home in a 3rd party cloud system that is not practically possible to delete. Big security risk.

  • Connecting to the device be laggy and slow compared to the £5 baby monitor app.

  • I don't know about other dogs but Barkley went nuts when the device squeaks and tosses a treat and tried to break the door down to find the deadly intruder so that's a pointless gimmick. Also I'm really not sure about encouraging you to leave your dog alone so long they need a treat, get a dog walker or don't get a dog.

  • Whilst the night vision is good I think it wakes the dog up and it's not really that much better than the baby monitor glowing the screen amber.

  • You get a lot of alerts most of which is just the dog moves from the bed to the floor ALERT, or it's triggered by you coming home from the pub (you then get sent a range of video clips of you drunk saying "awwww mr flufflesworth did you misssss mee" which you then have to manually run through and delete.

  • I'm just not sure I want to pay the subscription every year.


In summary the device is nice - the treat toss is a waste of time, the software is buggy and limited and the cloud is mostly just creepy and invasive.

If you have a spare Apple (or Android) device try the Baby or Pet Monitor apps first they'll probably do what you want.






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