The Best Looking Smart Indoor Camera Ever (Video)

So Hive reached out to me and said they wanted me to come by and check out their booth at CES and show me a new device they were launching. Honestly, I’ve heard the name before but wasn’t that familiar with them. So decided to do some digging first. Turns out their actually super popular in the UK as the leading smart home brand their in over 750,000 homes.

They sell a variety of starter packs with different lifestyles in mind from a basic starter pack with a a hub, a smart plug, 2 smart light bulbs, and two window/door sensors for $199 to a heating and cooling pack which just comes with the hub and a thermostat for $229 and then two top-tier packages one called Welcome Home that has everything in the basic pack plus the thermostat or a Close to Home pack that swaps out some of the sensors and thermostat for a camera for $349 (all of which are actually a good deal compared to other brands when you put together similar packs.).

They even have options for monthly payments instead of the upfront price making them even more accessible and differentiating them from some of the other smart home companies out there.

All of it works with their Hive app (which I love the look of frankly), as well as works with Alexa and IFTTT.

Now, that camera in the last kit is what really caught my eye and it just so happens that it’s what Hive wanted to show me anyway. So, let’s see what it’s about.

This little guy is the Hive View, it’s a smart home monitoring camera and it was the star of the show for Hive here at CES.

Firstly, we have to talk about the styling cause it has to be the best looking smart indoor camera ever. Look at it. It’s made out of metal and comes in this sexy black and bronze I like and a white and silver model.

Because of this look, it fits pretty naturally into the home decor without glaringly saying, hey look at me I’m a home monitoring camera.

Regardless of the aesthetic, it is a smart indoor camera and as such needs to have some good monitoring features right?

Video resolution is a proper 1080P with a 130 degree field of view which is important for getting the entire room in view and can be adjusted to point where you need it.

It can do person detection, motion detection, and sound detection and can be set to only record when something sets it off (and can even be set to ignore pets) and automatically saves the last 24 hours in the cloud so you can access it securely from your app at any time if you need for free. You can add a rolling 30 days of storage if you wanted for $6/month though.

It also has a kinda cool unique feature. You can pull the camera off of the stand via the magnets it’s attached with and use it for an hour on battery life that way. Maybe you want to quickly capture a moment on video and can quickly snatch it off, record, and put it back.

The new Hive View is selling for a reasonable $199 and a two pack of them will set you back $339 saving you $60.