Momentum Aria Smart Floodlight Camera

First things first. YES, you can use this without a subscription to their cloud service. It’s not nearly as elegant without the cloud service but it does work. I’ve had this camera/light for a few weeks now and thought I would address some of the questions I had when I was looking through all the reviews of various products. The entire unit is well built. It doesn’t feel like cheap plastic and actually has some weight to it. None of these things will ever last 20 years but this one seems better than a lot of the setups I’ve looked at at the big box stores. The packaging is good and the documentation is better than what I was expecting. You can actually use a QR reader on your smartphone camera to download their app and I had this setup working on my network in about 5 minutes after turning the breaker on when I finished the installation. I was impressed. This camera light combo is pretty easy to install. It’s a standard 3 wire system that will connect easily if you are replacing an old light. The camera runs on the same power so there is no additional wiring. The only hiccup in the installation is that there is a small screw on the very top that you have to put in after the actual light is secured to the mounting plate (base that bolts to the junction box). It can be tricky to get that little screw set but with some patience it goes in fine. I’ve seen several reviews saying the camera doesn’t respond, won’t stay connected, or that the app is just garbage. More likely that not, those people have set up the camera too far away from their wireless router. I had a problem with slow response early on and thought it couldn’t be my router because I could get online with my phone no problem. But the light is about 15’ in the air above my garage. As soon as I moved my router closer, all of those issues vanished. The camera has been flawless for several weeks now. After getting everything connected and testing the lights with the motion sensor, I noticed how ridiculously bright the lights are. Seriously, you could land aircraft with these lights. So bright, in fact, that I was worried about blinding my neighbors as they were driving by. Luckily, these are LED lights and you can adjust the brightness through the app. And once adjusted, they return to that setting when they are triggered. Very nice detail to this setup. You get their cloud service free for a month and it’s fine but I’m not going to subscribe to it after the 30 days. I’ll just use the micro SD card and let it overwrite on a loop. A 64GB card will offer several months of record time before it overwrites which is more than enough for my needs. If I ever do have a need, I’ll just pull the card and give it to the police. The app isn’t amazing but it’s not bad at all. It is about as good as what DLink offers (yeah, not amazing, not terrible) and honestly, the app does exactly what it’s supposed to do. No complaints at this price. If you want a better app, spend some more money on a NEST setup. If you want to save money, this will certainly work, and work well. As for the hardware, you’re not going to get any more quality for more money. Hope this rambling review helps answer some questions.