D-Link Full HD Pan & Tilt Wi-Fi Camera (DCS-8525LH) Review

The D-Link Full HD Pan & Tilt Wi-Fi camera (DCS-8525LH) is an indoor security camera that provides clear day and night video at 1080p, as well as motion and sound detection.

It records motion and sound events and stores the clips locally on a microSD card or for free in the cloud, and it uses mechanical pan and tilt to provide whole-room coverage.

At $99.99, it's half the price of our Editors' Choice, the iSmartAlarm iCamera Keep Pro, but it lacks some of the extras that you get with the more expensive camera.

Still, it's a solid alternative if you're looking to save money.

Design and Features

With its mechanical rotating base and round pivoting camera head, the DCS-8525LH looks like a mini R2D2 robot.

It measures 5.2 by 4.3 by 4.5 inches (HWD) and has a 3.5-inch Wi-Fi antenna attached to its right side for use with the internal 802.11n radio.

The rear of the base has an Ethernet port for wired connectivity to your network, a microSD card slot, a reset button, and a mini USB power port, and the bottom of the base has a mounting hole for attaching the camera to the included ceiling mount.

The camera captures 1080p video at 30fps and has a 114-degree field of view.

It uses 11 infrared LEDS to provide up to 16 feet of clear black-and-white night vision.

The mechanical pan mechanism has a 340-degree range of motion, and the tilt mechanism gives you a 110-degree range of motion.

There are two small LEDs on the front of the camera for power and connectivity status, along with a microphone, and there's a small speaker on the base.

The DCS-8525LH uses the same updated mydlink mobile app for Android and iOS devices as the D-Link Full HD Wi-Fi Camera DCS-8300LH.

It opens to a main screen that displays all installed cameras and whether they are online or offline, and at the bottom of the screen are buttons for Devices, One-Tap, Events & Video, and Settings.

Tap the camera you wish to view, then tap the view icon to launch a live stream.

Turning your phone sideways puts the stream in full-screen mode.

At the bottom of the live screen are buttons to begin manual video recording and to take a snapshot.

There's also a box you can tap to display controls for selecting a resolution (1080p, 720p), muting the speaker, and initiating two-way audio.

A gear icon in the upper right corner takes you to a settings screen where you can configure Wi-Fi settings, enable the microphone and night vision settings, put the camera in Privacy mode, and update the firmware.

Use the Motion Settings to adjust sensitivity settings and select motion zones using the Activity Area grid.

Back at the main page, the Devices button takes you to a screen where you can access all installed D-Link devices by category (Camera, Plug, and Sensor) and add new devices.

Tap the Event & Video button to view a timeline of recorded event video with thumbnails and time stamps.

The One-Tap feature lets you control multiple devices with a single tap and offers six presets including Away, Home, Bedtime, Wake-Up, Panic, and My Tap (custom).

In the Settings screen, you can create Automation rules to do things like have the camera turn on a D-Link switch when it detects motion or sound.

There's an Account button for editing your email and password and for enabling/disabling notifications, and a Schedule button for creating weekday, weekend, vacation, and holiday schedules to have automations run at specific times on specific days.

Back at the main screen, in the upper left corner, is a three-bar icon that opens a menu where you can access all of the above settings screens and get information about integrating with Alexa and Google voice commands and IFTTT applets.

Here you can also see the status of your cloud recording plan and change it if you prefer.

As with the DCS-8300LH camera, the DCS-8525LH comes with free cloud storage for up to three cameras that gives you access to event-triggered video recorded over the past 24 hours.

The Basic plan gives you access to seven days of video (up to three cameras) for $2.49 per month or $24.99 per year, and the Premium plan gives you access to 14 days of video with support for five cameras for $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year.

Finally, the Pro plan provides access to the past 30 days of video with support for up to ten cameras for $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year.

Installation and Performance

If this is your first D-Link device, you'll have to download the mydlink app and create an account.

Once the camera was plugged in I opened the app, tapped Settings, and tapped the Device bubble.

I then tapped the plus icon in the upper right corner and followed the instructions to scan the QR code on the camera base.

When the LED began blinking orange I tapped Next, gave it a location, selected my Wi-Fi SSID from the list, and entered my password, after which the camera joined my network within 30 seconds.

The DCS-8525LH delivered sharp 1080p video in my tests.

Colors appeared crisp and there was no barreling or pincushioning.

The infrared LEDs provided night vision video that was well lit and well defined out to 20 feet, and two-way audio was clean with no notable distortion when the volume was cranked up.

The motion and sound detectors worked well, with push alerts arriving instantly, and recorded event video was just as sharp as the live video feed.

I like the small positioning box that appears when using the pan and tilt function, as it helped me find the correct orientation, but found that the camera was a bit slow in responding to my gestures.

The Yi Dome Camera 1080p's pan and tilt is much more responsive.

My IFTTT applet to turn on a Belkin Wemo Insight Smart Plug when the camera detected motion worked perfectly, as did my Alexa voice commands to show the camera on my Amazon Fire TV-enabled HDTV.

Conclusions

With the D-Link Full HD Pan & Tilt Wi-Fi camera (DCS-8525LH), you can see what is going on in every corner of the room without the use of a distorted wide-angle lens.

It delivers sharp, colorful video during the day and equally sharp black-and-white video, and recorded video is just as good.

The camera comes with free cloud storage for the last 24 hours of recorded video and there are several fee-based storage plans available if you need more, or you can store video locally if you supply your own microSD card.

Support for Alexa and Google voice commands lets you view video on a large compatible screen, and you can use IFTTT applets to make the camera work with other IFTTT-enabled devices.

That said, the camera's pan and tilt response is sluggish, and it doesn't offer features like time-lapse recording and motion tracking like our Editors' Choice, the iSmartAlarm iCamera Keep Pro.

Still, it's a solid buy at half the price.