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I have a list of features I prefer in an indoor camera: discreet sizing, long cords, the ability to turn off indicator lights, remote pan-and-tilt functionality, decent night vision, and zoom. There are a few brands that are already doing this pretty decently: Blink, which has a relatively well-priced indoor pan and tilt at $39.99; Wyze, which has the best performing pan and tilt at $31.90 (if you can get past the security issues); and even PetCube, which has a 360 cam for $10.49. A new indoor camera would need to raise the bar set by those cameras, and I don’t think the new myQ Smart Garage Security Camera ($29.99) from Chamberlain, who are known for their garage door openers, does. While it functions just fine, you can get better functionality from other cameras for the price. Even if you have myQ products and want to stay in the ecosystem, Chamberlain has enough integrations with hubs to make that a pretty seamless process with cameras from other brands.
Easy to spot
The Garage Security Camera is a lightweight stationary one-piece camera with a four-by-four-inch camera face. The integrated stand can be used right side up or upside down. Setup was easy enough: The camera paired easily through Bluetooth via the myQ app, after which you could install it, either by standing it somewhere or hanging it. The base has a magnet so it can be attached to a fridge or a garage motor easily.
Although it’s not really different from any indoor camera, myQ advertises this as ideally hanging upside down from your garage door motor, so you can see if the garage is open or not, see what’s happening in your garage and even communicate with people via the camera. Even though the camera has a 130-degree field of view, it’s stationary, so in that scenario, more than half the garage is out of the field of view—it’s easy to avoid being filmed. It’s an easy camera to spot, too—large enough to stick out like a sore thumb.
Chamberlain makes much of the camera being used for the Amazon Key In Garage Delivery program. This allows Amazon to open your garage, deliver your items while you watch on camera, and then close your garage, for an additional cost of $1.99 a delivery. The requirement for inclusion in the program is the smart garage, not the smart camera, and there are other smart cameras, like Ring, that are included in the program, so I don’t see this as a unique feature to the myQ camera.
Be aware of subscription costs
The myQ app allows you to set the same options you’d see in most cameras—zones to ignore, sensitivity levels, notifications. The video delivered is as good as any other 1080p camera I’ve tried, but does require a subscription after your 30 day free trial ends if you want to save any of those videos—plans started at $3.99 a month, which isn’t bad compared to competitors, but Eufy offers an almost identical camera for $28.97 that you can add to your Eufy Homebase drive, so you don’t need a subscription at all. Blink cameras have an option to use local storage, as well.
Static camera means lots of areas are out of field
This camera made me realize how much I used pan-and-tilt options remotely to adjust the view. Unless you plant a camera in a ceiling corner, it’s highly unlikely you’ll get a full view of the room, and you’ll likely want to zoom in and scan the space when you look at live video. My Wyze camera, for instance, actually follows activity on its own, rotating to always have activity in focus. I frequently brought up live video of the myQ and whatever I wanted to look at was out of range, but I couldn’t do anything about it, remotely.
Annoying software update glitches
My second issue was the clicking. The myQ cameras update at night, precisely at 11pm. I know, because my camera began clicking, with the lights flashing, every night at 11pm, and would not stop. The app would tell me the camera was updating, but it never ended. I eventually unplugged the camera out of annoyance. MyQ even sent me a new camera, which experienced the same exact problem. Unplugging and power cycling the cameras a few times does eventually solve the problem, but that’s more work than I’m willing to commit to.
There are better cameras for the price
In every scenario I tried to imagine this large, stationary camera, I just couldn’t come up with a reason that a smaller pan-and-tilt wouldn’t be better. Attached to your garage door motor, a 360-degree camera could capture everything in the room, and be high enough up to be hard to reach. For the price, you could buy a small pan-and-tilt that doesn’t require a subscription and use automations to tie it to your smart garage opener.
