Netatmo Cameras Review: Bringing New Technology to DIY

We’re impressed with the technology Netatmo is bringing to the do-it-yourself security space with its Welcome and Presence cameras. Face and object recognition are two features Netatmo helped pioneer, but has the company provided these perks and ignored customers’ favorite security features? We’ll discuss the Welcome’s and Presence’s key features and tell you our thoughts in our Netatmo Cameras Review.

Before we go over the pros, cons, pricing, and tech specs. of Netatmo’s cameras, we’ll give a brief rundown of what each camera does.

Netatmo can connect to other security and home automation devices through IFTTT (if this then that). IFTTT is a technology that creates a series of events when something occurs. For example, if Netatmo Presence detects a certain person at home, then the D-Link Smart Plug can turn on your coffee pot. Netatmo can connect to Scout Alarm devices, Philips Hue, and D-Link Smart Plug.

Netatmo has three forms of customer service: help center, email, and Twitter. The help center is extensive and has articles covering various issues customers have struggled with. Twitter seems to be the next best place to go. Netatmo’s Twitter support page answers questions Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (UTC+2), which is 3 a.m. to 12 p.m. (CST). These aren’t the most convenient times for people in the United States, considering most Americans would likely be either working or sleeping during those hours. Email is the last option, but you may not get a response as quickly as you would with Twitter. Oddly, Netatmo does not offer phone support, which may cause problems when performing a complicated install on the Presence. Offering no support on the weekends docks Netatmo some points too.

I Tweeted to Netatmo a few times and heard back fairly quickly. In fact, this is one of the best experiences I’ve had with Twitter support through a company. My questions were answered within the day, and the representatives were very helpful. A few of my Tweets were sent out Friday afternoon, which meant I didn’t hear from Netatmo for a couple days because of its hours of operation. I wish it had support options seven days a week, but I was pleased with the support I did receive. I wanted to call Netatmo, but there is no phone number, which was a little disappointing because most security companies offer a number to call.

"Prior to buying this camera, I had the Fujikam FI-361 HD, the Dropcam pro, and i even bought the new nest cam. You cannot even compare the software! Obviously it's 1080 full HD, but there is a the face recognition software. For about a week I kept receiving alerts for me to identify unknown faces, but now it works perfectly. You don't have to stare at your camera of rewind to see what happened, you have a a time line showing you all the motion and the faces to show you at what time who came, and you can setup alerts for each person. I personally set a notification for my house keeper so I am sure at what time she arrived and leaves. no more BS!

"It also send me a notification when someone it doesn't know comes to the door. To recap: I love Welcome by Netatmo, It's easy to install, reliable, it notify me when someone it doesn't know comes to my house! this is the surveillance camera of the future!" - Shira, Amazon Verified Purchase 7/12/2015

"I just got and installed two presence cameras last week. Very happy so far. The car, person and animal detection has been spot on so far. I've used D-Link and x10 cameras for a couple of years and with those you get a ton of the false alarms on movement detection. Those use a very basic algorithm for detection and you get almost every few mins same false alarm. The Netatmo camera is a bit smaller than I thought but it blends better that way. They simplified the setup a lot compared with the Netatmo Welcome. They use same air play feature on IPhone and they even get the wifi info from the phone. Very cool. I like the Dropbox link feature since I do want to have the videos saved but positively I do not want to be tied up to a camera subscription and as an added bonus you can play the videos even if camera is offline. It has a ton of IFTTT events you can integrate with e.g. I set it up such if I setup my house alarm it will also put Netatmo into the nobody is home mode meaning it can start notifying you etc." - MuchHat, Amazon 11/20/2016

"I own 3 of the weather stations and love them. I just returned the second Welcome due to the fact that it would not install. Customer service was almost non existent . A response every couple of days finally admitting it was their hardware problem. Great idea but not perfected. I suspect Customer service is being overwhelmed with calls. Amazon as usual made even the returns easy." - Paul N., Amazon Verified Purchase 7/19/2015

"So far, so "slow". I bought this as a more reasonable option to my current AXIS and OPTEX laser scanner setup. The only issue is by the time its detected a person,car,animal etc and told you on your phone, its already 20 seconds behind. That doesn't do it for things like presence when you are home, only presence after the fact. Anyone else have similar performance issues?" - Mark L., Amazon Verified Purchase 12/4/2016

Netatmo has a lot going for it as a DIY security solution. Specifically, we think the Presence is a great solution for the outdoors. One thing we’d like to see added to both the Presence and the Welcome is a siren. Without a siren, there is no way to scare off an intruder, which is the main purpose of these cameras. The Welcome wouldn’t be our first pick for an indoor home security camera, but if you want to keep an eye on things at home, we think it’s a great solution.

Do you think Netatmo has what it takes to protect your family from an intruder?