Best feature set and image in its price range

Author's Rating:

Pros: Decent CMOS sensor Great customization and features Mobile device accessible Privacy button Time lapse buffer

Cons: Full motion only works with IE6 and Active-X No sound

The Bottom Line: 
This is the best wireless internet camera in its range, if you're considering anything else around $300, you are wasting your time!

Author's Review
This is the best webcam in its price range, no doubt about it! I have tried three units before I settled on the Panasonic BL-C30A. I bought the webcam so my family can view my baby room overseas 24/7 ( call me a freak for making my baby's room a Truman Show, but my family loves it!)

The three units I have tried are:
- Linksys WV54G
- Toshiba IK-WB01A
- Panasonic BL-C30A

Out of these three units the Panasonic wins in every aspect, and is a true keeper!

For physical size, this is the smallest and cutest looking of the 3 I have tested, my wife really prefers its size as it is not too intimidating. While the Linksys looks really weird with it's flat base and the camera head sticking out, the Toshiba looks like and industrial unit made to supervise aisles in a supermarket, not my baby in his room.

This unit has a 1/4" CMOS sensor and a fixed focus lens. It works great, and the gain changes to levels where you can see more detail in the picture than you could with the naked eye in dark situations. The image is really noisy by then but it is still a lot better than any of the other two I have tried. During regular daylight the colors are true to the real colors, the automatic white balance does a fantastic job guessing the proper color temperature, and the unit produces accurate colors. Due to the sensor being CMOS and not a CCD the noise level is a bit higher than the Toshiba unit under regular light but it is more than acceptable. Compared to the Linksys it's night and day. The Linksys unit had terrible color reproduction and under low light it had so much grain that it's not even funny.

The camera can display images in 640x480 or 320x240 resolution, or if the images are viewed from a mobile device it can send 160x120 resolution images. It has 3 levels of JPEG compression and the difference between the 3 levels is distinguishable, making them useful.


As for the features of this camera, this is the most feature rich web enabled camera I have seen in its price range. The Panasonic engineers really knew what people might need or would like to use.

The camera will work either on 802.11b or 802.11g networks, making it a great choice if you run an 802.11g network exclusively so there is no speed degradation because of having to run an 802.11b device or if you're still on an older 802.11b setup (the Toshiba is 802.11b only, while the Linksys is 802.11g only). Configuring the camera is a breeze if you want to go for the basic setting using uPnP. The camera configured itself in seconds with my Linksys router via the T10/100 wired connection, but I could change to full manual mode without a hitch and set up wireless access with WEP encryption very easily. You have to be fairly competent in networking to get everything set up securely but you can get it up and running with relative ease if you're no computer savvy (I'm a software engineer, I love all the features).

The built in web client is fantastic! It has a lot of features that I haven't seen in other cameras. It can do motion JPEG feed of live video which requires an active-X control to be downloaded to the viewer's machine (it is very painless, everyone in my family could do it). The frame rate is fairly decent, the limiting factor is clearly the bandwidth, not the camera. On my LAN via the wireless connection I can view 15fps in 320x240 and at least 7fps in 640x480. From work I can still get 2-3 fps in 320x240 over my 512kbit Upload with who knows how many other family members watching. The Toshiba uses Java which is slow as a dog when the images are viewed over the Internet, it has acceptable speed when viewed on the LAN. The Linksys uses motion JPEG active-X similar to the Panasonic and has decent results when broadcasted over the Internet. If some people want to view the images from the camera but can't install the active-X control they can still opt for the still image viewing that updates every second or less often as desired (up to 60 second interval). So anyone who has a web browser can view the camera's image whether it's full motion via active-X or just regularly updating still shots, making the feed compatible with anything practically.

The camera has pan and tilt controls (The Linksys doesn't, the Toshiba does) which is truly great. What is even greater that you can have up to 8 preset positions that viewers can see. You can also set up to 50 users with their own login name and password to access the camera (The Toshiba only has one user account besides the admin one, the Linksys has many) and each user can have their own level of camera management rights. Some can have full control of the pan/tilt features, some can only go to preset positions, some can't move the camera at all. This is really nice to be able to give control to some people and not to others. With the Toshiba there was no such feature, you could either lock everyone out or have everyone control the camera.

Another really neat feature is the built-in image buffer. It lets you take a snapshot at any time interval from one second up to several hours between pictures and it can store about 160 of these with 320x240 resolution in its internal memory. Then you can go back and view these images either as a time lapse video using the motion JPEG codec or as still shots with time stamp. I set mine to take a picture every minute so I can go back almost 3 hours in time to see what has happened while I wasn't watching. None of the other cameras had this feature. Also, the camera can upload pictures at the same or different rate to an FTP site or via e-mail with either timestamped filenames or overwriting an existing image on the server. You can set the buffer up to upload at a certain time interval (like I did every one minute) or you can set it to upload if the built in motion sensor (yes it has a motion sensor) detects movement. You can have up to 7 different buffer and ftp upload criteria with different time intervals or events.

One more feature worth mentioning is the activity light and its settings. While the Toshiba had a green LED burried somewhere on the board inside and no visible feedback on the unit itself and the Linksys had separate LEDs for power and activity, the Panasonic's single LED is fully customizable. It can be on when the unit is on, it can be set so it's only on when there is someone watching (my preferred setting) it can be on when motion is detected or it can be off at all times for stealth survellance. This is really great! Another nice feature is the privacy button, with a single push of a physical button on the unit or access via the web interface or via your cellphone you can turn on or off the unit, so it would stop broadcasting video feed to the world. The unit's lens actually turns inside the unit so there is visible confirmation that there is no way any image could be recorded. This can be turned back on via the button or the Internet from the administrator account. None of the other units offered such feature.

Speaking of mobile phone. I can access the image and control the camera from my cellphone. I have T-mobile with T-zone Internet access and my SonyEricsson T610 can receive XHTML pages so I can view still shots captured live by my camera pretty much anywhere. This is really amazing and a good feature if you want to check up on your babysitter while you're at the movies. Again, no other camera offers this feature.

Also, the camera offers free dynamic DNS service for people who are on DSL or cable broadband where the external IP address changes frequently. Panasonic offers a free easy to remember domain name xxx.viewwebcam.com where the domain name will point to your camera regardless of your ever changing IP address. Both Linksys and Toshiba offer a similar service for a $10 or so monthly fee. This is free with the Panasonic camera. I don't use it as I have my own domain name, but for less computer savvy users this is surely great!

One more thing worth mentioning for people who are familiar with HTML and web sites in general. The camera offers a full range of CGI scripts and commands to access the features and change the settings of the camera without using the built in web interface, making full customization possible. Again, none of the other cameras offered such features. Toshiba's manual did mention something about such feature, but I have yet to find the detailed information similar to what Panasonic provides. Panasonic provides a 32 page document and several sample HTML code snippets on their website specific for the CGI customization. If you want to use these features, Panasonic sure makes it easy to incorporate the web camera feed into any website.

The built in web server of the camera is also capable of displaying up to 12 units' feed on a single page but I only bought one unit so I am not planning using this feature.

There is also another great feature in the unit and that is the bandwidth management feature. You can limit the camera's bandwidth from 100kbit to all they way up to 5Mbit or go unlimited. This is really nice if you're sharing the bandwidth with other things such as web browsing, so you camera will never hog the bandwidth. There is also another feature where you can set so the viewer will get a live feed for the fist 10 second to 10 minutes only (there are several time settigns in between) and after that they only get still image updates every so often (can be set from 1 second to 60 second intervals). This is a great feature so people who are staying on your page to view for extended periods will not hog the bandwidth. Again, none of the other cameras offered any kind of bandwidth limiting or saving feature.

There is one thing this camera doesn't offer that the other two cameras I have tested did; Audio. But to be honest with you the Linksys audio never really worked for me when I tested it, and I really don't want people listening in on my conversations, having them see our baby room 24/7 is plenty enough (chosen by us) invasion of our privacy.

All in all, I think this is the best wireless Internet camera in its price range and it's a steal for $300. I can't help but wonder who will buy the other products that are on the market which offer inferior picture quality or motion and a fraction of the features this camera offers. I wish I had bought this unit first, it would have saved me from a lot of return trips to the electronics stores!