The best facial recognition cameras of 2020

Many home security cameras these days have facial recognition that allows you to create a database of friends and family members who visit your home regularly. When the camera sees a face, it determines whether or not there are faces in your database of known faces.

The software can be hit or missed due to a variety of factors, from lighting to changing hairstyles, wearing glasses one day but not the next – and more.

However, we know with certainty that this function is becoming increasingly popular with our devices, not only with home security cameras, but also with ours Phones and help as efficiency tools Automate airport check-ins. Law enforcement is invested more face recognition Technology is already raising and bringing serious questions about data protection and civil rights across the board calls for government regulation.

But let’s get back to the consumer realm a bit. Your home is your lock, and the option of having facial recognition devices in it is still a compelling option for those who want to be up to date with the smart home innovation. Let’s take a look at the recently tested facial recognition cameras to find out which models are the best and to determine if one is right for you.

Tyler Lizenby / CNET

When it comes to pure face recognition features, the Nest Hello, Nest Cam IQ Indoor and Nest Cam IQ Outdoor (all essentially the same camera) win by far. Of these models, the Nest Hello is my first choice for face recognition as it is the cheapest of the three models and the greatest opportunity to give you important information about who is at your front door.

Nest’s IQ Indoor can tell you who is already in your house, but Hello and IQ Outdoor Cam tell you who it is outside your house. The eye-level position of the Hello doorbell offers the best chances of also monitoring and seeing most visitors (although you could install the IQ outdoor camera at eye level for $ 349 if you’d like).

The catch with the Hello and other face tracking nest cameras is that you have to pay for the face recognition function. That means you have to subscribe to the Nest Aware Cloud Subscription Service for face recognition. Learn more about Nest aware.

Nevertheless, the Nest Hello is also a choice for the best video doorbell. So it’s a win / win situation, regardless of whether you want to enable face detection or not.

Read the Nest Hello review.

Chris Monroe / CNET

The Tend Secure Lynx only costs $ 60. Given that, I was skeptical that this camera would deliver, but it does. The camera itself not only offers good performance and offers numerous useful functions such as free seven-day event-based video clip storage, but also free facial recognition (in contrast to the optional Nest Aware service).

Create your database with familiar faces, and the Lynx takes over. There is a certain learning curve as it gets familiar with every face, but it is a very good option if you want an inexpensive indoor security camera with decent facial recognition.

Read the Tend Secure Lynx test.

Chris Monroe / CNET

The Nest Cam IQ Indoor for $ 299 is similar to the Nest Hello doorbell. It has facial recognition (when you sign up for a Nest Aware subscription) and keeps you informed of who’s in front of the camera with constant accuracy.

But it also has a number of additional advantages. Since it’s an indoor camera, Nest has provided it with an integrated Google Assistant speaker. That means the camera essentially acts as a Google Home speaker and can answer basic questions like the current weather or traffic around you – and can control a variety of Google Home-enabled smart home devices. It also works with Amazon Alexa.

Read the review of Nest Cam IQ Indoor.

Face detection cameras: Anyone we’ve tested

Here is a summary of the facial recognition cameras we recently installed and tested.

Recommend above:

Worth considering, but not as good as the tips above:

• Nest Cam IQ outdoors: The IQ outdoor camera is similar to the Nest Hello for $ 229 and the IQ Indoor for $ 299 when it comes to specs and performance, but is worse at a whopping $ 349 per camera.
• Netatmo welcome: The Netatmo Welcome camera did a good job of detecting faces, but ultimately the function wasn’t quite as reliable as we would have liked.
• Wisenet SmartCam N1: The SmartCam N1 smart surveillance camera and app for $ 150 did a good job of facial recognition. It has a built-in microSD card slot for local storage, but the $ 60 Tend Secure Lynx offers equally good performance for a lot less.

Not recommended:

• Honeywell Smart Home security: Unreliable performance, including facial recognition technology, significantly affects the attractiveness of this all-in-one system.
• Tend Secure Lynx Pro: While the Lynx Pro for indoor and outdoor use is technically the high-end version of the Lynx only for indoor use, its improved technical data did not lead to better facial recognition.

Note that the recommendations above were at the time of testing and may change due to later software updates. We will update this list regularly as such changes warrant it.

How we tested

When you set up a camera with a face recognition feature, you profile individual people by either taking and adding their real-time picture or using an existing photo you have of them. From there the face recognition camera should You can distinguish human faces from any other type of movement activity and choose those recognized from your database of known faces. If it works optimally, you will receive a notification that the camera has seen “Chris”, “Molly” or everyone in your database.

There are many use cases for this type of functionality, but some common ones are getting an alert when your kids come home from school or when a dog walker or family carer shows up. It restores peace when you expect someone to show up and you want an automatic notification telling you that they are showing up (especially when you’re not home to greet them).

But it also helps in security scenarios, since the camera essentially differentiates between recognized and unrecognized faces. This allows you to send the information to police officers more quickly in the event of an actual interruption if your camera sends you a warning that she saw someone on your porch or went into your house but you don’t recognize him. in or theft instead of having to search through dozens of generic motion alerts to find the activity.

The best way to test these cameras is to create a database. This is the case when I test a camera with facial recognition (see screenshots above). I add people to my database and let the camera do the rest. It is best to give these cameras at least a few days, as some will improve significantly even over a short period of time as they see faces from different angles.

Then it has to be analyzed how well the camera actually recognized faces. How many times has it correctly identified my face compared to someone else’s face? What was it like when you approached from different angles and changed hairstyles and clothing accessories? Could the camera even recognize faces? Some occasionally have difficulty recognizing faces, including those that claim to have facial recognition, and instead mark the activity as a basic motion alarm (ahem, Tend Secure Lynx Pro).

The future of face recognition

Amazon doorbell and security camera company, Ring, filed two patents related to facial recognition The patents indicate that future ring products may automatically recognize and identify faces from “most wanted” lists or watch lists, and may automatically send notifications to law enforcement officers. Here is an extract from one of the patent applications:

A video can be analyzed by an A / V recording and communication device that recorded the video (and / or one or more backend servers) to determine if the video contains a known criminal (e.g., one) convicted offender, a sex offender or a person on a “most wanted” list etc.) or a suspect. Some of the present embodiments can automatically send such video streams to law enforcement agencies.

“Amazon dreams of a dangerous future,” said ACLU lawyer Jacob Snow in one blog entry.

“The history of discriminatory government surveillance makes it clear that facial surveillance will disproportionately harm people who have already been attacked by the government and who are exposed to racist profiles and ill-treatment – immigrants, black people and former prisoners,” added Snow.

Ring cameras currently do not offer face recognition at all. Models that do this, such as the Nest Hello, are only used to identify a person you add to your “familiar face” list. They won’t pull off a law enforcement list to determine if a convicted criminal is nearby – or contact law enforcement if they see a face that might match someone in a database.

Although we currently do not know of any ethical violations of these cameras on the market, in reality we cannot check how the biometric data is used. Even if we give the participating companies the benefit of the doubt about their analysis and data usage guidelines, these guidelines can change at any time. And when you consider that Ring is owned by Amazon and Nest is owned by Google, the potential for a Big Brother scenario is immediately apparent.

We’ll continue to keep an eye on surveillance cameras, doorbells, and other devices with built-in facial recognition technology to keep track of changes in industry trends – and to see if new models come close to the smarts of Nest’s Hallo Summer.

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Originally released last year.