Logitech has rebranded its general consumer products division as the friendlier-sounding, “tech”-less Logi for its non-PC-related products. The idea is for Logi to represent simpler, easier, more accessible devices, and its first home security camera under this name certainly fits those criteria. The Logi Circle ($199.99) boasts an attractive, cordless design, a very un-intimidating app, and two-way voice communication, making it something you can use to keep in touch with your home instead of just keeping track of it. Logi has added 1080p video capture and cloud storage for keeping footage for longer than 24 hours since the camera launched, though it still lacks a few of the more useful features you’ll find in cameras like the Editors’ Choice Piper nv or the Nest Cam.
Editors’ Note: This review has been updated to reflect features added since the launch of the product. The score has been changed to reflect those additions.
Design
The Circle looks more like a webcam than a security cam, though the differences between the two categories have blurred a great deal in the last few years. It’s a plastic sphere, about the size of a baseball, mounted on a small, cylindrical base. The front of the camera has a glossy plastic ring surrounding the lens, with a speaker grille surrounding the ring. An indicator light sits just above the lens, turning different colors to show its status. The camera can pivot up and down on its base, but it can’t twist left or right unless it’s on its magnetic base plate and charger, which you’ll want to keep it on whenever possible for sheer convenience.
The base plate attaches an eight-foot USB charger securely to the camera, making sure its contact points touch the pins hidden in the camera’s base. The magnetic plate also attaches securely to nearly any steel surface. With the plate connected to the camera’s base, I was able to position it sideways or upside-down in a variety of places our test lab an my apartment, including on wire shelves and under fixtures.
You can use the Logi Circle without the power cable attached, thanks to a built-in battery. However, it will only last up to 12 hours on a charge, so it isn’t feasible to keep it off of the charging ring for a long period of time. If you really want a wireless home security camera, the Netgear Arlo VMS3230 boasts a battery life of six months before you have to switch out its CR123 cells.
A small Power switch located on the underside of the Circle’s base is the only real physical control on the camera, with the exception of a very well-hidden pinhole Reset button on the back of the base. Besides the connection pins for the charger, there are no ports, slots, or buttons anywhere on the Circle.
Setup and App
Setup is extremely simple through the free iOS or Android apps. Turn the camera on, wait for the light to blink blue, then follow the directions in the app to connect it to your Wi-Fi network. I got it to work with both my home DSL network and the test lab’s FiOS network, though to switch from one to the other I had to use the Reset button to configure it again. Since, as a home camera, you’ll likely set it up to work with your home network and not bother changing locations, this is not a big deal.
The Circle app is very easy to navigate, thanks to a simple interface that focuses on a handful of unobtrusive icons and a scrolling wheel of recordings. All video is recorded to Logi’s cloud, so you can access it from any mobile device with the app installed (no Web portal is available yet). The main screen shows the live feed from your selected camera, with a series of time stamps on the right side of the display. Swiping down plays videos related to those time stamps, which are triggered and filed automatically when the camera detects motion. You can also swipe up on the list to generate a Day Brief, a compilation of clips from the last day showing what the camera recorded over just one minute.
Swiping to the left brings up the app’s options, which are relatively sparse. You can turn the camera on and off (or add additional cameras), flip the video 180 degrees (useful if the camera is mounted upside down), and individually toggle the indicator LED, automatic night vision, the microphone, the speaker, and even a Power Save mode to prolong battery life when it’s not connected to the charger.
The live feed includes audio, so you can hear whatever’s going on through the camera. The Circle also features a built-in speaker, so you can talk through the app to whoever is nearby. The voice communication is push-to-talk; press and hold the voice icon on the lower left corner of the screen to speak through the camera.
Logi claims an instant, real-time video feed with voice chat, but that’s dependent on the status of your network. Realistically, the Circle lags about a half-second between what it captures and what the app shows, and if you have network congestion or a weak signal with either the Circle or your mobile device, that can balloon to five to ten seconds. Fortunately, the app has a signal indicator to show if the camera is dealing with any network issues, and it generally kept a strong connection with both of the networks I tested on.
The speaker itself is also fairly weak. My normal speaking voice came out of the Circle a bit softer than ideal. It sounded better than a mumble, but you really need to be close to the camera to hear anything coming out of the speaker. Unfortunately, there’s no way to adjust speaker volume on the Circle, or microphone sensitivity through the app.
That’s the main weakness of the Circle: a lack of app functionality. It’s designed to be very easy to use, but that means many functions are out of your hands. It will automatically record video clips when it detects movement, and can send you push alerts, but you can’t manually set up specific zones or times for the alerts to be active. The most you can do is enable the automatic Smart Location geofence feature, which disables notifications if it detects that your mobile device is near the camera, or selectively enable or disable notifications for motion, low battery, and disrupted Internet connection. More manual control and some scheduling options for the notifications would really help the Circle work as a home surveillance camera.
Besides the mobile app, you can now access your Circle through a Web portal, a welcome addition to the service. The Web portal offers most of the same controls for the camera, and all of the live and recorded viewing options of the app.
Circle Safe
Video recorded by the Circle originally only lasted 24 hours unless downloaded to a connected mobile device. That’s still the case out of the box, but you can optionally subscribe to the Circle Safe service to extend the camera’s cloud storage significantly. Circle Safe records 31 days of video to your Logi Circle account, so you can access video long after you get a notification about an event.
Currently Circle Safe subscriptions start at $9.99 per month, and users can try the service out with a free 31-day trial.
Performance and Conclusions
The Circle’s hardware is capable of handling 1080p video, and as of a recent update can now stream and capture video in that resolution (it was limited by software to 720p at launch). Video quality is very good, though the wide, 135-degree lens produces an almost fisheye-like level of barrel distortion. The live video stream is dependent on your network connection, so it can easily develop compression artifacts. However, video clips after the Circle has uploaded them to cloud storage look consistently sharp. In normal light, colors are bright and vivid, and a built-in set of infrared LEDs combined with an automatic night vision mode showed all of the strange things my cat did (in green-gray monochrome) when I was asleep.
Both the mobile app and Web portal worked flawlessly, with only a half-second of video lag. Both were very responsive to navigate, and I could easily download clips or take snapshots from either interface.
Logi has answered several complaints and added much-needed features to the Circle since launch, so we’ve bumped up our score to reflect that. However, the Nest Cam and the Flir FX are each available for the same price, and offer more configuration options (the Flir FX also includes a microSD card slot for simple local recording). The pricier Piper nv, meanwhile, remains our Editors’ Choice for its ability to serve as a Z-Wave home automation hub on top of its already powerful home surveillance functionality.
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