D-Link DCS-8525LH WiFi Camera Review: Superb Video Surveillance Quality

360-degree IP cameras are usually expensive investments, but you can’t deny that they are darn useful when it comes to monitoring your home surroundings. For under RM400, the D-Link DCS-8525LH aims to keep your home safe and monitored with its ability to tilt and pan, it’s a badass looking camera that with a large sensor that captures Full HD surveillance footage, coupled with a number of IR sensors (10 of them to be exact) and a light sensor, it is ready to capture footage clearly even in total darkness.

The DCS-8525LH is the flagship of D-Link’s WiFi camera portfolio, it features a rather huge footprint that you can’t easily hide it away, however it’s got a solid build quality and connectivity features are not compromised. For instance, it has an external antenna for better signals, a LAN port for fixed line connectivity if you prefer a reliable connection, and a MicroSD card slot for storing surveillance footages locally.

In terms of installation, the DCS-8525LH can be mounted on a camera tripod or wall with the provided bracket, power is supplied through a MicroUSB port over a 10W or 5V2A output, a common standard that can be powered by any standard smartphone chargers or power banks out there.

Like the recent DCS-8000LH we reviewed, the DCS-8525LH also uses the mydlink app for setting everything up, so it is a similar process of scanning the QR code on the quick start guide and go through the setup wizard, there is also no web interface access so you can be rest assured that your WiFi connected guests won’t be able to logon to your camera through their web browser.

Operating the DCS-8525LH is straightforward, as you can either tap or swipe to change the camera’s direction, though I wished it could respond slightly faster, the controls have never failed on me.

What you will probably be most impressed is the camera’s image quality, in fact if not the best it is one of the best image quality that I have ever seen on a surveillance camera, the details are sharp and even in our brightly lit office, the footage doesn’t look over-exposed like some cameras do.Fun fact, the DCS-8525LH has a built-in speaker at the base, which there was once I used it to instruct my colleague to help do something instead of calling back to the office, the speaker is really loud, and the entire office thought the place was haunted when they realized my voice was coming out nowhere. To add on, the built-in microphone was able to pick up my colleague’s conversation without issues from 20ft away, so yeah, it’s pretty awesome.

While I’m excited for most of the things on the camera, I wasn’t impressed with D-Link’s cloud storage service as it merely offers days of storage, you also cannot record footage to both the MicroSD card and cloud storage at the same time, hence if the footage is gone on the cloud you won’t be able to retrieve them from the MicroSD card. Like the DCS-8000LH, it supports Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and IFTTT integration but you can only use them to view your footage on the TV.

Ultimately, no WiFi camera is perfect but D-Link’s DCS-8525LH is one of the very best 360-degree camera that you can buy to monitor and secure your home, and that is if you aren’t looking into 24-hour video recording. For what it is capable of, RM399 is a fair asking price tag, but considering Xiaomi’s Mijia Dome Camera and Xiaoyi’s 360 Degree Camera costs almost half the price for the same features and a much smaller footprint, D-Link has a tough road ahead to win consumers over, and its cloud storage service isn’t going to save the DCS-8525LH.

The Good

• Excellent 1080p video recording quality
• Good speaker and microphone
• MicroSD card for storage
• Powered using a MicroUSB port

The Not so Good

• Huge size
• Pricing not competitive
• Cloud storage service could be better