Icontrol Networks Piper NV vs Samsung SmartCam HD Pro

The siren is very loud - rated at 105dB (louder than a snowmobile or motorcycle). It's loud enough to scare off virtually any intruder.

With a temperature and humidity sensors on-board, the Piper NV can give you a good idea of what the interior 'weather' is like. It can also track outdoor temperature, and will warn you of local weather alerts.

The apps are simple to use, and designed to make sure the most important stuff can be accessed the quickest. Any important actions will give you feedback from the Piper NV itself so you can rest assured each action goes through.

Small details are included in the app as well - from adjustable motion sensitivity (for shadows, animals, and other small movements) to a trusted circle of contacts that will be notified each time an alert is triggered.

All features worked as advertised, notifications were delivered quickly, and the camera is very responsive to actions performed in the apps.

The Piper NV has both a microphone and speaker, letting you have a conversation with a person in front of the Piper while you are elsewhere with your phone. This can be handy for conversations with babysitters, deliverymen, or even talking with your children when you're away.

The 1080p camera allows for up to 10X digital zoom. Without zooming, the picture is very crisp and clear which is immensely helpful when figuring out who is on the camera and what they're doing. The digital zoom will reduce this clarity, but allows for a close-up inspection of any small details.

The device can also tilt and pan - unique features that let you get the best angles of view.

The NV in Piper NV stands for night vision. This product included infra-red LEDs that illuminate pitch black rooms so that the camera can still see (although human eye's can't detect this light).

With a full 180 degrees of vision, this camera can be placed on a wall and see everything around it. Because its fish-eye design, the edges of the image will be slightly warped, however this is required for such a high field of view.

Z-Wave controller is built in.

Has a proper IR motion sensor, so does not image analysis to detect motion. This is very useful as it avoids the false alarms that many other camera are subject to when clouds change the lighting conditions.

You can manually adjust the speaker and microphone volumes, as well as wide dynamic range settings to balance the brightness of the video. Sensitivity of both motion and audio sensors can be adjusted as well.

The SmartCam HD Pro is equipped with infrared LEDs. These illuminate dark rooms for the camera, while being invisible to human eyes.

You can have a conversation with somebody through your phone while they're in front of the SmartCam. This is useful as it allows you direct communication with babysitters, contract workers, house sitters or anybody else around your camera.

There is a SD slot which allows for local storage. This means that as video is captured, it is recorded straight onto the local storage, while most cameras don't offer local storage (instead they upload it directly to a cloud service, and often charge a monthly fee to download these videos).