The first security camera appeared to the public in 1949 – and we’ve come a long way since! With cameras now being readily available for our homes, it’s not an unusual sight. For the pet owner, this camera can become even more fundamental in day-to-day life, as it’s a way to monitor our beloved four-legged friends when we have to leave the home. Even though my dog is kennel trained, it still gives me a lot more relief to check what she’s doing with a camera.

However, cameras intended to watch our pets have different criteria they need to fulfill than those meant to watch our front doors. From motion detection to clear night vision, we expect more from them. The AiDot Winees M2X aims to offer features more conducive to monitoring our dogs and cats, giving pet parents peace of mind!

What is the AiDot Winees M2X?

The AiDot Winees M2X is an indoor security camera with special features that make it more useful as a monitor for our pets rather than just a camera watching our home’s access points. This model boasts a 2k viewing resolution, excellent night vision, an 8x digital zoom, motion detection that can identify an animal moving (that’s especially cool!), push notifications, and so much more. For me, the best part is that the camera is ready right out of the box – take it out, plug it in, and it works immediately.

Aidot offers an entire smart home ecosystem intended to make everyday life easier and more interconnected. From light bulbs and outlets to security cameras and daily electronic products, AiDot has something for your home. The AiDot Winees M2X security camera is another great product that neatly fits within the existing system. The best part? Unlike Nest, Ring, and the like which require a subscription to use the multitude of features, AiDot does not.

With the company mission being “To build a life beyond smart.”, I feel even this camera well encompasses this slogan. The About page shows that AiDot, as a brand, wants to make smart home technology accessible to all and cut many of the complexities out of the system. With relatively low prices and a very easy system to use, even my grandmother can get this camera set up without our assistance.

Overview

In the grand scheme of cameras, the AiDot Winees M2X is an excellent choice for the amount of features and professional specs you get at the price point.

Pricing

It almost feels like stealing at $29.99 per camera with free shipping on all purchases over $10.

Specs

This camera’s footage specs feature a 2K HD resolution, an 8x digital zoom, and a vertical 55° turn and pan 350°.

This camera includes local storage on a microSD card (up to 128GB), cloud storage, and internal storage.

The AiDot Winees M2X integrates with the AiDot smart home interface, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Home.

It is rated exclusively for indoor use.

Contents

The AiDot Winees M2X package is very straightforward – it includes the camera itself, which is one solid piece (no putting anything together), a cable and wall plug, an instruction manual with a QR code for the AiDot app, and a small bag of screws and plates for hanging the camera on a wall.

Features

The features are where this camera shines!

For starters, the field of view is quite wide – so it can encompass an entire room (on average). The camera has motion tracking and detection so that it will turn and follow the motion.

The night vision view will clearly show any dark room, so you can still see what your pet is doing in dim ambient light.

The 8x zoom allows you to use the AiDot app to zoom in on anything you see in the frame. If your pet gets too far from the camera, you can zoom in to see what they’re doing.

There is a built-in speaker, so you can also use the camera to talk. Granted, this might not stop your pet from chewing on something they’re not supposed to, but you can try to talk them out of it from the camera!

You can customize “activity zones” where your camera will send push notifications if it tracks movement in these preset zones. You can also ask your camera to send push notifications when it hears specific sounds, such as barking.

You can even get statistics sent to your phone about how many times a pet has entered a certain zone. For example, if you set the couch as an activity zone, you can get how many times your dog has jumped on the couch when you weren’t home.

Multiple devices are supported by the AiDot app, so you can use your computer, smartphone, tablet, and even smartwatch to control and monitor the camera.

Construction

The camera is 8.58 x 4.45 x 3.43 inches and weighs 13.1 ounces. It’s small and lightweight but still durable and able to handle some bumps! My dog came over and started messing with it a bit (pushing it around with her nose), and there was no issue.

The bottom of the camera already has a good design to keep the camera in place, especially as the camera does turn to follow motion. This might be a silly thing to bring up, but there are cameras out there that will knock themselves over simply by rotating.

AiDot App

AiDot has its own personal app ecosystem to control its products. The camera integration into the app allows you to control and customize the camera and its features and keep a visual track at all times. This app is intuitive and easy to understand, with the features laid out. If you already have Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home, the camera also integrates with these.

In Summary

Key Features

The key features of the camera are its strongest selling points.

Video Quality

To me, the video quality was very good for a little $30 security camera! You can’t expect ultra 4k perfectly sharp image resolution. This camera produces 2k HD quality and allows for up to 8x zoom. Although the more you zoom in, the grainier it gets, it’s still clear to determine what is happening.

App Ease Of Use

I loved that the entire setup and camera usage was easy enough for a non-tech person to figure it out. The app is very straightforward with no frills, and it walks you through all the settings and adjustments. I can’t think of an easier app, in all honesty.

Motion Detection

This camera can identify motion between a pet and a human, send alerts for motion captures, send statistics on where the motion occurs the most (how many times your dog jumps on the couch, for example), and even allow you to set up motion spaces to monitor the activity. The camera can be set to turn and follow motion, so most rooms only need one.

Zoom and Pan

The zoom and pan are easy to control manually via the app, or if the camera is set to detect motion, it’ll do so on its own. The camera can turn 350 degrees and has a field of view of 55 degrees, which is quite wide.

Night Vision

The night vision turns a dark scene into a very clearly visible one. I could even see my dog’s eyes! The camera can sense motion even in the dark, too.

Speakers

You can talk to your pet through the camera, which is cool. Although it might not stop your dog from chewing on something, it might slow it down very well!

Is the AiDot Winees M2X a Good Value?

I can’t think of a better value security camera on the market. Let me break it down simply:

The AiDot camera is $29.99 per camera. For a price comparison, their competitors’ cameras are priced between $50.00 and $99.99 per camera. Not only that, but they all need subscriptions to utilize the majority of their features, which range from $8 per month to over $20 per month – which is something to factor into the price as well.

AiDot is $0 per month to use! That is a subscription fee if you want to store the data on the Cloud or use any of AiDot’s Cloud features. However, this is completely optional; you can use the camera without it.

Also, the view is very wide, so you shouldn’t need more than one AiDot Winees M2X per room in your home. You can have an entire home security system (I am going to imagine an average of 5 cameras – front door, kitchen, family room, two bedrooms) for about $150.

The above doesn’t even factor in all of the features and great specs of the AiDot Winees M2X. You get motion detection, subject detection, night vision, a 350-degree pan, an 8x digital zoom, 2k HD video resolution for clear shots, and so much more for… $29.99 per camera. It’s ready right out of the box, too.

FAQ

How easy is the camera to set up?

Very easy! Right after plugging the camera in, it is on. You use the camera to scan the QR code in your AiDot app, which is automatically connected to your account and can be used.

What is the maximum number of cameras you can have?

There is no limit. 

Do you have to use the AiDot app?

Yes, the AiDot app is necessary to control and use the camera. But from this app, you can integrate the camera to Alexa or Google Home and control it from those apps. 

Do you have to use the Cloud service?

The Cloud service is optional.

Can I use this camera outside?

This camera is not meant for outdoor use; AiDot has other cameras for that purpose.

Our Experience With the AiDot Winees M2X

Before I talk about my experience with this camera, I want to share a short story about why having a security camera watching my dog is important to me. My dog Lorelei comes from an animal shelter, having been found as a stray.

With my previous dogs, I could always leave them at home, alone, unsupervised, because they just slept the whole time. When Lorelei seemed to fully settle into the home at about four months of living with me, I started to leave her home alone and expected that she was sleeping like all of my previous dogs. One day, I came home to my dog crying on the floor, unable to use her back legs. The image of that continues to traumatize me to this day. Had there been a security camera I could watch in real-time or could alert me of her cries, I would have rushed home immediately to her aid, and my vet could have been able to see how she actually injured herself. So, as a word of wisdom to any pet owner, have a camera.

Now, as to the AiDot Winees M2X, it shipped very quickly to my home. The package was rather small, as the box was sized exclusively for the camera. Unboxing the camera revealed more about its use, including a QR code to download the AiDot app to any smart device. There was also a QR code for a help guide.

The camera’s design was cute and bubbly. I placed the camera on the floor facing all of my pup’s belongings, as that was the best spot to capture what I needed. You can also hang it on the wall if you prefer that.

To get the camera set up and running, I had to plug it into an outlet and download the AiDot app. The app had me connect to WiFi and set up an account. To connect the camera to the app, scan the QR code with your phones camera. All in all, I had the camera set up and working within 5 minutes. I didn’t need any sort of technical expertise to get it working!

I was able to change some preset defaults like the name of the “room” the camera is in and the motion space perameters, push notifications, and more. You can also manually control the camera in the app, such as turning it around or talking through it.

By default, the app is set to Live Stream. To see what the camera recorded from earlier, go to the Events button, which shows all of the motion and “events” the camera registered.

It was a lot of fun to check up on her periodically, and every time I did, I experienced no lag on the camera whatsoever. I liked that I could even set up statistics to see how often my dog visited a specific area, such as walking into her kennel or drinking out of her water bowl.

The night vision in the camera remained super clear; I could see her very easily even when she was fully bundled into the back of her kennel! The camera’s audio quality was quite good as well; I could clearly hear what was going on.

The camera did miss the motion a couple of times, but it was extremely rare. The app also lost connection to the camera or took a bit longer to refresh but this resolved itself by resetting the app, and even when it was having trouble connecting to the live feed, it was still recording “events”.

But for the most part, it worked perfectly fine! The camera did exactly what I wanted it to and so much more. I’ve been using it for a week now and have no complaints; it’s a constant use-case for me when I am home and when I am not. It’s so portable that I could easily take it when I took a quick work trip and had my pup with me.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I need three more of these cameras right away. I am someone who has long used the other brands’ system of cameras, but had I known there was a less expensive way, I would never have invested in the others.

The AiDot Winees M2X is a fantastic little camera, and the app is so easy to use! Plus, I like this company’s other integrations, so I am definitely considering swapping my entire smart home system for AiDot.

My one comment to AiDot would be to amp up the marketing and get these cameras more known by the general public!