I don’t know about you but the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear “spy camera” is “well this sounds like it’s going to be a lot of fun!” With that, we are going to go over our experience with the Conbrov T33 1080p Mini Spy Camera that we’ve been playing with. A tiny little camera that looks a lot like any of today’s action sport cameras, minus all of the action…sports stuff.
The size of the camera is pretty small. only around 1.25-inches all around the sides, and around 1.5-inches front to back, it is quite similar to something like the GoPro Hero Session (around 0.25-inches on the sides smaller even). It’s build is mostly of aluminum with a little bit of plastic and does feel quite a bit durable. It also has a fun two-tone (black and silver) theme to it.
Instead of using special mounts like most of the cameras it looks like, it uses a magnet base that can swivel in all directions via a ball joint, and stick to any flat surface using double-sided tape (too bad there isn’t a magnet on the bottom under the tape as well for the additional option). You simply have to choose a location for the mount, and the camera plops right onto it with enough strength to hold it, even if it was upside down and shaken quite a bit. This was a nice find since we have seen some of these magnetic mount approaches fail quickly on products in the past. This one seems quite dependable.
There are only two buttons that control the camera, located on the top. You have a power button on the silver section that triggers the camera into an instant recording mode. It also enables file sharing if you have it actively plugged into a computer via USB. The black half of the camera contains a similar button with an icon that shows a stick figure walking. This button turns the camera on and into motion detection. This way you can shoot video all day while only capturing things that are caught moving around, thus saving the battery some. A big some actually as they claim the camera will last up to a year in motion detection mode (I think it might take us a little too long to test that theory so you will just have to trust them on that one).
The back side of the camera a microSD slot where it saves all of the footage to. This is required to get it to work and you can use something as simple as an 8GB card to get started–although 16GB or more would be best if you plan to use it a lot, as around 6 minutes of footage will be about a GB of space consumed when set to 1080p.
Next to the microSD slot, there is a micro-USB port for charging the camera with, and browsing the contents when it is connected to a PC.
As mentioned, when you are connected to a PC via the USB cable, you can press and hold the power button for a few seconds to trigger file sharing. It will pop up within your PC as an inserted drive where you can browse the files. This is also where you customize any of the settings for the camera as it doesn’t have WiFi or any smartphone apps to accompany it. As you can see in the image to the right, you can adjust a small number of options including language, date, timestamp display, light frequency image quality, overwrite mode (where it will begin to overwrite older files if you run out of space so that continuous recording it’s interrupted), and audio recording (which we will get to in a second). There is a small .exe file in the root directory of the camera that leads to this screen. The options are straightforward and you will be ready to use the camera in little time.
As for the audio recording, the option is actually disabled, regardless of what you select in the settings window. Something to do with international compliance more than likely, but this can be fixed (you just have to jump through a hoop). You download a firmware update (available here) that you update the camera with (Winrar is needed in order to open the downloaded file and access the firmware file–Winrar is simply an alternative to zip files). You freshly format the microSD card as FAT32 and copy the firmware file to the card. Insert it into the camera and power it on. The red LED is supposed to flash and then go off, eventually replaced with a solid blue light that shows it finished. Take the card out and reformat it again as FAT32 again to reset it, and the camera should be good to go for audio. It’s a bit of a silly process to have to go through, but it seems to affect all of their cameras (hence it must have something to do with international compliance).
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When first holding this in my hand, I had to question what part of it looks like a spy camera since it clearly looked like a camera and it would be pretty difficult to completely hide it without it being clearly within sight. You can place it up high, but eventually, someone’s eyes may fall upon it. But hey, at least it works right?
Once you get around the hoop of properly enabling sound (if you even need the option enabled), the camera is actually quite user-friendly to use. Simply place it where want it to live and press and hold one of the two buttons for two seconds to enable the selected mode. Then sit back and let it do all of the work. It’s like having a tiny Nest Cam or Arlo cam you can randomly stick anywhere, with zero wires and only a portion of the cost. You just don’t get any app access to it (no WifI, etc).
Video-wise, it can record up to 1080p, however, we do find it to be quite compressed for what it is (although the size of the files don’t suggest this). Maybe it is the quality of the sensor or maybe it is the type of compression/format that it uses. It seems a bit over-sharpened (fuzzy) and sometimes a tad saturated depending on the light in the room/space. So it is either the compression and sensor or maybe 720p stretched to 1080p digitally (or all of the above). It isn’t perfect by any means, but I guess you aren’t paying the price of a GoPro either.
The quality of the video is more than enough to pick out objects and people as they walk in and out of frame. So you most definitely will know who has been sneaking into the fridge and drinking the orange juice directly out of the carton at night or re-organizing your books. You can see all of this in the above video. Given, the face of the culprit isn’t in view in this shot (this was just a quick example we put together).
Also seen in the above video, the camera should be kept away from reflective surfaces and objects as it will not function well in low-light conditions where it needs to be able to make use of its “night vision”. If such objects or surfaces are in range, the IR light required for the night vision mode will reflect off and throw the camera into a frenzy switching in and out of night vision mode.
So it isn’t perfect by any means, but you are also only spending $55 on a tiny camera option. I guess you can compare it to a late 1990’s webcam, only 1080p in resolution. It is perfect if you just need something simple, like the ability to spy on the nanny or catch family members in the act of something trivial. You obviously aren’t going to use it as your main security solution in place of a true security camera. You can. however. have a lot of fun goofing around with it for other trivial means, like playing secret agent man around the house (as long as you keep things kosher and don’t break any laws).
What does it come with?
Besides the camera and the mount, they include the USB cable for charging it (or browsing videos on your PC, or customizing the small bit of settings you have access to). They also provide a small poker (they call it a pin, but I think poker sounds like a good official name for it) that is used for resetting the camera with, in case it ever locks up. We never got it to require this in our testing of it, but just in case I guess (you can also use a small paper clip). A bonus is that they also provide microSD USB reader/adapter so you can quickly transfer files without having to connect the camera to your PC. There are some basic instructions to get you through using everything that are mostly straight forward and a little information about your warranty.
Our Conclusion
It’s a good little camera for simple tasks when you don’t need an amazing picture and a bunch of added features (no WiFi, Bluetooth or anything else). You simply place the camera somewhere and hit record (manual or motion activated). Due to the fact that the options are pretty simple, it is quite user-friendly. It comes with everything you need outside of the microSD card, but those are so dirt cheap now between 16-32GB. The camera itself is also pretty well priced when you think of what it is trying to achieve. It would have been nice to see a little better quality video though given today’s modern tech. So it doesn’t get a perfect score this round. That is pretty much the only thing taking away from the score (despite the whole audio work-around). Better video would match it up perfectly to the price. For now, you can take advantage of the above discount code while it lasts to bridge that gap up with (at the new price, the score would be around 7.5 easily).
Discount: For a limited time (before it expires), you can receive a discount of 30% off with promo code “30OFFNT33” when checking out via Amazon thanks to Conbrov.
| Buy from Amazon | |
Our Rating | Average Price* $55.98 |
*Average price is based on the time this article was published
Downloads:
Updated firmware needed to enable sound: Click here (Winrar is needed in order to open the file)
Additional Images:
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