When you buy a Toucan smart home product, you are expected to also download the Toucan Smart Home app for your smartphone. As we all know, the hardware is only half the equation when it comes to smart home devices and the other half is software. Even the best hardware in the world can be crippled by a bad app experience. That’s why we’ll be reviewing these apps too now along with the hardware. First up is the Toucan Smart Home app for all of Toucan’s products.
The Toucan Smart Home app is meant to be used for all of Toucan’s products such as their Outdoor Camera, Wireless Video Doorbell, and smart wireless lights. I only have the Toucan Wireless Video Doorbell so that’s what I’m basing this review on.
If you take a look at the rating for this app, it doesn’t show very much promise at only 2.4 stars on Android and the same for iOS. However the reviews don’t seem to mirror my own experience as for the most part, the app has been fairly flawless. Pairing the device to the app was really simple as long as you choose the right network to connect to. A 2.4GHz network seems to be the sweet spot as a 5GHz connection won’t work. Once paired, you’ll see the Wireless Video Doorbell in the app.
The app is simple to use as well. Clicking the camera will take you to a live view of what it sees. From there you can choose to enable the mic as well as the speakers if you want the person at the door to hear you. You can also capture live video and photos to your gallery. Here you can also adjust settings for your doorbell such as motion detection, motion detection zones, auto greetings, etc.
The app is also where you’ll find all your event notifications and recordings. Based on my use so far, it does notify you when the camera detects motion or when someone rings the doorbell. Clicking the notification takes you directly into live view. If you want to view events, you’ll have to go into the app and click the events tab to view recorded video.
That’s a lot of features you can use with your free account. There’s also a PRO account you can subscribe to for $2.99/month. This adds longer video history, video downloads from the cloud, shared access, and more in the future. There’s also an Elite tier for $9.99/month which stretches video history to 90 days. I chose to stick to the free tier as it does everything I currently need.
So with that said, I’ve had a pretty good experience with the Toucan Smart Home app thus far. While my experience might not represent what others are saying about the app on their app store reviews, I wouldn’t let it deter you from trying it out. Worse comes to worse, you return your device if it doesn’t work for you. For me though, it’s been a painless experience so far.
Google Play Store: Toucan Smart Home
Apple iTunes Store: Toucan Smart Home
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