At a glance
Pros
- High quality QHD camera
- Good night vision
- Adjustable spotlight
- Supports HomeKit and Matter
Cons
- Aqara app is over-complicated
- You have to provide your own power adaptor
- Cloud storage requires a subscription
Our Verdict
The sturdy design of the G5 Pro is well-suited for outdoor use, and provides a good, clear image with Quad-HD resolution by day or by night. Its support for HomeKit and Matter also makes it a good option for Apple users, with low-cost cloud storage available via an iCloud+ subscription.
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In recent years, Aqara has been one of the few manufacturers of security cameras that still supports HomeKit for Apple devices – even when Apple itself seems to have dropped the term ‘HomeKit’ and now tends to just say that a camera ‘works with Apple Home’ (referring to the Home app on your Apple devices).
The G3 and E1 cameras that we’ve reviewed from Aqara (in our round up of the Best Security Cameras) are very competitively priced, but they’re both designed for indoor use, so the company has extended its range with the new Camera Hub G5 Pro, which boasts a sturdy design that is very much intended for life outdoors.
There are actually two versions of the G5 Pro available, and they also give you a choice of colours, with either plain white or a dark-grey that looks very similar to Apple’s Space Grey. We tested the standard Wi-Fi version of the camera, which uses a USB-C cable for its power supply and costs $179.99/£179.99.
The USB-C cable included is 2m long, so that should allow you to place it on a window sill or on a wall without too much trouble. The camera stand is adjustable, allowing you to tilt and swivel the camera as required, and there’s a wall-mounting kit included in the box as well. However, Aqara only provides the USB-C cable for charging, with no mains power adaptor included, so you’ll have to provide that for yourself.
If you want to move the camera further away – or perhaps higher up on a wall so that it overlooks a car parking space – then you might want to opt for the more expensive PoE version (power over Ethernet). This costs $199.99/£199.99 and uses an Ethernet connection to provide both power supply and a wired network connection.
Both models are identical though, and are larger than previous Aqara cameras, as the G5 Pro houses the main camera sensor, along with a PIR sensor (passive infra-red) that provides night vision, and an adjustable spotlight that you can activate to scare off intruders.
There’s also a built-in speaker and microphone that provide two-way audio as well. And, as it’s designed for outdoor use, the G5 Pro has a sturdy IP65 rating for resistance to water and dust, and Aqara states that it can cope with temperatures as low as -50f/-30C.
Getting started is very easy, thanks to the Aqara Home app for iOS/Android – although things do get a little more complicated later on. As soon as you connect the G5 Pro to a power supply, the camera’s speaker announces that it is ready to go into pairing mode, and the app uses Bluetooth to connect to the camera and set everything up.
The camera supports dual-band Wi-Fi using the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz frequency bands, and the app prompts you to select your preferred network and enter the Wi-Fi password. If you hold your mobile device upright, the Aqara app displays a small preview of the live video from the camera at the top of the screen, with a rather daunting selection of additional controls and settings below. If you turn your device into landscape (wide) mode then the video image expands to full-screen size to give you a better view.
The camera has Quad-HD (2688×1520) resolution, which provides a clear, sharp image with a viewing angle of 133-degrees. There’s a little fish-eye distortion around the edges of the image, but that doesn’t affect visibility very much at all, and it’s good to have such a wide field of view to keep an eye on things. The camera’s infra-red sensor works well too, providing good visibility even in darker conditions.
To be honest, we found the Aqara app rather complicated after the initial set-up process, as it spreads a wide range of camera controls and settings across a long series of menus and sub-menus (and Aqara told us that they don’t provide a manual for the app either). But, thankfully, Aqara’s HomeKit support provides a more straightforward way of controlling the camera, and it only took a few quick taps to connect the G5 Pro to the Apple Home app on my iPhone and other Apple devices.
The Apple Home app offers a simplified set of controls that let you record or stream live video whenever you leave or arrive home. It even offers to download firmware updates for the camera via Apple home too, so full marks to Aqara for making the HomeKit integration so smooth.
HomeKit integration comes in useful elsewhere too. Our review camera had 8GB of memory that allows it to store video directly on the camera, and the Aqara app also allows you to connect the G5 Pro to a NAS drive for storing your recordings on your home or office network.
Aqara also offers a subscription service called HomeGuardian that provides online storage and other features, costing $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year for a single camera, or $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year for an unlimited number of cameras.
But, of course, Apple’s own iCloud+ subscription service includes a feature called HomeKit Secure Video that allows you to store video from HomeKit-compatible security cameras, starting at just $0.99/£0.99 per month for a single camera (see: iCloud+ pricing).
Should you buy Aqara’s Camera Hub G5 Pro?
If you need a sturdy outdoor camera that works well with Apple devices then the Camera Hub G5 Pro is hard to beat. Its camera provides good image quality even in low light conditions, and the built-in memory allows you to record and store video straight out of the box.
Aqara’s app isn’t the most elegant piece of software we’ve ever seen, but the camera’s support for HomeKit and Matter allows you to easily control the camera using the Apple Home app, as well as providing a low-cost option for cloud storage too.
