Cinnado B6 wireless outdoor security camera review: A solar-powered bargain
Just $60 buys you a 2K camera, but there's one big shortcoming you need to consider.
Why install an outdoor security camera? Better question: Why not? They're great for seeing who's coming and going. They're a potential theft deterrent (and thief recorder) for your porch or yard. And they're surprisingly affordable, as evidenced by the Cinnado B6: It's just $60, and often on sale for $50 or less.
The question is, can a $60 security camera be any good? No doubt it's lacking a few key features or has a poor-quality lens. Maybe it's a pain to use or sticks you with a pricey cloud-storage subscription? As it turns out, the B6 is pretty good overall and solves a common outdoor-camera problem: power. This sucker runs on solar. However, it's not perfect: There are a few things you should know before pulling the trigger. Here's my Cinnado B6 review.
VERDICT: A bargain-priced, well-rounded outdoor security camera that (probably) never needs manual recharging. There's just one problem: The inexplicable 10-second limitation on motion recordings.
- Low price
- Powered by solar panel
- Cloud subscription not required
- Can pan a full 360 degrees
- Windows and Mac apps available for viewing live feed in a browser
- Confusing setup due to incomplete documentation
- Motion-detection video recording limited to 10 seconds
- Mediocre image quality
- Confusing array of subscription plans
Cinnado B6 design and setup
There's nothing subtle about the Cinnado B6. It's a large, hard-to-miss camera, which can be a good thing if you're looking to deter thieves. You can install it just about anywhere that can accommodate three screws. (You also get plastic anchors in case you're not drilling into wood.) Same goes for the solar panel, which just needs to be mounted within reach of the 8-foot power cord that connects it to the camera.
That panel eliminates the need for AC power, giving you lots more options when it comes to camera placement. It also saves you from having to swap batteries or manually recharge batteries at regular intervals. In theory, once it's installed, you're done.
Unfortunately, getting there is half the battle. Cinnado's printed instructions are detailed and easy to follow, but inexplicably missing a few key items: how to charge the camera, install the mounts and use the solar panel. All three omissions caused me some frustration.
Any battery-equipped device needs to be fully charged before use, so I plugged the included USB-C cable into the camera and a USB wall plug (not included). But nothing happened. Although the B6 has an LED that shows camera status, it doesn't light up while charging or when charging is complete. Because of that, I suspected a problem — every other device on the planet does something when you plug it in: beeps, flashes, etc. Heck, some cameras even talk when they're first turned on. The B6 stayed dark and quiet.
While puzzling over that, I installed the companion app, which is confusingly called Wansview Cloud. After running through some fairly simple setup steps, I successfully paired the camera and was able to determine that, yes, it was actively charging (though the icon indicating this is tiny).
Although this doesn't fundamentally affect use of the camera — I don't need a charging-status LED when it's connected to continuous solar power — Cinnado should at least mention charging in its instructions. It should also mention the panel that supplies that power, don't you think? It doesn't.
Similarly, while the box includes peel-and-stick drill guides for the camera and solar-panel mounts, the manual supplies zero installation info. It took me a while to figure out how to remove the camera's mount (it pops off when you pull it straight back) so I could drill it into a beam. The ball-joint solar panel mount was easier to deal with. I placed it on our porch and angled it up to get several hours of sun each day, clouds permitting.
The dual-antenna B6 is designed to connect to 2.4GHz Wi-Fi networks. Most routers support that frequency, but be sure to double-check yours just in case. If it's locked in at 5GHz, the camera won't connect. For the record, I use Verizon Home Internet with an Eero mesh network; the latter can accommodate both 2.4GHz and 5GHz devices.
Before installing the camera, I moved it outside to make sure signal strength was good enough. It was, thankfully, but your mileage may vary depending on where you install the camera and how far your own network reaches. For example, if you wanted to put this in a far corner of your property — doable thanks to the solar power supply — you might need an outdoor Wi-Fi extender as well.
Cinnado B6 features and operation
The B6 ticks most of the important boxes for a security camera, including two-way audio, multiple night-vision options (color, infrared, etc.), person detection (with three levels of sensitivity), a microSD slot for local video storage and two alarm modes (siren and lights). You control all this via the aforementioned app, which I found fairly easy to navigate.
The fully weatherproof camera can pan a full 360 degrees and tilt up and down. Cinnado doesn't specify the tilt angles, but my guess is around 90 degrees in total, most of that "down." (It can't angle up very far.) You can also zoom, but that's entirely digital. I like that you can save "favorite" camera positions and recall them with just one tap, though in my testing, this didn't always work correctly. Sometimes, I'd choose a favorite and find that it panned to the right position but then tilted down, which wasn't how I'd saved it.
The camera's 2K resolution lens should result in some pretty crisp video. Unfortunately, I'd rank it merely good, not great. In fact, I can't say image quality was markedly better than that of my Wyze Video Doorbell, which tops out at 1080p. Any zooming resulted in a noticeable loss of sharpness.
Like most smart cameras, the B6 doesn't provide a live 24/7 video feed. Instead, it works on demand, displaying live video when you open the app or detecting motion and subsequently recording video clips. Unfortunately, the latter are limited to just 10 seconds. That's true whether you insert a memory card or sign up for a cloud subscription. You can manually start a recording that lasts longer, but motion-detection video tops out at 10 seconds.
I find that problematic, as it may be insufficient to capture everything that needs capturing. For comparison's sake, Ring's security cameras allow for anywhere from 15 seconds up to two full minutes. Thankfully, there's a workaround, albeit a clumsy one: You can set the "retrigger interval" to zero, meaning the camera won't pause before recording another clip. Thus, if it continues to detect motion, it will continue to record — but you'll still be left with 10-second clips.
I thought one of the five available cloud-storage subscription options (provided via a third party, AJCloud) might overcome this limitation, but they're all restricted to 10 seconds as well. (The only difference is how long they're stored.) So what do you get? The option to share camera access with more than three friends or family members; "rich motion alerts," meaning a thumbnail image included in notifications; time-shifting video for quickly reviewing the captured motion; and detection that extends beyond just people to include vehicles, pets and packages.
I think most users will be fine without any of these plans, which are confusing at best. For example, Basic AI ($12.99 per month or $129.99 annually) is the only tier that includes the aforementioned extended identification; the Pro plan ($169.99) doesn't.
My recommendation, then, is to pop in an inexpensive microSD card (here's a 128GB SanDisk card for under $20) and be done with it.
I appreciate how fast the app is to load (I configured it to use my iPhone's Face ID capabilities to quickly bypass manual sign-in) and display a live a feed; it usually takes no more than a few seconds.
Meanwhile, after a solid week of use, I never saw the battery dip more than a little below 100% — and that was with plenty of cloudy days in the mix. A typical battery-powered camera can often last months without needing to be recharged, so it stands to reason the solar panel can keep the B6 "topped off" more or less indefinitely. And should you need to recharge it manually, it's simple to pop the camera free from its mount.
Cinnado B6 wireless outdoor security camera: Should you buy it?
I'm conflicted about this, because I like the camera, the solar panel, the app and the price. The B6 can install just about anywhere there's at least partial sun and a decent Wi-Fi signal, and it does a good job detecting and recording motion.
But it records only 10 seconds' worth of action, and that's a problem. Yes, you can work around it, but I'd rather see Cinnado push out a firmware update to allow for longer clips. Even bumping it to 20 seconds would be an improvement.
If that happens, I'd have few qualms recommending the Cinnado B6. As it stands now, I still recommend it, but with reservations. There are plenty of other inexpensive security cameras that don't have this vexing limitation.
