StartVision L4 Solar Powered Security Camera | A Full Guidance Review

StartVision L4 Solar Powered Security Camera comes with industry-standard features. There is nothing exceptional about this camera, yet it has 2 main disadvantages. First, there is no Cloud storage. Second, the solar panel is directly attached to the camera limiting camera placement to the sun-rich locations. 

L4 Solar camera is developed by the Shenzhen StartVision Technology Co. A manufacturer and exporter of CCTV products with 10 years of experience. The company is located in China, they distribute their products globally.

StartVision L4 Solar Camera Specs

🔹 Solar panel power: 2 watts (requires 10 hours of direct sunlight to fully recharge the battery)
🔹 Field of View: 120° diagonal
🔹 Connectivity: 2.4GHz Wi-Fi only
🔹 Night Vision: Yes, PIR sensor
🔹 Resolution: 1080p
🔹 Motion detection: Yes (adjustable through the app)
🔹 Notifications: Yes
🔹 Live view: Yes
🔹 External Storage: No Cloud Storage
🔹 Internal Storage: 32GB SD card
🔹 Water resistance: IP65 weatherproof

StartVision L4 Solar Powered Security Camera Pros and Cons 

PROS

There are no pros that make this product stand out in front of the competition.

CONS

❌ The solar panel directly attached to the camera limits camera placement options for effective camera recharge from the sun.
❌ No Cloud Storage
❌ Electrical plugs are designed only for use in the US.
❌ Micro SD Card s not included.

Things to Consider before Buying a StartVision Solar Powered Security Camera

Here are things to consider before purchasing StartVision Solar Powered Security Camera.

Solar Panel: Solar panel is Starvision’s weak point compared to the competition. Being directly attached to the Starvision camera – the solar panel becomes useless if you plan to install the camera on the shady part of your house with little to no sunlight. Most competitors including Reolink, Ring, ieGeek and others have solar panels with separate mounts that connect to the camera via a cable (usually type C). A separate solar panel allows to put it in a different place with more sunlight, which greatly speeds up the battery recharge. 

Less False Notifications: Being equipped with a PIR sensor (infrared sensor) camera does not react to ambient temperature objects like falling leaves or other objects that may be pushed by the wind. Instead, motion sensor efficiently detects humans and animals. As a result – less false notifications and fewer useless recordings with nothing happening. On the other hand, users reported poor motion sensor adjustability with motion sensor being either too sensitive or not working at all.

Storage: One of the downsides of the StartVision camera compared to the competition is the lack of Cloud storage. The camera supports only a 32 GB SD card. If the camera gets stolen you will lose the footage. Moreover, the absence of cloud storage makes Starvision less secure and ads a routine of replacing SD cards.

StartVision Solar Powered Camera Features & Benefits

Let’s discuss some of the more compelling features and benefits of this camera model.

Night Vision

Users reported poor night vision. StartVision camera comes equipped with infrared night vision and infrared illuminators (Infrared light is not visible to the human eye, but the camera’s PIR Sensor can see in the infrared light and display the black and white picture to you). The problem is that factory-installed infrared lights are weak and provide little light for the PIR sensor to capture resulting in poor night vision. 

There are 2 possible solutions. First – install additional powerful infrared lights. This way there will be more IR light for the Camera’s PIR Sensor to capture resulting in better night vision. Second – illuminate the area with standard LED lights to keep the camera working in the daylight mode.

StartVision App Compatibility

StartVision does not have its own app. Instead, you can use general apps like iSpy, ToSee Plus, Smart Life or HiCam to connect and use the Camera. We recommend using “Tosee Plus” app since it is the most popular out of mentioned apps. Also, StartVision recommends using it as well.  

The Live view and playback features are available through the app. Note that the camera does not have cloud storage and you are playing back videos that were saved into the internal SD Card. The motion sensor is also adjustable through the app.

Push to Talk Feature

The camera has a built-in microphone and speaker. It is possible to talk to the visitors through the camera using the app. Press and hold the “push to talk” button inside the app to talk. Note that there will be a 3-second delay so it is rather inconvenient, yet still a useful feature to have.

Push Notifications

StartVision L4 camera will send a notification to your phone when its sensor detects movement. Again, the app is required for the notifications to work. We recommend “ToSee Plus” app, it has all camera features covered.

Wifi Connection 

This device has a 2.4GHz Wifi connection and AP hotspot connection mode. It has built-in support for 802.11b/g/n 2.4Ghz Wifi band, however, 5Ghz is not supported. Most competitors also support only a 2.4 GHz WiFi connection so it is not worse or better than the competition in this regard.

IP65 Waterproof

The StartVision L4 camera has IP65 weatherproof rating and may be safely used outside during the rain. 

Motion Sensor

StartVision L4 camera is equipped with a PIR (Pyroelectric, “Passive” InfraRed Sensors) motion sensor which identifies only live object movements. This greatly reduces the number of false notifications caused by falling leaves for example. 

Solar Panel Adjustability

The solar panel is directly attached to the camera. It is manually adjustable but adjustments are limited to the vertical angle. This is a problem since it greatly reduces locations for camera placement if you want the solar panel to effectively recharge the battery. 

Solar Panel should receive at least 10 hours of direct sunlight over the week to top up the battery charge. This means that StartVision Solar camera can not be placed on a shady side of your house. 

Most competitors come with a separate solar panel that has its own mount. Therefore, the solar panel may be placed separately in a place that gets enough sunlight to effectively recharge the battery on daily basis. This is not the case with StartVision Solar Powered Security Camera.

What Users Report about StartVision L4 Solar Camera

We have researched reviews on Amazon and noted that most 5-star reviews look fishy and mostly mention general marketing info from the manufacturer’s website. We suspect that most positive reviews were placed by the manufacturer to boost product rating.

On the other hand, there are many 2, 3 and 4-star reviews that look like they are written by real users. Most complaints include poor motion detection, weak night vision and the solar panel not charging the battery enough.

Verdict

Based on our findings we can NOT recommend this product. 

The solar panel directly attached to the camera is limiting camera placement options to locations that get a lot of sun daily. Infrared illuminators are weak resulting in poor night vision. And the biggest con is the absence of Cloud storage which means additional routine with SD Card replacements. We recommend checking other surveillance cameras with solar panels like Ring Solar Camera or Argus PT Solar Camera


Nathan Robinson

Porch pirates stole my package and now I’m on a mission to stop them from doing the same thing to you. I’m always researching, inspecting and informing myself on the newest porch lockers and other technology that can help stop package theft. My library of free content is growing bigger by the day – dive in and together we can defeat porch pirates.