Battery Life on Essential - is 4000 seconds per month enough?

[Steve_AU]

Hi All,

I am thinking about buying one of the new Essential cameras to add to my system.

I noticed the disclaimer on the Essential cameras has now become a lot lower than it used to be. The website now says the 6 or 12 months battery life is based on just 4000 seconds per month... which my math's says is only about 2min per day. All the previous cameras used to be based on 5min per day.

Do you feel 2min per day is enough for a camera that is looking over my front door or garden?

My current doorbell would be working for at least 5min per day as we have a family of 3 and all of us leave the house in the morning and come back at least once per day - so that's a minimum of 6 clips every day. I also like to live view most days to see what's going on, and I'm sure that will use up some of the battery too.

Would love to hear your thoughts. The 6months battery life sounds awesome, I'm just afraid that I won't see anything near that claim as the 2min per day allowance is so low.

Thanks

Steve

[jguerdat]

That's an interesting find - I hadn't heard/seen this before. Since we don't know the battery's capacity, that may be the reason for the change (smaller battery = less charge life). Still, the usage is important - do you need long recordings? Can you use live view less and/or more briefly? 

Decisions, decisions...

[Steve_AU]

Thanks for your reply Jguderat. I don't need long recordings, just enough to know what's going on really. I do like to live view most days if I get notifications that someone is detected I wasn't expecting.

Like you, I wasn't able to find the capacity of these new batteries either. Looks like they can't be replaced anymore, they must sit inside the case. If anyone out there knows the capacity I'd be interested to know.

[TomMac]

Much has to do with the newer cameras having spotlights too ( which use more power if on ).

Even with the Utra cam with a light , I'm still getting 3 months of average usage.

[Steve_AU]

Thanks TomMac