The Package

The AirLive WL-2000CAM ships in a normal cardboard box. One of the things that make the AirLive WL-2000CAM interesting is the fact that it has a speaker out, this enables two way communications. Besides that this little cam has a wealth of features such as wireless connectivity, fully customizable behavior, and the ability to stream the video and audio feed over the Internet to all sorts of devices.


The bundle is like the feature list: quite extensive. You get a ballhead with a small stand that can also act as a wall mount. I really like the fact that you get everything you need in order to deploy the camera straight out of the box. The only thing missing in order to take full advantage of the camera is a set of PC speakers for two way communication, and a network cable so that you can access the cameras firmware and set it up for your network.

Closer Examination

The unit looks just like a big webcamera, the only thing that gives it away is the LED ring around the business end of the device. My first impression was that the camera is pretty well built and that the layout seems well thought out. Installing the camera on a wall should be a breeze because you both get a mounting plate and a small ballhead which allows for easy mounting and positioning.


As you can see on the pictures above the ballhead has an articulated joint and allows you to point the camera in pretty much any direction you like. There is, however, one problem and that is the connectors on the bottom of the unit. When you have it all hooked up it puts a limit to how you can setup the camera. Overall you have a decent amount of space to manipulate the direction of the camera when mounted on the head.


One of the great things about the WL-2000CAM is that it is wireless and can be configured to work with basically any G-standard based wireless solution. The antenna the camera uses looks just like the ones you get with most of the generic wireless cards for PC, and not surprisingly the range is about the same range as well (not scientific just tried it out in a few locations).


On the bottom of the camera there is a power connector, RJ45 LAN, and a reset button which is recessed into the shell so you do not press it by accident. The screw on antenna can be mounted on the gold plated adapter on the back of the device. It is a little annoying that there is no USB connector that allows you to connect to the camera. My Vista x64 machine could not find the camera without disabling a lot of the security features, if it had a USB connector, it would be much easier to configure because you do not need to alter security settings and so forth.


The camera is only capable of a maximum resolution of 640x480 WxH which is a bit on the dull side. Furthermore it is not autofocus so you have a very limited range. Another issue is noise, the image quality is not up to much even when compared to my year old Creative webcam. This can be down to two things, one an inferior sensor, or two a more aggressive compression. I tried reconfiguring the picture quality settings but when you set it to "Excellent" picture quality it is not all that good.


The power adapter is very small and has a relatively long cable.