Bought EZVIZ C6C Home Camera

I have two parrots at home and wanted to check on them remotely—especially while traveling—so I bought a home camera. Here are my purchase and usage notes to help others avoid pitfalls.

Brand Choice

I went with EZVIZ. I’d tried Lenovo and Xiaomi before—my quick take:

• Lenovo’s activation flow is terrible and the hardware quality isn’t great.
• Xiaomi’s app experience is decent but overloaded with ads. One brand-new device prompted me for a firmware upgrade out of the box, and tapping upgrade bricked it. Search online and you’ll see tons of similar complaints. The fix requires formatting a memory card and flashing manually. Other annoyances include no 5 GHz Wi-Fi support.

So those two brands are on my blacklist. After watching a few YouTube reviews, I chose EZVIZ.

EZVIZ is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hikvision, a professional security company—so the product matches the parent company’s expertise.

Picking a Model

With the brand decided and a 200–300 CNY budget, I landed on the C6C. I paid 233 CNY, which included a 32 GB Class 10 SD card, via JD (link) for reference.

This model ticks the boxes I care about:

1. 4 MP resolution, which is plenty clear for my needs.
2. Supports 5 GHz Wi-Fi, which is rare in this price range and better than certain competitors.

Setup

Activating the EZVIZ was smooth:

• Plug in the camera.
• Download and log into the mobile app.
• Follow the prompts in the app to bind and activate the device.

Tips

After a week of use, here are a few handy tricks:

1. You can disable ads in the mobile app. Once they’re off, even the launch screen is clean.
   • Steps to disable ads are documented here.
2. EZVIZ offers lots of services—cloud storage, phone alerts, etc.—but almost all of them are paid add-ons, with short trials after activation.
   • Be careful not to subscribe accidentally. Only pay for what you really need.
   • For storage, EZVIZ supports SD cards and the cloud. I disabled cloud storage and left out the SD card for now to keep things private; I don’t need recordings yet.
3. You can share the camera with up to five people for free. Handy when multiple family members want access.

Impressions

Here are the pros and cons of the C6C:

Pros

• The image is sharp—much better than Xiaomi’s so-called 2K models.
• 5 GHz Wi-Fi support is great; you don’t have to switch your phone off your usual network during setup.
• I like the design more than Xiaomi’s—it looks nicer overall.

Cons

1. The EZVIZ app is less polished than Xiaomi’s. For example, you have to use on-screen arrow keys to move the camera; gesture control isn’t supported.
2. Most features beyond live viewing require separate subscriptions, which feels a bit stingy.

Final Thoughts

Sure, there are downsides, but the core functions—live view, two-way audio, device sharing—work well. At this price, I’d still recommend it if you have similar needs.