T3 Awards 2019: Neos SmartCam wins Best Gadget Under £100

published 7 June 2019

The Neos SmartCam is a small wonder. The cube-shaped connected camera manages to absolutely destroy our “under £100” criteria by coming in at £20, yet somehow sacrifices so little. It’s a genuinely great bit of smart home kit, for an impulse-buy price.

The Neos SmartCam captures Full HD video that rivals cameras that cost five times as much for quality and detail, with a proper night-vision mode that again goes toe-to-toe comfortably with much fancier cameras. There’s motion sensing built-in, of course, and the camera gives you an alert on your phone whenever it spots something (or when it hears something) – though it also includes geo-location so that it won’t bug you when the motion it’s sensing is you.

You can go straight into the app to view clips of when it detected something, and one of its handiest features is the 14 days of free cloud storage, with no subscription needed. It can also record to microSD card, though, so there’ll still be footage even if your internet stops working.

You can go into the app to watch live video at any time, and it supports multiple cameras in an easy interface, so you could kit out the whole home for under our magic £100 mark. There’s also two-way communication, so you can yell at burglars until they leave.

It all works so well, and though it lacks the more advanced features of more expensive cameras, this is 90% of the usefulness for 20% of the cost. It makes advanced home security affordable for the masses, and what’s more deserving of a T3 Award than that?

Full shortlist: Amazon Echo Input, Amazon Firestick 4K, Blue Yeti Nano, Echo Dot 3rd Gen, Ember Smart Mug, Native Union Drop Wireless Charger, Neos SmartCam, Mini SNES, Roku 4K Stick

Check out more of this year's award winners on our main T3 Awards 2019 page.

Matt is T3's former AV and Smart Home Editor (UK), master of all things audiovisual, overseeing our TV, speakers and headphones coverage. He also covered smart home products and large appliances, as well as our toys and games articles. He's can explain both what Dolby Vision IQ is and why the Lego you're building doesn't fit together the way the instructions say, so is truly invaluable. Matt has worked for tech publications for over 10 years, in print and online, including running T3's print magazine and launching its most recent redesign. He's also contributed to a huge number of tech and gaming titles over the years. Say hello if you see him roaming the halls at CES, IFA or Toy Fair. Matt now works for our sister title TechRadar.