Axis 207MW Wireless Network Camera review

Dave Mitchell Read more October 7, 2009

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£265

Price when reviewed

Axis has traditionally offered some of the smallest IP cameras on the market. The 207MW takes discrete surveillance a step further, as Axis claims it’s the world’s smallest megapixel camera, offering an impressive top resolution of 1,280 x 1,024 pixels.

It uses the same compact chassis as the 207 and 207W, and it comes with a wall-mounting bracket and a G-clamp as well. Wired and wireless connections are supported, as the camera incorporates a Fast Ethernet port and 802.11g wireless client. You get MPEG4 and Motion JPEG compression, full-motion detection, a built-in mic for one-way audio and a four-pin terminal block for adding additional alarms and controlling external devices such as security lights.

Installation is simple, as the bundled Axis IP Installer searches for the camera and presents it ready for configuration. Axis’ smaller cameras still don’t support Power over Ethernet, but the mains adapter does have almost two metres of cable, and an extension cable adds a further 180cm to the length. Wireless setup is handled well, as the web interface displays all available access points – just click on one, add your WEP or WPA details and away you go.

Our initial response to the live view page was that we’d need a bigger monitor. At the maximum resolution, we couldn’t view the whole live image on a 21in display, even though it was set to the same resolution. You get 15 settings to play with, but note that the frame rate is a casualty, as it drops to only 12fps at the highest resolution. When it comes to image quality, we can safely say that Axis has done it again – this is so much better than the competition. Once the lens has been manually focused to suit, the resultant image is sharp and clean with good overall colour balance. Artefacts are conspicuous by their absence and, even at the lower frame rates, motion is conveyed reasonably well.

Bandwidth utilisation is always a concern with IP cameras and our HP ProCurve 2848 web-monitoring tool showed the camera using 15% of a 100Mb/sec connection when set to Motion JPEG with two clients connected to it. Fortunately, with MPEG4 selected, this dropped to below 10%, although note the package only includes a single-user decoder licence.

The biggest impact will be on wireless operations, and we tested bandwidth consumption using AirMagnet’s excellent Laptop Analyzer software. With an 802.11g connection and the highest resolution selected, the camera sucked up around 15% of available bandwidth with a single client accessing it using Motion JPEG. Switching over to MPEG4 again reduced this to a more manageable 10%. It’s also worth noting that this mode allows you to set a maximum bit rate to reduce impact even further.

For such a small camera, the image size and quality the 207MW delivers is amazing. Add in the number of features on offer, and there’s nothing to touch it at this price.