The Canary Flex is a decent home surveillance camera. It's installation with the magnetic base is a breeze and positioning the camera is very easy. The camera must be installed vertically as the software cannot automatically rotate or flip the image if the camera is installed horizontally, or upside down.

During pairing, for some odd reason, the Canary requires both Bluetooth and Location Services to be on (Android install). This caused my pairing to fail multiple times as I did not permit Canary to have Location permissions, I didn't think it was necessary and didn't want to share this. After multiple attempts at pairing failed, I enabled Location permissions and the devices were successfully paired. Post-pairing, I removed Canary's location permission and the device has been functioning fine since. I would prefer if the device could connect simply through Bluetooth only. I also did not like that the camera required an address during setup.

Setup is very simple and if you are looking for a camera to plug in, pair, and get going, this is it. I found no options to set a static IP address, and there is no web app accessible from a browser, you must use an Android or iPhone. You also only get 24 hours of recorded video via the Canary Cloud without a subscription. There is no SD card slot. The Canary Flex does not have a RJ-45 connection for Ethernet, and must always be connected to WiFi.

The camera's performance overall is sufficient for home indoor and outdoor use for general surveillance. Due to the 720p camera and wide field of view, pixelation is visible on targets 15 to 20 feet away. Therefore, the camera is good for large, overview shots to determine movements and behaviors of targets. Since you can't change the camera's focal length, you are stuck with the 116 degree field of view. As mentioned before, you can't change the camera's aspect ratio either, so a hallway shot looking at a door results in a lot of wasted wall being recorded.