Labs

With a removable sun and rain shield, the VIS349 looks businesslike. It has a 60cm captive cable so you can mount it outside, using the supplied bracket, and connect the power and video cables indoors.

The VIS249 claims to have a higher resolution than the other cameras here, but we were disappointed by its image quality. Images were always too bright during the day, making our thief's face too white and rather hard to recognise. When the lights are out, the 18 infrared LEDs illuminate around 20m of the shot. This lights up the scene well, and the camera did a decent job of capturing an image of the room. There was lots of noise in the picture, but it included a good view of our thief's face.

No power supply or extension cable is provided, so you'll have to budget for them. With the camera alone costing over £140, this is not good value.