Amcrest View Pro 2

This is easily the worst software I have ever used. Barely anything works — maybe 5% of the app functions properly, and that’s being generous. It’s shocking that this was ever approved for release. Every year the company pushes out a “new” app, and somehow each one is worse than the last. I now have five different apps installed, and each one barely handles a single basic function. None of them are fully developed, none are properly maintained, and none feel finished. Instead of fixing their broken apps, they just abandon them and release another poorly built replacement. It feels like there’s no long-term plan, no quality control, and no accountability. The desktop software is just as bad — clunky, unreliable, and outdated. It’s honestly unbelievable how such solid hardware can be paired with software this dysfunctional. The software experience completely drags down the brand. At this point, the company needs a complete overhaul of its software development team because what they’re delivering right now is unacceptable.

The view of the app is very modern. The app itself is pretty easy to use. But if you have an iPhone, the motion events will not show up on your apps event list unless you physically click on each push notification your phone receives. This is an extreme flaw in my opinion, because if I have 10 events & want to see them all, I can’t just look through my events list in the app. I have to click on each notification my phone received, and view them individually. Please fix this!

Reducing to one star. App constantly crashes. Original Review: View Pro 2 is marginally better than the original app. That was a pretty low bar to beat but worth mentioning. It still requires too many taps to accomplish simple tasks. For example, live view and playback are separate areas of the app. Watching live view? Back out, go to playback, select the camera, select the date, start playback. Other apps (Unifi for example) put the timeline right under the camera live view on the same screen. Those let you view live or scroll around the timeline in one place. It should be that simple. Also, the iPad app doesn’t fill the screen. It’s basically the iPhone app enlarged, but not actually formatted to correctly fit the screen ratio. Annoying, but not a deal breaker. Turning your device sideways to view a larger image resizes weird too. That said, it is better than the original View Pro. That was a one star hot mess. View Pro 2 at least functions. Amcrest cameras work great and are reasonably priced. Amcrest NVRs have been reliable for me. Their mobile app development however is still ten years behind where it should be.