D-Link Omna 180 Review: One Year Before It Failed
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The D-Link Omna 180 Cam HD was a 1080p HomeKit camera with a 180-degree lens, bought in October 2019. It ran noticeably hot in normal use, and about a year in it went dead with no explanation I could find. It is discontinued now. Every camera bought for this house between 2017 and 2019 failed within a couple of years, while plugs bought in 2017 still switch daily.
Jump to where to buy →What works
- Image quality and the 180-degree view were fine for an indoor camera of that era
- HomeKit integration worked as advertised while it ran
What doesn't
- Stopped responding for good about a year after purchase
- Ran hot enough that picking it up was unpleasant
- Discontinued, and only turns up through aftermarket sellers
I bought a D-Link Omna 180 Cam HD on October 28, 2019. It was a 1080p indoor camera with a 180-degree lens, HomeKit support, night vision, two-way audio and a microSD slot, model DSH-C310/AN.
It ran hot enough that picking it up was unpleasant, and I noticed the temperature repeatedly over the year I had it without going looking for it.
What I can and can’t tell you
About a year in, it stopped responding and never came back. There was no impact, no power event and no firmware change I can point at, and I never diagnosed it; there was no error message or log to send to support.
Heat is my suspicion, but that’s a guess based on how warm it ran rather than anything I measured. Plenty of devices run warm for years without dying.
Three cameras, 2017 to 2019
All three cameras bought for this house in that stretch failed:
- Logitech Circle 2, ordered July 23, 2017. Dead within one to two years.
- Logitech Circle 2, a second unit ordered September 18, 2017, running at the same time as the first rather than replacing it, mounted to a front window. Same outcome.
- D-Link Omna 180, ordered October 28, 2019, the subject of this review.
eufy, bought later, has held up. A eufyCam 2 kit from June 2020 still works and I rate it highly. Its cameras are sitting uncharged at the moment rather than broken, and its HomeBase is still live on my network. I also have a eufy plug-in indoor camera, bought two weeks after the kit; it has run without a fault. More on both in the eufyCam 2 review.
The eufy gear, battery and mains alike, has outlasted all three.
Everything else bought in the same period is also still working. Two iDevices smart plugs from 2017 switch a light every day, on firmware that stopped being updated years ago, from a brand that no longer meaningfully exists. An iHome sensor from January 2018 still reports temperature, humidity, light, motion and sound. All of it ran on the same network in the same house over the same years.
Why that might be
Cameras ask more of their hardware than anything else in a smart home. Continuous video encoding, a radio pushing that video, an image sensor and infrared emitters, all running around the clock in a small sealed enclosure with no fan. A smart plug switches a relay and otherwise idles.
That fits the three failures, which all ran continuously on mains power. It doesn’t explain the eufy plug-in camera, which is also mains-powered and has been fine. Era and build quality probably matter more than power source.
That’s a mechanism rather than a proven cause, and four cameras is a small sample. But it matches the failure I watched, and it’s changed how I budget: I now plan on replacing any camera after two or three years.
What I’d buy instead
I can’t give you a first-hand camera recommendation, because I don’t have a working one.
What I can offer is the brand record: I’d buy eufy again, on the strength of the eufyCam 2 kit from 2020 and the plug-in indoor camera that followed it.
I’d skip the Logitech Circle View, the follow-up to the Circle 2, purely because two Logitech cameras already died on me. That’s pattern-matching on a sample of two, and you’re entitled to weigh it differently, but it’s the reason.
Whatever you buy, note that HomeKit Secure Video needs a home hub and an iCloud+ plan, and records at 1080p regardless of what the camera’s sensor can do.
Hands-on notes
Ordered October 28, 2019. Ran in this house for roughly a year before it stopped responding permanently.
Image quality and the 180-degree field of view were fine for an indoor camera of that era, and HomeKit integration worked as advertised. I have no complaint about what it did while it worked.
The model is discontinued. Mine is retired, and I never went looking for a like-for-like replacement.
Verdict
Nothing about this camera bothered me except how long it lasted, which turned out to be the only thing that mattered.
Where to buy, tested picks
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Common questions
Is the D-Link Omna 180 still available?
No. The Omna 180 Cam HD (model DSH-C310/AN) is discontinued and only turns up through aftermarket sellers. There is no reason to buy one now.
Why did the D-Link Omna 180 stop working?
I never found out. The unit ran warm through its whole service life, and at roughly the twelve-month mark it went unresponsive for good. I was able to rule out physical damage, a power interruption, and a recent firmware update, which leaves heat as an unconfirmed theory.
Do HomeKit cameras last as long as other smart home accessories?
Not in this house. Three wall-powered, always-on cameras bought between 2017 and 2019, two Logitech Circle 2 units and this Omna, all quit inside two years. A battery eufyCam 2 kit from 2020 remains in service, and the iDevices plugs from 2017 are still in daily use.
Runs the homekit.reviews test home, a real mixed Matter/Thread/HomeKit house. Everything reviewed here was set up, paired, and lived with. See how I test →