Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro review: almost perfect

The Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro boasts an impressive spec sheet. It’s the only camera that can pull power from Power Over Ethernet (PoE) while offering a HomeKit Secure Video stream, but it's also, as far as I can tell, the first-ever outdoor smart home hub. With superb built-in AI smarts, the only downside is that you need a subscription to get the best out of it—but you have plenty of options there. 

It’s both brilliant and not quite perfect.

Video review

Camera specs: impressive, but not the best

The camera itself has solid specs, though it’s not the most high-end option out there. It’s IP65-rated for full outdoor use, shoots at 2.6K (2560 x 1520p)—which is sharper than Full HD but not quite 4K—and has a wide 133-degree field of view with full-color night vision.

More impressively, it packs a built-in neural processor for on-device AI recognition. That means it doesn’t just recognize objects like people, packages, or vehicles—it also identifies faces. In theory, this allows for on-device automation based on who is at your door, rather than just something being there.

In terms of storage, you get 32GB built into the device with a 30-day trial of Aqara’s HomeGuardian cloud plan, plus local network connectivity and HomeKit Secure Video support. It’s also compatible with Google Home and Amazon Alexa, and offers an RTSP option for third-party solutions. 

And then there’s the smart home integration. The Camera Hub G5 Pro is a full-fledged Matter controller, a Thread Border Router, and a Zigbee hub. Essentially, it’s an Aqara M3 Hub mashed together with a security camera, and designed to work outdoors.

On paper, it’s incredible. But does it deliver?

Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro

The Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro is an outdoor-ready surveillance camera with advanced AI features, True Color Night Vision, and wide platform compatibility, ensuring secure and intelligent monitoring for your property.

Buy at Amazon US for $199.99

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Installation: mostly easy, with one quirk

Installing the Camera Hub G5 Pro is pretty straightforward, but there’s one small detail that’s not clearly explained in Aqara’s official manual or setup videos: where exactly are you supposed to put the screws? The trick is to look for a small rubber cap on the base, next to the pairing codes. Pull this out, unscrew the tiny Philips screw, and the base slides off.

Once that’s off, you can screw the mounting plate onto your wall, slide the camera back onto it, and re-secure the screw. That’s it.

Now, here’s where I hit my first snag. The mount has a limited range of adjustments. You can spin the camera on the base and extend the mount slightly for angling, but it’s not a full 3-axis adjustment. My view of the front door was skewed—not unusable, but definitely not as versatile as my previous Reolink camera, which could freely rotate.

Also, this is a fixed-view camera—no pan or tilt—so placement matters a lot. Take your time figuring out the right spot, especially if you want to make use of the facial recognition.

The main body of the camera is no bigger than the palm of your hand, so it's fairly compact compared to some. 

Power and connectivity: PoE for the win

The Camera Hub G5 Pro is powered by PoE (Power over Ethernet), which is fantastic. I find battery-powered cameras unreliable, and I already have PoE infrastructure, so this was perfect for me. The cable exits the main body of the camera of to the side rather than through the rear mount, and a waterproof connector is included. This worked for me, but some users have noted they want a cleaner install with the cable hidden in the mount. 

If you don’t have PoE, you have two options:

• Use a PoE power injector to add power to a standard Ethernet connection.
• Use the USB-C port for a standard power cable.

There’s also a Wi-Fi model, but I haven’t tested that one. It still requires a power cable.

Matter support: it’s complicated

The Camera Hub G5 Pro is both a Matter controller, Thread Border Router, and a Matter bridge for Zigbee. That means:

• It can be your smart home hub—it’s basically an Aqara M3 Hub with a camera attached.
• However, since it’s outdoors, it might not be ideal as your only hub. Unless you have a full mesh coverage of your whole home, a more centrally located indoor hub would be more appropriate. 
• It can bridge Zigbee and Thread devices into your existing Matter network.

But the camera feed itself is not Matter-compatible.

Matter has promised camera support for a while, but as yet, it hasn't materialized in the specs. Even if Matter 1.5 adds full camera support, adoption will probably take a while, with some providers still working their way through the Matter 1.2 and Matter 1.3 specs.

That said, it doesn’t matter because the Camera Hub G5 Pro directly supports:

• Apple HomeKit Secure Video.
• Google Home.
• Amazon Alexa.
• RTSP feeds (for third-party recording solutions).

So whatever your smart home ecosystem of choice, the Camera Hub G5 Pro should work with it anyway. 

Camera performance: motion detection, events, and AI

Two things really impressed me, and one thing slightly disappointed.

First, the event timeline and interface responsiveness are superb. I’m used to Reolink cameras, which always have some delay when retrieving or scrubbing through events. The G5 Pro, however, is incredibly snappy. Events load almost instantly, even when scrolling back through footage. Events are clearly labeled, color coded—and there's even a timelapse recording in-between events. 

Surprisingly, this isn’t just because it’s running over Ethernet. My other PoE cameras aren’t this fast. I suspect the difference comes from solid-state storage instead of SD cards, or more likely, because these events are being stored in Aqara’s cloud. Whatever the reason, it’s fast and responsive, even when accessing footage through Apple Home.

However, there’s a catch: the fast, labeled event timeline requires an Aqara HomeGuardian subscription. You get a 30-day free trial, but after that, if you don’t subscribe, you’ll lose labeled event detection (in the screenshots above: the cloud-based timeline view, the local timeline, and lastly, what you'll see if your cloud subscription expires). The camera will still recognize different types of events and notify you of such, but it won’t label them properly when you view the recordings, making the default local timeline frustrating to use.

By contrast, Reolink cameras allow full event labeling locally without a cloud subscription. I’m not saying one is better than the other—they’re completely different products—but given that the camera itself still detects these events, locking proper labeling behind a subscription paywall feels unnecessary. There’s no technical reason for it as far as I can see.

The AI detection is surprisingly accurate. The camera recognizes people, packages, pets, vehicles, and even sounds. It correctly identified my dog whining at the door—though it labeled it as "baby crying," which was amusing but also impressive. It did occasionally mistake a group of ducks for a human, but overall, it was pretty accurate.

Most importantly, there were no false alarms at night. My previous Reolink camera was constantly triggered by rain and bugs. The Camera Hub G5 Pro wasn’t. That alone makes it a fantastic outdoor camera.

The one letdown was facial recognition. I was hoping it would work like Apple Photos or Google Photos—where it learns faces dynamically over time and asks you to tag anyone it finds. Instead, you have to manually upload a single photo of each person you want it to recognize.

For me, this was a dealbreaker. Since my camera is mounted high up and off to the side, it struggles to get a clear enough face for recognition. I only got it to recognize me once, and that was when I was standing directly in front of it, looking straight into the lens.

For facial recognition to work well, you’d probably need this mounted at head height and facing directly toward an entryway. If you can make that setup work, you could use the detected faces in home automation—for example, “When James is detected, turn on the office lights”. But in my case, it wasn’t usable.

Apple users with an iCloud+ subscription can use Apple’s own facial recognition system for event labeling. Apple’s system is generally excellent, since it has more data to work with than Aqara’s single-photo method. Unfortunately, you need to store your entire photo library in iCloud to make this work, and with 2TB of photos, that wasn’t an option for me. The recorded footage from the camera doesn't count towards your storage space, but the photo library required to power facial recognition does. 

Workarounds for cloud subscription

I don’t want to be overly negative about cloud subscriptions because there are alternatives. The G5 Pro supports RTSP, so you can stream 24/7 footage into a local NVR or third-party software that may provide event tagging and AI recognition.

For example, Scrypted is a great option that can run in Docker but is also a paid subscription. You can also configure the camera to save clips directly to a network storage folder or your Mac, bypassing Aqara’s cloud entirely for long term video storage

The key takeaway here is that you’re not locked into one cloud service. If you’re comfortable setting up an NVR or using third-party integrations, you can still get a full-featured experience.

Final verdict: Should you buy the Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro?

If you’re looking for:

• A PoE-powered outdoor camera.
• A Matter controller, Thread Border Router, and Zigbee bridge in one device.
• Superb AI-based motion detection with minimal false alarms.
• Good smart home integration (HomeKit, Google Home, Alexa, RTSP).
• Don't mind a cloud subscription to get the best from the camera; or have the know-how to use a third-party solution. 

Then yes, this is a fantastic buy.

However, if you:

• Need full pan-tilt control or a more flexible mounting system.
• Want completely local event labeling without a cloud subscription.
• Expect flawless facial recognition.

Then you might want to look elsewhere.

Despite my frustration with the cloud subscription model, the Camera Hub G5 Pro offers plenty of choice, whether that's an alternative cloud provider like Apple iCloud+, or a raw RTSP stream for any number of third-party solutions. 

All in all, the Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro is an excellent security camera on top of a useful Matter controller and bridge. It’s not perfect, but for the price, it offers way more than just a camera—it’s an entire smart home hub that just happens to have a security camera built in.