Review Insights · App Store
Vico Nature: Smart Nature View
PHOTON SAIL TECHNOLOGIES PTE. LTD. · 1,035 ratings · ★ 4.3
4.3
★★★★★
1,035 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 73 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"birds"
24 negative reviews mention this · 33% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Updated app. Before I updated this app, it identified my birds most of the time. Now, it says unknown about 90%+ of the time even when it is clear what type of bird it is. What can I do? I am going to have to get another type feeder that uses a dif…" - ReneethePooh
2
"bird"
19 negative reviews mention this · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Updated app. Before I updated this app, it identified my birds most of the time. Now, it says unknown about 90%+ of the time even when it is clear what type of bird it is. What can I do? I am going to have to get another type feeder that uses a dif…" - ReneethePooh
3
"camera"
17 negative reviews mention this · 23% of all complaints
★★★★★ "App has issues. Camera image is fine, but the app can be grief, it won’t let me sign in and keeps giving me the “retry” message. Very frustrating. Also misidentifies some birds." - Gale171
4
"feeder"
13 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Updated app. Before I updated this app, it identified my birds most of the time. Now, it says unknown about 90%+ of the time even when it is clear what type of bird it is. What can I do? I am going to have to get another type feeder that uses a dif…" - ReneethePooh
5
"vico"
13 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Worse than vico home. Doesn’t have the connectivity issues that vico home did. But vico home captured so many birds all the time. Vico nature can go days and catch nothing. Garbage." - rina184652749
6
"nothing"
12 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Updated app. Before I updated this app, it identified my birds most of the time. Now, it says unknown about 90%+ of the time even when it is clear what type of bird it is. What can I do? I am going to have to get another type feeder that uses a dif…" - ReneethePooh
7
"doesn"
11 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Worse than vico home. Doesn’t have the connectivity issues that vico home did. But vico home captured so many birds all the time. Vico nature can go days and catch nothing. Garbage." - rina184652749
8
"live"
11 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Vico Home vs Vico Nature. Since the change, I have had lagging on live video, the UI is atrocious, the AI isn’t intelligent nor is it learning. It’s a technical problem child with cyber ADHD. My biggest concern is cost. Are we to be paying for both Vico Home Ge…" - lcherri2
9
"home"
10 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Worse than vico home. Doesn’t have the connectivity issues that vico home did. But vico home captured so many birds all the time. Vico nature can go days and catch nothing. Garbage." - rina184652749
10
"keeps"
10 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "App has issues. Camera image is fine, but the app can be grief, it won’t let me sign in and keeps giving me the “retry” message. Very frustrating. Also misidentifies some birds." - Gale171
11
"since"
10 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "HORRIBLE. Ever since they switched the Vico Nature cameras, we’ve been experiencing constant issues with all of them, not just the nature ones, but also our security cameras. To make matters worse, these cameras no longer provide us with notification…" - Mela-Mel
12
"view"
10 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "App won’t let me log in. What is the point of this app? I just get caught in a loop of being asked for my password, giving the password, being asked for my password again. I can’t log in at all, and there is no contact info for customer service. Leaving a review he…" - HPinCT
📋 All 73 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Updated app
Before I updated this app, it identified my birds most of the time. Now, it says unknown about 90%+ of the time even when it is clear what type of bird it is. What can I do? I am going to have to get another type feeder that uses a different app if this can’t be fixed. I’m paying to get nothing
Not a fan
I prefer the simplicity of the older app. This new version does not have a history for the day, right up front. You have to search for it. I’m keeping my original app.
App has issues
Camera image is fine, but the app can be grief, it won’t let me sign in and keeps giving me the “retry” message. Very frustrating. Also misidentifies some birds.
HORRIBLE
Ever since they switched the Vico Nature cameras, we’ve been experiencing constant issues with all of them, not just the nature ones, but also our security cameras. To make matters worse, these cameras no longer provide us with notifications. When we reach out for help, they send us a lengthy list of tasks that we need to complete, which takes several hours when we have eight cameras. We need to reset, uninstall, reinstall, and install all the apps they provide. Even after we complete these tasks, they send us a generic apology message saying they’re here to help, but then they stop responding and nothing was fixed.
They are the quintessential example of contributing to what is known as the annoyance economy.
They are the quintessential example of contributing to what is known as the annoyance economy.
Poorer than vico home
This app is way worse than vico home. I got longer videos with vico home and better pictures and motion detections . The night motion detection on this is virtually useless. Do not switch from vico home if you do not have too. This app is just designed to give you less.
Cannot open app
I am so frustrated that ever since they changed apps I have not been able to see my birds. It’s been various issues. First the app wouldn’t connect to my feeder. Now after several other issues, the app now will not let me log in. I get a message that my session expired and to log in again - but I’ve not been able to log in just repeats the same message. I have written several times to customer support, deleted and reinstalled, turned off and on my phone among other attempts to solve the issues. Nothing works and support just keeps saying uninstall and reinstall. How many times do I have to say I’ve already since this too many times and it still isn’t working. This is an expensive item that I couldn’t wait to have for a very long time before finally making the purchase and while everything was great before they changed apps, it is now a great frustration. I do NOT recommend this at this time.
Session Expired
I can’t log in anymore. Keeps saying session expired and can’t go any further than this. Please fix!
Awful App. Doesn’t work.
The app has us in a loop of signing us out, and asking us to log in. It claims we have poor network connection despite us having high speed internet. If you have recently purchased this brand of bird feeder… RETURN IT. Piece of junk.
App stopped working
I can’t log in to my app anymore after almost a year of having this. It keeps saying session expired login but won’t let me login it just keeps repeating that message. Disappointed
DONT DOWNLOAD THIS APP
So this app is actually useless because whenever it detects the wind blowing it sends a notification saying motion detected but when a squirrel is at the feeder for over 20 minutes, it won’t send a single notification. It knows that the squirrel is there though. The videos it saves of it are highlighted red. Please do not download this app until this problem is fixed. Also, the alarm won’t just stay on you have to continually turn it on over and over.
Vico Nature made my camera unusable
The new app takes a very long time to log in and then will never connect to my camera. I constantly get a notification that my phone “doesn’t have connection strength” despite having full bars on wifi and refuses to connect using cellular data even when I switch it off. My device has literally been unusable since the switch from VicoHome.
App won’t let me log in
What is the point of this app? I just get caught in a loop of being asked for my password, giving the password, being asked for my password again. I can’t log in at all, and there is no contact info for customer service. Leaving a review here is the only way to ask for help. ??????
App shut
App shut down tells me my session has expired. I can’t get into the app. I can’t get any support. I can’t open anything up. It was working fine for no apparent reason. It just stopped. To get into it change the password login just keeps telling me session expired. I am not subscribed.
No connectivity
Online, full battery, all bars…still will not connect to my bird cam when I open the app. The original app was infinitely better.
Hummingbird swayin in the wind
Really need to alert me everyone my camera sways in the wind? It’s a bird feeder on a top hook.
Annoying.
Annoying.
I miss the old app
This new app keeps signing me out for unknown reason and when I try to sign back in, it tells me my phone has poor network or something went wrong, try again. My mom has the app and same issue with her. It also misidentifies birds A LOT. The same bird will have three different identities within a few different clips in the hour. The AI summary will label it a different bird than the notification on the same clip. Also I see a lot of people have the same issue of empty clips, I’ve changed the sensitivity to all different strings to no avail. I love the camera and feeders themselves but surely hate to have wasted money because of a broken app :(
I’d give the app and customer service a negative 10 stars
Whole system worked great until o moved to the app. Now nothing works. Customer service is useless because you have to email and only get a useless answer back every 2 days because they don’t read what you are telling them. They just paste a standard answer that doesn’t address your question/problem.
Vico nature App
Terrible downgrade to the original VicoHome app. It doesn’t recognize what birds and other birds as the original VicoHome app for AI bird watching. Horrible. Go back to the original. Subscription is useless to say the least.
Awful
I’ve had the smart camera birdfeeder for over a year and I use the original VicoHome app it was amazing. I received a message stating that app would no longer work and I had to upgrade to the Vico nature so I did. None of my videos would load and just the way it was setup was horrible. I ended up deleting it and re-download the original app. So far it’s still working fine! Not recommended
Live view laggy
When I go to do Live view it lags so bad it did not use to on the old app. It mess it when I try record.
Disappointed
I much prefer the old app. Features were lost such as being able to edit the bird species on unrecognized birds and I keep getting kicked out of the app. I’ve gone back to the Vico home app and I’ll stay there as long as the camera is supported there.
Camera rendered useless by WiFi disconnecting.
The camera only stays connected while the app is open. As soon as the app is closed I have to reconnect to WiFi manually. My birdhouse is not easily reached, nor within view to push the buttons. The new app does not allow me to try reconnecting to camera from the live screen.
Support has been useless. Repeatedly tells me it is my router.
Support has been useless. Repeatedly tells me it is my router.
Old app better
Vico home is much better. Not liking the switch. The feed is chaotic
The App Sucks
It took nearly an hour to add ONE bird feeder. Now, I can’t sign on. Vice Home worked so much better and when they took away bird feeder support. It went downhill from there. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were created and supported in India. It’s truly that bad.
Unfair
Please remove the paywall
Conversion & performance
Conversion from the VicoHome was horrible. The performance of the new app is also terrible. The old app and performance was much better.
Not impressed
So far I’m not impressed at all. I tried to sign in with my VicoHome ID. No luck. It just “timed out”. Then I decided to create a new account. When I hit the country/region, it “timed out” again. So now I don’t have a bird cam anymore. Thanks for nothing!!
Keeps timing out
Updated to the new app- now I cannot get the feeder to show the live feed. It just keeps timing out- and yes I’ve reinstalled and done all the other things that MIGHT fix it
Crash crash crash
Never had problems with the old app. This one crashes constantly, and keeps logging you out. Fix the bugs!
Issues
Worked great at first but now it won’t let me login into the app. Keeps telling me “something went wrong. Please try again later”
Won't let us sign in anymore
Worked great until the recent update. Now every time we try to sign in, it gives us an error message (something went wrong, please try again later.)
Tried deleting and re-installing, new password, etc. Nothing. Garbage. Can't find any way to contact anyone, just FAQs.
Tried deleting and re-installing, new password, etc. Nothing. Garbage. Can't find any way to contact anyone, just FAQs.
Must pay
Now you must pay subscription in order to watch video recorded. 0 stars if possible
Won’t connect
I can’t get this to connect to my wifi. Old app worked fine. Not pleased with new app at all.
Garbage
This new “upgraded” app is pure garbage. Real score would be -100. Camera has disconnected twice in the two weeks since I was forced to make the switch. Never once lost connectivity on the old app. Also lost functionality. I am the primary user and I shared the camera with my spouse. He can only view images, not videos, with this app. He also cannot choose to start a live view. Where’s the fun in that? Ready to toss this paperweight and buy a new camera with an app that actually works. Vico Nature is horrible!
Big downgrade
I use the original
This new app is awful
It still says, waiting for a bird to come to the feeder when it’s been hundreds of birds that has came
This new app is awful
It still says, waiting for a bird to come to the feeder when it’s been hundreds of birds that has came
Grossly Misidentifying Regulars!
The updated app… what in the world has happened?? You’re identifying my regular House Finch as a redheaded woodpecker! My common Grackle, very much looking like a crow also identified as a woodpecker. I just sent like 6 feedbacks on misidentified birds. I get excited thinking a new bird has visited. The previous app was not making these mistakes. Please fix it! And you have the nerve to be offering another, more expensive app. Uhh, no. Not until you fix whatever you have broken.
Terrible app
Users that I share with CANNOT view the live camera. They just see a message that says “No permission to operate this device.” What’s the point?
Disappointed
The directions that came with the camera do not match. In the directions, it tells you that you can set the motion detection on the camera to automatic yet in the camera there is no such recording action in the cloud there is a 20 second video and you have to go find the actual video on the SD card if you want the “full” video and even then it’s hard to find because the camera goes off so many times and there is no sorting to say just show me birds like there is on the cloud tab. I don’t know this could be an awesome app. It just seems like it’s doing the bare minimum and for the price it’s disappointing.
Does not work
It comes on it goes off, reset it it works for a day or two. Then I have to reset it again. And you are stuck with it for the year prescription. It did work good before I subscribed to it. And it miss identifies several birds.
No basic features
Can’t delete an individual video clip from the SD card. Can’t connect to a long name with white spaces SSID.
Not an upgrade
This app change is so disappointing. It’s awkward, not user friendly, and an overall downgrade from the previous “no nonsense” app. Constantly pushing a new AI driven subscription when I have the previous one is obnoxious. Why would anyone want AI to write fake stories about the birds at their feeder? Everything about this app is a downgrade.
Terrible app
It keeps signing me out nonstop
Worst
This app is even worse than the first one. Still sucks at identifying the birds and now the new app doesn’t even let you manually enter the species name yourself when it can’t. God I hate this system. Will be doing an upgrade as soon as I can.
Need a lot of improvement
Several issues with this app. Live view will not load most of the time. Even when I am standing directly in front of the camera with the camera literally sitting next to my router (I moved it there to rule that out.) It records fine but when you try to load the live view it just spins for eternity.
You can’t reboot the router via the app.
AI only identifies birds about 40% of the time and I am not able to identify them myself to label them. I get more “there was a bird” notifications than actual ID notifications. Definitely not subscribing to that service if they cannot accurately and consistently provide it.
I also agree with a previous reviewer there needs to be an option to set off the alarm when only a squirrel visits.
You can’t reboot the router via the app.
AI only identifies birds about 40% of the time and I am not able to identify them myself to label them. I get more “there was a bird” notifications than actual ID notifications. Definitely not subscribing to that service if they cannot accurately and consistently provide it.
I also agree with a previous reviewer there needs to be an option to set off the alarm when only a squirrel visits.
Upgrade is a Downgrade
The new app does a poorer job identifying the birds. And I can’t access old videos of the birds that have been categorized. They are all lost. Additionally the calendar and filter view is hard to find. Lots of bugs.
Huge downgrade
Half the time it doesn’t work as you can’t even get into the camera. On the chance you do it’s blown up so huge it cuts a majority of the image off so you have to reduce the size to fully see the view. You can’t access past images without getting into the camera live and then going to the history. New app also took away the images of the birdhouse type which was super helpful when you have multiple feeders, it’s nice to reference the style or shape for quicker access. Finding image quality to be poor as well, despite nothing changing in the settings or the camera itself the app is not showing leasing the camera quality. Still have a significant issue with it being correct on the battery percentage, which was a big thing in the last app that never seem to get fixed. It still shows a camera may be not charging when it is or saying it’s dead when it’s not, so that bug has continued to this app now too. Things overall are just not as easy to access like they said it would be and I’m pretty tech savvy. As per usual a company takes a pretty decent app and created a new one to only make it way worse. I don’t know why companies don’t focus on fixing the current app and the issues with the current one instead of making a new one and then making that five times worse than it was. I used to turn to this app and hook up other birdfeeders to it, and instead of using the apps that were originated to go with them because this one was way better but now those other apps are out shining.
Sucks
This new app to use for birdhouses is absolutely terrible
Screw this
Great until they make you buy a subscription
You broke it
I loved Vico Home. Now, if I just wanna see the snapshot, I have to go through three different clicks. It runs slower and I just don't wanna watch a steady video first.
VicoHome work well-THIS DOES NOT
I have several bird feeder cams and monitor them throughout the day. Switching to this app is a nightmare for that. I can no longer look at an individual camera and see what been going on. All the camera clips are on one feed which is awful. Fine if you only have one camera but for those of us that have invested in more- app has made them useless. Resolution has deteriorated. If this is what I am forced to deal with, I will be cancelling my subscription and shutting them down. Why did this company have to ruin my birdwatching experience when they had an app that worked impressively well? Bird watching has become a big part of my life because of it and now that will be gone. Very distressing!
+ 23 more in the clipboard copy
Sentiment summary
85%
Positive (4-5★)
1%
Neutral (3★)
14%
Negative (1-2★)