Hamrol 5MP bulb camera review: 5MP for under a thousand pesos

The Hamrol 5MP E27 bulb camera is our Best cheap 5MP: 5MP with H.265 compression, auto tracking and a built-in alarm, at around ₱949.

What makes it stand out at this price?

Two specs you rarely see this far down the price list.

5MP is the top of this category, matched here only by the IMOU at nearly three times the money. Every other camera in our roundup runs at 3MP or 1080P.

H.265 is the quieter one, and arguably more useful day to day. It roughly halves file sizes against H.264, so the same microSD card holds around twice the footage. On a camera recording all day, that turns a few days of history into over a week. Most budget listings never mention the codec at all.

Add auto tracking to follow movement across a room and a built-in alarm that can interrupt an intruder rather than just record them, and this is a well-featured camera for under a thousand pesos.

What should make you cautious?

The app, and the missing paperwork.

It runs on iCsee, a third-party app used across a lot of white-label security hardware rather than something Hamrol built. In practice it works and plenty of Filipino households use it. The structural risk is that support and updates come from the app developer, not from the company that sold you the camera.

Hamrol publishes no field of view, no night-vision range and no warranty, and no model number that leads to a manufacturer datasheet. That last point matters for the 5MP claim itself: there is no independent figure to check it against.

We are not calling it false. 494 owner ratings at 4.8 suggests people are getting roughly what they expected. But it is the difference between a number you can verify and one you have to take on trust, and it is exactly why the IMOU sits above it.

The ceiling angle applies here as everywhere in this category: from a light fitting you see the tops of heads.

Is the Hamrol 5MP Bulb Cam sulit?

Around ₱949 as of August 30, 2026. Check the latest price on Shopee.

On paper this is the best value in the roundup: 5MP and H.265 for around a third of the IMOU’s price. If the specs hold up in your unit, it is a lot of camera for the money.

The honest framing is that you are trading verification for price. Pay ₱949 and you get a strong specification you cannot check, from a smaller brand, with no warranty. Pay around ₱2,700 and you get a slightly better specification you can check, with two years of cover.

For a secondary room, a stockroom or a second camera, the Hamrol is the sensible spend. For the one camera that matters, it is not.

Who the Hamrol 5MP Bulb Cam suits

Buy this if you want the sharpest picture your money will stretch to and you are comfortable with a third-party app and no warranty. It is the right choice for a second or third camera around a house, or for a small shop covering more than one room on a budget. If this is your only camera and the footage might matter, buy the one with a datasheet behind it.

If the Hamrol 5MP Bulb Cam is not right

If verified specs and a warranty matter more than price, the IMOU Bulb Cam 5MP publishes 2880 x 1620, a 25m night-vision range and two years of cover. If you would rather have two views than one sharp one, the V380 SQ002 shows a fixed and a moving lens on a split screen.

See how it ranks against the rest in our best bulb CCTV cameras in the Philippines roundup, or work out which specs to insist on in our bulb CCTV camera buying guide.