Review on 📷 Reolink E1 Zoom Indoor Security Camera - 5MP Super HD WiFi Camera with PTZ, Motion Alerts - Ideal Baby Monitor, Pet Camera, and Home Security - Dual Band WiFi, Multiple Storage Options by Tai Waldbillig

Despite the mixed reviews of their product line, I decided to take a chance with Reolink. I upgraded from a Foscam FI8921W v2 camera; only a 1.3 megapixel camera. The E1 Zoom is a big step forward in video quality. However, the installation seemed to me uncomfortable, to say the least. It's pretty basic, but I didn't like the loud, distorted screeching voice that sounded like a broken NJ Transit speaker late at night. The documentation provided is rather sparse. Pros: The picture quality is very good, as is the video. The sound leaves a lot to be desired, but it's a feature I wouldn't plan to use anyway. I used Reolink tech support and they were very responsive and helpful, but they didn't solve my issue with a bug in their firmware and I'll address that below. I found the camera worked well even in the dark. The Bad: I found many aspects of the firmware to be downright mediocre. Here's a list of firmware issues I've encountered: 1) I'm surprised that the microSD card is only for storing video when motion is detected. With every other brand of IP cameras I've used, you can select the camera you want to take a picture of and save it to the camera at regular intervals, often between 5 and 65535 seconds. This is very desirable as the camera is Wi-Fi only. Reolink is incredibly lazy to do this since the basic functionality is in the firmware. You must use either FTP or third party software; this reduces the value of the camera. A 5 minute clip with a full resolution of 2560x1920 and only 2 frames per second is the lowest you can do, it's around 155MB. The maximum microSD capacity you can use is 64GB. You will run out of storage space very quickly, so why not save photos at intervals of 5, 10, 30, 60. JPEG photos with the same resolution are smaller than 500 KB. 2) Reolink claims WiFi is stable. I strongly disagree. My shed is about 200m long and connected via single-mode fiber between two Cisco 3560CX switches. I have a Cisco wireless environment: WLC 5520 with old 2702i access points. I see that the access point algorithm should choose 5 GHz. The client has no option to select a range; it would be nice. It's annoying. Consider this in your environment. Most dual-band consumer/consumer access points have separate SSIDs for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. Since my shed is far away, I don't really mind running it at 5GHz, but I wouldn't want it running in your home environment. Why do you ask? Because this camera works on 802.11n and slows down 802.11ac devices; not so desirable if you add AC clients at the expense of an AC router. I usually leave 2.4GHz for low priority devices and this device is for me. I would not trust this device with my security in critical situations. I've experienced multiple radio dropouts with an SNR of -51dB, which is excellent. I have attached pictures of these waterfalls. I lost connection to the camera several times using the Reolink client and the Blue Iris v5 demo. I have no radio interference on my WLC and spectrum analyzer, although my noise floor is around -97 dBm. My barn is far from any neighboring house, so there is no 5GHz interference. I've noticed a significant amount of repeated packets and retries. This device is said to have MIMO antennas that are designed to reduce multipath. This is the only 5GHz client on the access point, so I've concluded that the problem is with their wireless driver. I noticed that some of my photos are missing data. Again, saving directly to a microSD card would completely eliminate this problem. Here is my wireless environment: (Cisco Controller) > AP Auto-RF Show 802.11a SHED-inNumber Of Slots. 2AP name. SHED-inMAC address. 84:b2:61:45:a4:98 slot identifier. 1 radio type. RADIO_TYPE_80211a sub-band type. All information about noise. noise profile. PASS Channel 36th channel -95dBm 40th channel -98dBm 44th channel -95dBm 48th channel -98dBm 52nd channel -97dBm 56th channel -97dBm 60th channel -95dBm 64th channel -95dBm 100. -97 dBm CH 104. -95 dBm CH 108. -95 dBm CH 112. -97 dBm CH 116. -97 dBm CH 132. -95 dBm CH 136. -97 dBm CH 140. -95 dBm, channel 149 -97 dBm, channel 153. -95 dBm, channel 157. -97 dBm, channel 161. -94 dBm, channel 165. -97 dBm. Disorder Information Disorder Profile. PASS CH 36 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy CH 40 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy CH 44 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy CH 48 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy CH 52 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy Busy Channel 56 - 128 dBm at 0% occupancy Channel 60 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy Channel 64 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy Channel 100 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy Channel 104 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy Channel 108 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy Channel 112 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy Channel Channel 116 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy Channel 132 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy Channel 136 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy Channel 140 occupied -128 dBm at 0% occupancy Channel 149 - 128 dBm at 0% occupancy channel 153 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy channel 157 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy channel 161 -128 dBm at 0% occupancy channel 165. -128 dBm at 0% occupancy rogue bar graph (20/40/ 80/160) . Channel 36. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 40. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 44. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 48. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 52. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 56. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 60. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 64. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 100. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 104. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 108. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 112. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 116. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 132. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 136. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 140. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 149. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 153. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 157. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 161. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Channel 165. 0/ 0/ 0/ 0 Load information Load profile. PASS Takes getting used to. 3% transfer usage. 0% channel usage. 8% of connected customers. 1 customer and customer statistics. Client Statistics: Number of bytes received. 48560034601 Number of bytes sent. 402302231 The total number of bytes sent. 402302231 The total number of bytes received. 48560034601 Number of bytes sent (last 90 s). 317411 Number of bytes received (last 90 s). 49210943 Number of packets received. 41491709 The number of packets sent. 5409841 Number of intermediate updates sent. 0 Number of timeouts for EAP-ID request messages. 0 Number of EAP-ID request error messages. 0 Number of EAP request message timeouts. 0 Number of failed EAP request messages. 0 Number of timeouts for EAP key messages. 52 Number of bad EAP key messages. 0 Number of transmission attempts. 390543 <--- too much I observed values of 7-15%! Number of RTS attempts. 0 Number of packets received twice. 149552 Number of unsuccessfully decrypted packets. 0 Number of packets with microphone errors. 0 Number of missing microphone packages. 0 Number of discarded RA packets. 0 Number of policy errors. 0 Radio signal strength indicator. Signal to noise ratio -45 dBm. 51 dB Given these problems, I would be very nervous about firmware updates and the system had better check the integrity of the files, otherwise the probability of the device blocking increases. Data is deleted, but 7-15% is an unacceptable level. 3) No QoS/WMM - I expected the device to mark packets, but it doesn't. Again, not a difficult matter, but the firmware. If you don't have carrier grade gear like I do, prioritize packages SOL. Since this is only a Wi-Fi camera4) FTP: Only FTP is allowed and it is not a secure file transfer protocol. It's a security camera, right? How about securing communication from camera to upstream server? Lazy.5) The processor on this device is barely up to the task. Consistently high CPU utilization averaging 77%, never falling below 56% and often reaching >90%. Ugly: While the firmware works the way I want it to, the microSD card location is absolutely weird and not user-friendly at all. But why sacrifice after what I explained to the problems. Apparently Reolink just put that in so they can say they have it too. It's practically useless. Oh, if you manage to overcome the above issues, there doesn't seem to be any way to access files on the microSD card, so accessing that would be really interesting instead of having easy access to the card in the base. Based on this experience, I am fully reviewing the Reolink brand. I bought two; open one to test. I am returning the unopened box and am looking for a better camera because it is not the right one.