Review on 🎥 REOLINK 5MP Weatherproof PoE Camera (Set of 2) for Indoor/Outdoor IP Security Surveillance with 100ft IR Night Vision, Motion Detection, Smart Home Compatible, Support Up to 128GB SD Card, RLC-410-5MP by Eduardo Long

After my truck was stolen right out of my driveway with no evidence, I decided I needed a comprehensive monitoring system to protect my property. I did a lot of research and decided on Reolink. It seemed to me that this was a good turnkey system to build on later. I've been using my nine camera system for over two years now and for the most part I'm happy with it. Here are the highlights. I have a 16 channel DVR. While it's extremely underpowered for watching videos, it gets the job done. I find it important to watch the video in the lowest possible quality. I installed a standard 2TB drive and a 3TB drive, this gives me a few months + motion alerts. I will eventually build a Blue Iris computer for NVR purposes, but it wasn't on my priority list. The cameras themselves are pretty good. The quality of daylight is not bad, it is used to see what is most important. Night vision is mediocre but excellent when it comes to a budget camera. The problem with any IR vision is that things like license plates and certain details are lost. There are cameras on the market with better IR and night vision, but Reolink offers good value for money. Also, I have a mix of old 4MP and newer 5MP cameras. There's a difference, but it's not amazing, and I'm glad they cost about the same. The software ecosystem is so-so. The Reolink PC app leaves a lot to be desired. It gets the job done, but there are some quirks to contend with. Watching video from NVR or cameras requires patience and you can only view 4 camera feeds at a time. The camera configuration is pretty good, it's easy to find what you want to program and easy to apply the settings. I wish there were a few more features, but almost every problem I have with the software can be solved with another NVR. Reolink is also pretty good at providing software updates to fix issues, but they don't represent the core features that I would use most of the time. I was impressed with the cooling performance. I live in a very cold climate and these cameras are not "officially" rated for it. The nominal spec is literally 20F. However, I've successfully gotten the cameras down to -38°F without incident or issues, and they've withstood harsh winters of negative numbers with no issues. I don't have major problems with icing or autofocus, which can be an issue in cold temperatures. I suspect that -40°F/C would be the limit. Most electronic devices cannot operate at this temperature unless they are equipped with enhanced electronics. networks in general. I'm glad that the remote view doesn't depend on NAT and can survive the triple NAT scenario without firewall issues. This impresses me as I needed the ability to see from a distance. On average, a stream uses 150-250 kbps, so extremely high bandwidth is not required. In two years of system operation, one camera failed. This failure was actually my fault, I found that I had a bad and weatherproof connection on the RJ-45 port. My biggest problem is cobwebs in the summer and it's not a problem with the cameras themselves. Overall I'm happy with the system, but here's a list of the main shortcomings I found: * No motion sensitivity. This is a static setting based on the time of day and is set differently for day and night. The problem is that light levels change throughout the year and if you don't adjust, you might accidentally miss motion events. It would be better if the system was integrated during sunrise and sunset so it could be more automated.* Snow (and sometimes rain or chimney smoke) triggers numerous motion events, making it difficult to find an incident under these conditions. The masking system is not enough to solve these problems and you usually get a lot of traffic warnings. The best NVRs solve this problem by allowing zone surveillance to trigger actual alerts, which it doesn't. This actually resulted in me disabling both email and push notifications, which would be nice simply because I get way too many of them. * I love that Reolink has improved their cameras and basically made them backwards compatible with their NVRs. However, I am disappointed that the new 4K cameras are not compatible with 16ch NVR at all, but are compatible with 8ch NVR. It's annoying but I don't need 4K right now and it's pretty intense even with basic hardware. * There is no granularity or control over the alerting features as I mentioned above. They really need zone-based alerts, not just motion alerts. I get so many traffic alerts most of the year that it has issues with real-time monitoring and alerts, which is what I really want. Reolink needs to understand the difference between traffic and incident and somehow integrate that into its software. I opened a ticket with their support team about some of my main issues and concerns. While they were responsive, they also haven't resolved a single issue with the system in the two years I've owned the system. Despite the above issues, I feel like I have an increased level of security and haven't had any major security incidents since installing the system. Sometimes the presence of a guard is enough. I've caught the neighborhood dogs trespassing many times, once they climbed into our trash and made a mess. It was a pleasure solving this puzzle and I'm glad I have a system that lets me know what's going on at my property while I'm away.