Review on 📸 Amcrest 2MP Outdoor PTZ POE + IP Camera with Pan Tilt Zoom (25x Motorized Optical) ProHD POE+ Security Speed Dome, CMOS Image Sensor, 328ft Night Vision, POE+ (802.3at) IP66, 2MP, IP2M-863EW-AI by Oliver Phelps

I've wanted this camera for a long time and finally bought it. The camera was delivered on August 12th 2021 and I figured there must have been a few items in the Revain box as it was a lot bigger and heavier than I expected. No, it only contained an Amcrest box, which was huge and much heavier than any other camera I've ever bought. I took the camera out of the box and was shocked. This camera is 14 inches tall with a mount. I looked at the dimensions listed on Revain but didn't seem to be paying attention. It's all up to me. I'll start cutting cardboard to the size of things I plan to buy online so I can see the physical size for myself. Looking at the large unopened box, I debated whether to keep it or send it back. It took me a few seconds to decide that since she was here I could keep her. This camera may not look large on a building, but it can look unusually large on a house if not installed in the correct location. I originally intended to install this camera in the front of my house near the garage but that idea was scrapped. I figured the higher I could put it the better, so it'll be at the back of the house for now. I have a street behind my house and I wanted a camera with a high view of my yard. My immediate problem was that I wanted to use this camera now and am unable to install the camera myself due to an injury. Instead, I chose to place this camera in a second floor window overlooking the front of my home. The foam it came in was the perfect base for mounting the camera vertically, which was technically upside down for this camera. I opened the box and saw that this camera comes with similar parts that come with other Amcrest cameras, but this camera also came with screws that look like they are meant to be set into concrete. If you attach this camera to a tree, you will need large screws. The camera also has some weight, so it needs to be installed properly. I've only used two of the four screws on some small Amcrest cameras, but I wouldn't recommend it for these. I connected this camera to my NETGEAR GS308P 8-port Gigabit Ethernet PoE switch instead of the included power adapter. It turned on with no problems. I was able to connect to the camera like any other Amcrest camera. I changed the default password to a new one, set a static IP address and within minutes I was watching the footage upside down. I've rotated the image 180° and it's time to use the camera. I looked at the camera settings to see how it differs from my other Amcrest cameras. There were plenty of options in the PTZ menu to use the auto functions, but that wouldn't do much good since I live in an inn with a small yard. There were also many more other options compared to my other Amcrest cameras. I've started using the zoom and it's been amazing, and I haven't realized the digital zoom isn't on yet. I could see the power lines in the distance on top of a hill and I can't even figure out exactly where the hill and the power lines were. I have to drive out to see what I was looking at. I could see the house between and behind the two houses across the street from me. This house has a short cul-de-sac and I could see the back door of a pickup truck in the driveway. I don't know if I could read the sign, but something was in the way. According to Google Maps, the house I was looking at was about 200 meters away from me. It may not seem like much to some, but I assure you that it is quite a long way. The only minus for me was the zoom, it did not show the zoom level. I couldn't find a way to select this feature and I don't know if it even exists. The dome moves quickly with a default speed of five and a maximum of eight. I changed the speed to a top speed of eight and it was pretty quick but not out of control. Sometimes the camera didn't move immediately when I pressed the pan button, and if I held down the pan option until the camera responded, it would move too far. I learned how to turn off the pan option when the camera doesn't move immediately. What really impressed me was that the panning calibrates its speed depending on the zoom level. I noticed this when I zoomed in fully and pressed the button to pan the camera. I expected it to miss its intended target, but it didn't. Instead, he moved at the appropriate speed. The camera rotates 360° horizontally so you don't lose sight of a moving object. The only limitation is obstacles between the camera and the target or wherever the camera is mounted. If this camera were mounted on a mast, it could hardly see anything. The overall angle is 90°, which I noticed when trying to lean in as low as possible to look down at the work in my garden. I could barely see what was happening. The tilt angle wasn't bad, but you have to take that into account when the camera is high and you need to see something below. Since I was using the camera from outside the window, I couldn't use infrared. I decided to test the camera in the dark anyway and it looked great. There is a lot of ambient light in my area, but this camera has better low light capabilities than any other camera I've ever used. I wouldn't even need infrared if this camera was installed in front of my house. At first I was disappointed that the resolution was only 1080p before I even started using the camera. That frustration went away as soon as I started using the camera. The picture quality was very clear and the colors were accurate. I was much more impressed by the zoom and the good image quality than the higher resolution. If you need resolutions higher than 1080p, the Amcrest IP4M-1063EW-AI is a 4 megapixel 25fps video camera with a 60° field of view. This camera supports H.265 video compression which is a must for me these days. H.265 has a much smaller file size than the older H.264 compression, meaning I can store more videos for much longer than before. I will not compare formats because I have done so in previous camera tests. For a simple output that businesses will love, you can save big bucks on expensive storage by using cameras with H.265 compression. Unless you need a dedicated camera that only supports H.264, you should not buy a camera that does not support H.265 compression. I decided to try human detection after a few days of use. I used my neighbor across the street as a target as he was the only person around. My neighbor was about 35 meters from me in the yard so I zoomed in and out. I started getting email alerts with stills of my neighbor but no other movements. I made sure the camera zoomed out as much as possible so my neighbor's picture was as small as possible. Nevertheless, the camera caught him. I got a notification that I didn't see my neighbor and I thought it was a false notification. Then I noticed that he was at the very end of his backyard and mostly visible. It was impressive. I would be very interested in this feature if I had this camera in a place where no one should be present. Note: Before I could use the person recognition feature, I had to set up email notifications. I used Gmail, which meant I had to turn on 'less secure access'. I also had to go to my Google account > Security > Last security activity > and allow access from the most recent device (camera). It wasn't until the third day that I realized I was only using the 25x optical zoom and not the optional 16x digital zoom. I have other digital zoom cameras and I find them almost useless due to the image quality. That was not the case with this camera. I returned to the house over 200 meters away and zoomed in on the same car. It wasn't as clear as just the optical zoom, but I was able to zoom in a lot closer and the image quality was pretty good. I think it's worth keeping the digital zoom on. While trying out the optional digital zoom, I also switched the camera to 60fps. I used the camera through the Blue Iris monitor, but it lost contact with the camera when I used 60 fps and zoomed in all the way. The camera was on a gigabit switch, but I didn't check the data transfer rate. However, Blue Iris seems to have had trouble serving. I think 30 fps is more than enough for my use case, but it can be useful when recording a lot of fast action. It can mean the difference between blurry or sharp footage when it matters most. This camera has a microphone to record sound, which I find extremely valuable. The sound can alert you to activities outside the camera's field of view. Combine this with people and vehicle detection and you have some serious security. I have other Amcrest cameras with microphones and when I show them to friends they always seem to ask if they have a speaker like other camera manufacturers. I tell them it's not, but I don't care. If someone does something they shouldn't do, I'd rather not scare them off and arrest them. I was very impressed with this camera, especially considering its price. My only experience with a comparable camera was a Canon PTZ camera that came out a few years ago and cost four times as much as this camera. The only thing I liked more about the Canon camera is its compactness. He was much smaller. I don't even know if the Canon camera was weatherproof and had no sound. If the compact size wasn't needed I would have preferred this Amcrest camera to the more expensive Canon camera. I found a few things about this camera that I didn't like. As with other Amcrest cameras, this camera keeps trying to contact the Amcrest cloud service using the URLs config.amcrestcloud.com and amcrestview.com. This cannot be stopped with the camera firmware. There should actually be an option to disable this for those who won't be using their cloud storage service. Another thing I didn't like was watching videos through the camera's web interface. The image kept scrolling through the substreams and I couldn't figure out how to turn it off. I did a quick web search but didn't find an answer. So I used Blue Iris most of the time to look at this camera. After a few days of heavy use and exploring the features, I couldn't try everything this camera is capable of. I think this camera is great for business use with features like people and vehicle detection, incredible zoom, pan/tilt, H.265 video compression, microphone for audio and more. I've used this camera with Blue Iris, but it supports ONVIF so businesses can use the software of their choice. Cities or counties could save a lot of money on cameras by adopting this model. This camera is perfect for businesses, very large facilities or municipal use. I really want to highlight municipal use, as municipalities pay a lot for cameras and struggle with video storage requirements due to legal retention requirements. Municipalities often pay dearly for cameras and have many older cameras that do not support H.265 video compression. Instead of adding more storage, you might want to consider replacing older cameras that only support H.264 compression with this camera. Another bonus for municipalities will be PTZ. Municipalities that actively monitor the cameras will benefit much more from this camera than older non-PTZ cameras. Employees can zoom in on cars and take clear shots of license plates and people's faces. You can solve more crimes with this camera than with the old fixed view cameras.