Amcrest 5MP POE Security Camera System - Outdoor, 8CH POE NVR, 4pcs 5MP Turret IP Cameras, IP67 Metal, Built-in Mic, Pre-Installed 2TB Hard Drive

This is an excellent NVR and camera package. I actually had the standalone NVR (NV4108-HS) non-ethernet version of this and had a few cameras. So, I got this package and I have to say if you’re considering a non-ethernet version, this is the way to go. I have a full-stack Ubiquiti network, and for whatever reason, the cameras struggle to connect to my PoE switch. With this one – no issues whatsoever. You connect the cameras to the NVR and they just work. Also, the NVR came with the hard drive pre-installed. The last one I had to install a drive – very nice it was already installed.The NVR has (as far as I’m concerned) an easy-to-use and intuitive setup wizard to get it going. When you power on the NVR, it takes you through all the necessary steps to get it configured and set up (including adding the cameras). Then you’re ready to go. Mine shipped with the newer firmware, but if you have to update the firmware it’s not too hard. The user interface on these newer NVRs is so much better than the analog NVRs of the past which makes them an appealing option to many of the “subscription” based cameras such Nest, Arlo, Wyze, and many others. I like having my camera recordings stored locally and I like being able to use them without having to pay anyone.During the setup of the NVR, it guides you through a Peer-To-Peer setup of their Amcrest View PRO app which allows you to access your NVR remotely. Essentially Amcrest facilitates a secure connection between your device and the NVR with no subscription fees. The best part about this is that you don’t have to open any ports or anything in your router. The connection is automatic and transparent without any action on your part.The app does need some work but the notifications work well. They were right on par with my Nest Outdoor Cam and Wyze Cam and you tell the app what to when you tap on the notification. It allows you to select a few options two of which are opening to a live view of the camera or the recording event.The IP5M cameras are excellent! What makes them so excellent is their low-light performance. I really don’t like using IR if I don’t have to – you can see more detail without IR if you have enough ambient light. A great example of this is recently on my neighborhood Facebook page someone posted a video of someone trying to break into a car. The thieves pulled their car into their driveway and if they had IR turned off you might have been able to see the license plate, but because they had IR turned on the license plate just looked like a bright reflection. These IP5M cameras work well with low light and the picture almost rivals my Ubiquiti G4-PRO($449). The cameras have an excellent and high-quality microphone that can provide detailed audio once the “audio filter” has been disabled. The audio filter makes it sound like the microphone is underwater so I would strongly encourage doing that. You can disable the camera's microphone filter from the camera’s web interface.Speaking of the camera’s web interface. The camera's web interface CAN be accessed when they’re connected to the NVR. It may vary but you’ll use a URL similar to this http://<nvr-ip>:100. It’s the NVRs IP and then a port. You can see this if you use a browser to connect to the NVR and then select ‘Cameras’.Also, I would suggest changing the password again after you have finished the setup. I believe you change the password before adding the cameras. The cameras use a default login of admin/admin. If you change the NVR password after you have added the cameras it will update passwords on the cameras as well. The camera's web interface is accessible even if you’re not authenticated to the NVR.The NVR is fairly quiet and doesn’t run too warm as far as I can tell and with roughly 7 cameras connected with IR running it was using around 35 watts as measured with my kill-a-watt meter.Performance-wise – I would feel pretty confident that this NVR could record from six to seven 4K cameras running at their full FPS and resolution. I connected five IP5M cameras and two IP8M cameras all recording at their highest resolution and maximum FPS and set to record all the time and it was only using roughly 55Mbps out of 88Mbps of its available bandwidth. It doesn’t seem to struggle when recording but trying to playback the recordings you might be able to select 1-3 channels before it will say “Over decode ability”. I don’t really find that a problem as I’m only going to search one camera at a time. Also, a note about the matrix view of the NVR itself – it won’t play the 'main' stream from all the cameras. It will intelligently balance which stream it is showing in the matrix view – pretty smart.Playing back recordings is pretty easy – it’s easy to find motion events as the yellow blocks on the timeline. Downloading videos is tricky though – I would suggest using ‘SmartPSS’ and then watching a video on YouTube called “How to Playback and Export CCTV Video Using SmartPSS’ from ‘Auckland Security Cameras’. Also, be sure to read the ‘EXTRA NOTE:’ in the description.The method in the video works pretty well – as the video is very nice and clear if you can get the original video from the NVR itself.My favorite way to browse motion events is using the NVR itself (the web interface is decent from a Windows PC). The Amcrest App needs a lot of improvements before its usefulness will be on par with its competitors. If Amcrest nails their app down – this NVR with mobile app will be a game-changer.So, in summary: Great NVR, super simple to set up and configure, mobile motion notifications work great and built-in ethernet is life. Also, IP5M cameras are probably the best value in Amcrest’s lineup for quality and low-light performance!

I was previously using two 4k Amcrest POE, and two reolink 4MP POE cameras with Blueiris, along with Wyze V2 cameras and Eufy cameras. Blueiris is a wonderful software but very overwhelming to set up. This system is very simple. Plug and play. They simply just work straight out of the box.CAMERASThe bracket/mount for the camera is extremely easy to install. It's good for easy installation and bad since it is easy to detach if someone wants to steal but then I will have footage of the thief. I will take the easy install instead.I had to install sideway for 2 of the cameras due to my wire configuration. The image was rotated 180 degrees so they are correctly oriented. The only issue is the pics look stretch out when I make the fit to screen. Minor issue but I wish the screen just filled with black bar instead of stretched to fit especially in mobile app view.Night vision is great with infrared but since my house and front yard has decent light, I left the infrared light off. The night time images are way better than my old cameras I had.NVRFirst time when I hook up the NVR to my old TV that I was using before all I got was not supported error message. I had no idea what is not supported. After a quick Google search, I found that my TV has terribly low resolution that the NVR cannot display. After I swapped put the TV to a monitor, everything showed up great.Setting up the NVR was easy and straight forward. I was able to found all the cameras and able to add them, including my Amcrest doorbell even though the control/setting of the doorbell was very limited in NVR.I set up all the cameras setting and everything was working great. The problem I have was alarm set up. I set up to see the alarm message and they pop up but only stayed for a short time and went away. The message screen is still up but the actual messages disappeared. I don't see any other way to set them up so the alarm messages won't go away until I dismissed them.The motion detection detects every bit of pixel shifts of the scene. Since these cameras are not AI capable like Eufy, I understand why the every moments can cause the motion detection to go off. My cheap Wyze cameras are the same way but one thing I like is wyze will highlight the motion in green box to show what casued the camera to trigger. If Amcrest can implement something similar, that would be easy to track the reason of the motion alerts.When I turned on the face detection in the app, it turned on and saved the setting. But so far, I haven't noticed any face detection. I only see the normal motion detection. Snapshots are working great to glanced though the footage which is very helpful.These are my observations. I hope they are helpful.

Has audio, great pic, keep in mind they are plastic. But they are great