8CH POE Security Camera System

UPDATED REVIEW (3/9/19): After several e-mails to the company, Reolink has updated the firmware for the NVR and it now supports showing motion events only on the timeline with a check box. It is EXACTLY what this app needed and makes it absolutely perfect. Now it is a cinch to find the exact section of video where there was motion. They also added the ability to draw custom motion zones directly on the iPhone app. There is still no fast forward option however that does not affect the app too much. I am beyond happy with the customer service from the company and support staff. Every one of my e-mails was answered and they were true to their estimated timeline for implementing the update. I recommend this system to everyone! ORIGINAL REVIEW: I purchased this Reolink system to replace the Ring Video Doorbell Pro and Ring Floodlight Cam that I had installed at my home. I wanted the Reolink because unlike the Ring and its Wi-Fi competitors, the Reolink records 24/7 and offers a lot more flexibility and user customization. Before I get into the full review I would like to say that I am extremely satisfied with this unit. Unlike other reviewers, my NVR is whisper quiet and makes no sound other than the sound of the hard disk drive writing its data. I have yet to hear a fan noise of any kind. Planning: The most time consuming process of this system (or any wired home video system) is mapping out and installing the wires. I opted not to use the included Ethernet cables which are around 60 feet each. I purchased a spool of Cat5E from the local hardware store for around 60.00 and this proved to be more than what I needed for my installation. After my Ethernet cables were run, hooking up the cameras was quite straight forward. Plug them in, tuck in the wires and snap them to the base. Done deal. Set Up: After running all of my Ethernet cables to the areas where I wanted to mount the cameras, I found that everything hooked up and worked seamlessly. Once a new camera is plugged in, the NVR automatically finds it and adds it. The only configurations I had to make were for custom motion zones and my alert preferences. This system is very much plug-n-play. Because these cameras are POE (Power Over Ethernet), there are no other cables required for use other than one single Cat5 cable per camera. Camera Quality: The cameras are heavy duty and feel well made. Video picture quality is crystal clear and is much better than the Ring products I replaced which were only 1080P and were very dark in my opinion. The Reolink cameras have very good night vision and can light up nearly all of my rear yard (about 75 feet deep). If you have any flood lights or lights near your doors, the Reolink cameras are able to pick up light so well that you can keep them in full color mode even at night. The included cameras all record audio (you can chose to turn this off if desired) and the microphones are crisp and clear. They are quite sensitive and I could pick up my neighbors voice from around 50 feet away. Motion alerts: This is one of the biggest features in the age of home video recording. If I am recording video, I want to be alerted when someone is on my property or at my front door. The Reolink handles this with ease. You can set custom motion zones for every individual camera. Once the zone is set, you can customize the sensitivity and also when and how you would like alerts to be pushed to you (e-mail, push alerts, alarm on the NVR). You can also set custom time blocks where you may want more or less motion sensitivity.. Alerts are pushed instantly and on the iPhone they arrived every time without any delay. Remote viewing from Windows, Mac & iOS: Most people are going to be using this system for real-time alerts on their cell phone or mobile device to know if there is motion at their home. So far this system has shined in this area. The Windows and Mac client offer the full suite of customizations where you can tweak every aspect of the cameras and settings. The iOS app has many of the same features but lack a few abilities such as drawing the custom motion zones. For viewing, the iOS app works great. Upon opening the app, it immediately gives you a live stream of your cameras as well as the audio stream of whichever camera you have selected. Playback and Recording: This took a little time to get used to. Coming from the Ring, I was accustomed to having separate videos for every motion event or every time I pressed Live View. The drawback with Ring was that the videos were not available immediately. They had to be recorded and then uploaded to the Ring server before you could tap on it and view them. Unlike Ring, the Reolink video is a continuous timeline which gets broken down into 1-hour long segments. It is fairly simple to locate the chunk of video you want to view however unless you know the exact time you are looking for, you have to scrub through until you find what you need (I have been told this will be addressed in a future firmware update which will allow going directly to a motion event on the timeline). On the NVR itself, you can easily search by Motion Events and it breaks it down very simply for you. On the remote viewing clients, this is not the case (or at least I have not found the feature as of yet). There is no Fast Forward or Rewind so be prepared to scrub through the videos. Once you know what time you want, saving a video is very simple. On iOS, it saves directly to the camera roll and the videos are crystal clear. While live viewing any camera, you can also tap the record button to make an instant video which will save to your camera roll after you press stop. Overall, I love the ability to remotely view and save video, but I feel it could use some added features to make it better. Conclusion: For the money, this system meets all of my expectations and then some. While it is chocked full of features, I would really like to see the company offer the ability to fast forward and rewind while reviewing video in ALL of the remote viewing platforms. The single feature which absolutely needs to be added to iOS, Mac and Windows Clients is the ability to see any motion events in the playback timeline (again, I was advised this is in the works in a firmware update which will be released soon). This way the user can easily skip to the portion of video that is most important to them. All things considered, I recommend this system to anyone looking to get a good video surveillance system for their home.

I've had REOlink equipment for 3+ years now, and have waited until now to review after buying this latest system. Don't get me wrong, REOlink NVRs and computer/phone apps don't play well with other camera manufacturers and has caused me much grief over the years. But when using REOlink-ONLY equipment, their stuff is pretty bullet-proof. My latest system (NVR+8 cams) worked perfectly on the very first power-up. I have 20 cameras now, everything from RLC-423WS, RLC-423, and C1pro PTZs, to RLC-511 zoom, to 4MP bullets, to 5MP turret cameras, multiple NVRs, blah-blah-blah. I've personally wired 2000ft of CAT6 PoE to most of my systems, snaking through walls, attics, soffit, and even buried a few hundred feet of conduit to get all of the cameras and NVRs as inconspicuous as possible. That-said, here's the pros/cons to all of the REOlink stuff together, not just this item: REOlink CONS: - Doesn't play well with others - I think their inclusion of RCA-audio, reset-button, and power-socket is STUPID for an external camera that is made to be PoE (power-over-ethernet). I have to heat-shrink-seal every single one of those connectors on outdoor cameras (that's 54-connections I've had to meticulously seal) - Doesn't support HKvision encoding (used by virtually all of the doorbell cameras on the market) - Technical support is hit-or-miss; 80% want you to go away, 20% want to help, 0% actually do help - Both of my high-end recent cameras (RLC-423 and RLC-511) 4X-zoom cameras seem to have the same internal malfunction with focus... right-side is out of focus when zoomed-in and left-side is out of focus when zoomed-out - Most of their bullet and turret cameras have great quality, but such a narrow field-of-view that its hard to find good mounting locations (they are too zoomed for 8'-12' range use, which I argue is what most houses have indoors and outside for mounting locations) - Their motion-detection is based on pixels changing, not true motion-detection like Ring somehow accomplishes through infrared or other cameras with PIR-detection, so it is constantly going off for shadows and vegetation - The UUID-setup is so simple that it makes internet-security very questionable... if I can sign in from my multiple devices, other countries probably can too - Their cameras require you to turn on the active infrared-LEDs for nighttime use. They are NOT true nightvision like a passive FLIR would be. The problem with the infrared-LEDs is humans can see your camera and bugs are attracted to the lenses - There are plenty of cameras on the market with more optical zoom. 4X is frankly not enough for me in most cases, and most of their outdoor cameras start off with too much zoom to begin-with (no wide angle) REOlink PROS: - Their stuff plays well with their own equipment, better than every camera company I've tried - Their Apps magically work really well, whether on the same wifi-network or cellular or Internet-remote - UUID setup of apps is effortless - PoE setup of cameras with NVR is effortless, so are their WiFi cameras (as long as on same network) - Cameras have really good control of bandwidth-type adjustments (frame size, frame rate, KB/s) - Their motion-detection is fairly-decent; detects all movement (which is a pain with sun/shadow/bushes) - Their cameras have internal memory slots, incase you want localized non-NVR playback capability - I think their night-vision is actually pretty spectacular, but it requires the red-IR-LEDs to be on (and visible) - All of their stored videos have .MP4 codecs compatible with Quicktime and PC/Mac operating systems - All of their systems (NVR, phone, computer-MAC, computer-PC) work the same way, set-up is the same - I've had some cameras outside for 3+ years and they have held-up well to rain and sun I wish their customer / technical service people were more capable. Every time I talked or emailed them, it felt like I was speaking to an intermediary... like they weren't the company that actually designed the hardware. Frankly, I'd pay more and be more pro-REOlink if they gave a crap. Their ultimate response is basically always the same: our stuff works together and if you want to try something else, don't call us. And basically, they're right.

Why did you pick this product vs others?: I was looking at some cheaper ones that were going for like 160 but had some bad reviews so I just spent a little bit more and got these. I'm glad I did. Very high quality. There's some going for so much more. This is all you need. It has 4k video/audio recording. 2tb hard drive. Set up was amazingly easy. You only need to plug one cord into the camera itself and that singular cord (60ft) runs to the NVR. The app is done very well. Night vision is absolutely superb. The cameras themselves look quite stylish. I didn't even have to read any directions it was all so self-explanatory. Now it's only been installed for a few hours so I can't speak on longevity but the other reviews seem to say it works very well in the long term. Which was my biggest concern with going with a cheaper product. If anything ever craps out on me I will definitely come back here and update but for right now I am one happy customer and definitely recommend. Edit - I've now had the cameras installed for 8 months in my business. Over the course of the 8 months, 1 time, the cameras stopped recording and allowing me to view threw the app. I went to the nvr, switched it off, and switched it back on. This worked and brought them back. Other than than that, it's been absolutely flawless. I love that you can view through the app and also on your computer remotely, very easily, and as I said it's set up very nice and intuitive, so easy to use. It's very fast too. Pulls your recordings within seconds remotely. Overall, id say I'm still extremely happy with my choice. I'll come back and update if there's anything that's changed as far as as other hiccup requiring a reboot or it breaking. But overall this thing has given me piece of mind and I'm impressed with the quality.

We had an old system, so we just pulled the wires through using the old ones. It was easy to set up the cameras with the NVR, and the pictures are clear. It was easy to direct the cameras to capture the areas we wanted. The app, though, is a completely different story. Not at all obvious how to work it. When we set up the cameras we had to set a password, but when it came time to link the cameras to the app we had to create a separate password for the "admin" because the first one wasn't recognized. Then linking the cameras to the app required entering the password for admin. Now we find that the only time the app works is when we're at home on our own Wi-Fi network. We can't access the cameras when away from home and on cellular or other Wi-Fi. We're trying to troubleshoot that now. So right now we're not impressed with the app, to say the least.

Two break-ins and one failed break-in were the motivator to get a home camera system. Many of the home camera systems are from names I've never heard of, Reolink was one of those. Over the course of several days I searched Amazon for all of the different options out there. Cloud based, NVR based, Resolution, Form Factor, Camera Viewing Angle, PoE, etc. Ultimately I settled on this kit from Reolink with 4 of the RLC-420-5MP cameras in the box. I also added 4 RLC-410-5MP cameras to get the other angles around the home that are important to me. The NVR is a really well thought out device. It has an integrated PoE switch. The cost savings alone from not having to buy injectors or a PoE switch just for the cameras was significant. I knew I wanted to run physical Ethernet to the cameras because I didn't want to deal with solar or batteries. Plus, the NVR is on a UPS (which is a must in Florida) so the cameras and NVR will continue to run in a power outage scenario for about an hour. The NVR itself was simple to set up. All I enabled in the UI was UPnP and then with my mobile device, used the Reolink app to scan the QR code on the NVR. Within seconds the app was connected and instantly worked inside on WiFi and everywhere I've taken my phone. It was SO simple, I was shocked. My expectations were to spend hours configuring remote access, but Reolink has done all the hard work. It has been VERY reliable. The quality of the cameras is outstanding. Even though these cameras I chose weren't a "convenient" 16:9 ratio (I think it's closer to 5:4) - what's important is the level of detail the 410 and 420 cameras capture. They have a very wide angle and even at distances of 70-100 feet, I can zoom in live or recorded and objects are clear. This was important to me. We all have watched the 11 o'clock news and saw video footage of robberies and all you could really see was some perp in BlurryCam detail. But not with Reolink. They're great. I couldn't be happier with it. Night vision also has no problem illuminating a very wide area like my backyard or a small area like my utility room - as if a bright incandescent light was shining on the area. I also love the dynamic brightness option on the cameras - it does a phenominal job at night making dark objects bright and bright objects dark enough to see details that would otherwise end up too dark or too bright. I like the ability on the NVR to set motion schedules - the ability to set different motion sensitivity levels at 4 different times of the day. Also, you can mask out high motion objects like trees so it doesn't trip the motion sensor as often. Other details that made me happy include the camera name & day/time customization - you can set it on different parts of the screen per camera. Also, I like the ability to record sound with the video. The only real substantive changes I'd make to the NVR is to support hard drives larger than 4TB. Also, I'd like to integrate the NVR with home automation. For example, when I arm my home alarm, I'd like to be able to tell the NVR to enable certain alerts/push notifications, and turn them off when I disarm the Alarm. Originally I viewed this as a risky purchase with only a few Amazon reviews to base a choice upon. However, I was so happy to set that skepticism aside as I started using it and setting everything up.

I had a system provided by my internet provider that was very simplistic but free. I was wanting more so I did some research and saw that the Reolink systems were highly rated. Everything was well packaged and has simple instructions. I wanted a system that was hard wired so that i would not have to deal with wireless dropouts and could have high quality video and i am not disappointed. The hardwire also provides power to the camera which I would not have been able to supply to wireless cameras. The video quality is great (even at low settings) and system has never had any functionality issues. The supplied ethernet cables were not long enough to go around my home but for $35 dollars i was able to get bulk ethernet wire and a crimping kit to make my own (If i can do it ANYONE can). The system easily allows for indoor and outdoor camera blends and Reolink has multiple models of camera to let you dial in what you need for each zone. Setup was straightforward and the "wizard" does all of the heavy lifting. I plugged the unit into my TV and did all of the setup. No need to make any complicated changes to my router - it just worked. The motion detection settings can be as complex or simple as you like - from simply adjusting the sensitivity levels (even on a schedule - so you can have it more sensitive during the night time when there is less activity outside to cause false alarms for instance) and you can edit monitoring zones for motion detection on each camera. I have a sidewalk on one of my camera views and was able to easily edit this out of the detection zone on that camera so that i would not get an alert when someone walked on it. The smartphone application and desktop application are well done and easy to set up - again - they just work. No need to be a networking genius to get them going. Even on cell data the mobile app works well, have clear video, and sends alerts immediately. Overall delighted with this purchase. Highly recommended.

The system is really easy to set up except for running wires to the cameras. It records Motion and beeps an alarm. It saves the recording to the cloud. It has worked fine for years but now has crashed and quit recording for no good reason. Tech support is complicated so phone support is the best option but you have to get past all the special offers for direct tv etc. A real human would be useful. I used to recommend Reolink but not now.. Maybe they changed the software. I can’t figure out the maze of choices just to get my Channel 1 to show up on my iPad. Modern problems. I hope Reolink reads this. It was a really good system until it wasn’t

I bought this system to put in my moms house that was going to be unoccupied. She needed to move due to medical issues but we weren't ready to sell the house. I live in another state and couldn't be checking in on the house regularly and I was worried about it sitting there with no one in it so I bought this system and set it up so I could keep an eye on things from my house. It has been fantastic, everything is still working perfectly several months later and I haven't had to tweak or reboot or mess with ANYTHING in that time. That is exactly what I wanted in a system and after researching many options I chose this Reolink system and I am glad I did. PROS: 1) RELIABLE. Like I said, this was my top priority. There is no one physically at the property to be rebooting cameras or messing with settings. I needed something I could set up and then it would just work and this system has achieved that goal. 2) Local storage, so no monthly cloud subscription required. This was also a huge priority for me. I don't want to be paying $10 or whatever per month and having all of the video sitting on the cloud. I wanted it stored locally, and have the ability to pull up and review the video remotely on my phone or computer. Again, this system meets all of those needs. 3) Good picture quality, in day and night. 4) Easy setup. Instructions were clear, and everything I needed was included. I did buy a couple of extra 100 ft ethernet cables because I knew I was going to be placing a couple of cameras pretty far from the NVR box. I placed two outside at the front and back door, and then two inside. 5) Playback is easy, I check in on my phone regularly and its easy to locate the moments when there is someone at the door, etc. It can identify pets vs day/night transitions vs people and puts a little icon in that spot on the timeline so you can go right to it and see what it was. CONS: 1) The cameras are POE only, so you have to run an ethernet to each camera (can't be wi-fi only) but at least that one ethernet cable provides the data and the power connection. However, if you are going to be installing cameras outside or somewhere else where it is going to be challenging to get an ethernet cable to keep that in mind. There is no option to connect the camera to the NVR using wi-fi only. I will say though, that having the cameras be POE adds to the reliability. It means there are no concerns about the wifi signal being weak or your wifi router doing something screwy and the camera dropping connection. 2) The adapter cable where you plug the ethernet cable into the camera is unnecessarily bulky. It's already hard enough to get a really "clean look" on these cameras since they are wired, unless you're willing to drill a lot of holes and run the cables behind your walls. Having a bulky connector on top of that just makes it look more unsightly. Luckily for my use case, I didn't care too much about the appearance since no one is even living in the house. I just needed it to work. BOTTOM LINE: If you want a camera system that can be hands off, and allows you to remotely view the recorded video, and doesn't require a monthly cloud based storage subscription... this is probably the best system you can currently buy for your money and it comes with everything you need.