– Night vision, still great IF you change the frame rate/exposure. I have mine set at 28. Go to settings display, advanced settings. Change it for each camera.

– Those waterproof caps are an absolute necessity. The rubber gasket broke off mine somehow. I didn’t notice. It must have been damaged and eventually broke off on it’s own a few days later. Water was getting in. It was making the camera turn itself off randomly and CONSTANTLY. And I’d have to redo the settings each time. It was infuriating. I almost sent the system back. I switched the camera, switched the cable, switched the port it was plugged into – nothing worked. It wasn’t until I noticed the water getting in the defective cap. They replaced the broken camera. But it kept happening – so it wasn’t the cap. water was ALSO getting in the exposed external power port AND the reset switch. This, to me, is an insane design flaw. Why are these open like this? I had them taped but water was still getting in somehow. We did have a lot of rain that week, which is good otherwise I’d have been stuck with a broken camera. Why can’t they come with a cap? My solution was to put a heat shrink tube around it, shrink it down tight, fold the excess over twice, then rubber band it. This has been helping to keep water out and since I’ve done it the camera hasn’t turn off anymore.

– I had the motion detection zone backwards which is why it wasn’t working right. You have to select where you DON’T want to record. Which is counterintuitive. Checkerboard pattern = do not detect motion. Now it works better. Still not perfect or great but a lot better than when I had it backwards.

– I also bought an 8mp Lorex system with motion detector lights and all the bells and whistles. It was almost twice as much as this system and it was significantly worse. Same day quality. TERRIBLE night quality. After trying FOUR systems this month Reolink all the way.

END UPDATE
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I bought a 5mp Annke system. It was no good.
I bought an 8mp Annke system. It was one step forward and one hundred steps back.
Those are the short versions. Full reviews are under their product pages.

I’m still tweaking and learning and playing with this system. I may update after I spend a week or a month with it and see how it does.

This image quality is, unfortunately, not as good as I expected. But still the best recorder I’ve seen so far.

The 8mp Annke I used had a PERFECT daytime picture. Like, it blew me away. But night time was unusable and it couldn’t be adjusted. This, being an 8mp system as well I expected the same clarity if not better – since everything I’ve read had indicated that 8mp NVR > 8mp DVR.

And while it is a very clear image it’s not quite on the same level. I can’t make out license plates with this set up. I could with the Annke. But again, that system had SOOOOO many more problems. It really was junk. That picture was the only good thing about it – which doesn’t mean much when the DVR loses data like it did. And it was only during the day that the picture was good. Night image was AWFUL. And since most things that require security cameras happen at night, then what good is it?

Customer service was INCREDIBLY helpful and good. Best I’ve come across in years. Can’t say enough good things about the customer service/tech support.

The night vision, initially, isn’t great. It was about the same level (maybe a LITTLE better) as the 8mp Annke that I was returning for it’s poor night vision. However, THIS one can be adjusted and customer service walked me through it. They showed me how to increase the frame rate during night hours so you get a smoother night vision and are able to capture faces walking by. If you don’t adjust they will be a blur even when walking slowly.

You lose a LITTLE bit of the crisp image 4k quality but if you don’t do it, then only things staying PERFECTLY still will look very clear. And seriously the different is negligible with the FPS turned up. It’s much more important to be able to see the faces. And of the 3 systems I’ve used recently this system by FAR has the best night vision (when the settings are tweaked.

It would be nice if you could see plates as they drive by. Because I know it’s possible. The other system did it. And that’s really eating at me. Because it’s supposed to be the same level of quality, no? It should be even BETTER quality from what I’ve read. If it could get plates as they drove by this would get 100 stars. It would be the perfect system.

Even little things about this system are great. Like how you mount the cameras. I know some people will complain that they’re not as tamper proof as other cameras where they hide the screws and mount and all that. But honestly, I prefer it. You install the mount – 4 screws. And the camers twists and locks into place. Easy. And then you can adjust the camera angle easily too. The Annke 8mp system had bullet cameras with a different screw for every adjustment. So, by the time you get the angle where you want it, now you have to tighten the screw and will inevitably move the camera a little and lose the angle you just struggled to get. Not a problem with these. And honestly, if someone DOES walk up to your camera and twist it off the plate, or cut the wire, or tamper with it in any way – they’re going to be as close to the camera as possible and you’ll get a VERY clear image of the person doing it. No one is going to walk up and tamper with it though. They don’t know it just twists off. I must prefer the way these mount compared to other cameras I’ve used.

I put plastic wrap and tape around the old BNC camera cables anyway. So, these coming with a plastic waterproof cap was very nice. No need to bust out the saran wrap and electrical tape. Although, it only covers the ethernet cable – I may still tape the end of the exposed (optional) power line hanging out of the camera.

The audio recording is very nice. Every camera records its own audio. It may not be the same for you but if I had the choice between eagle eyeing license plates as cars drove by during the day (no surveillance system can really do that at night. Too much glare with the IR) and hearing audio 24/7 then I’m going with the audio. Lets say someone smashes your car with a bat and you catch him. You’ll see his face because of the great night vision and you’ll hear it happening. Which, I know sounds stupid. But police might be like “well, you can’t really see exactly what he’s doing. Maybe he’s walking by and trips and it’s an accident” but if you HEAR it too it’s just that much more proof. And when you play it for the judge it’s more impactful and will hopefully influence the sentence.

I just set up the detection zones tonight. But it was easy to do and will hopefully cut down on searing through hours of video like I had to do with my old system. There were no alerts on my old old old one that I’ve had for years. So, if something happened I had to take hours of footage from all different angles. Load it onto a thumb drive which could take hours. Then bring it to my PC where I have video editing software that will smoothly scroll through all hours of video. Which could still take hours to look through. Hopefully these alerts will make it so if something does happen I won’t have to look through 12 HOURS of footage – I can just check the alerts and maybe quickly scroll through a couple minutes or so. In theory anyway. I haven’t used it yet. We’ll see…

I checked it with my tone generator and I could hear it from at least 6inches from the cable. That’s not good. And after ripping it open it wasn’t even twisted that means it’s bound to have issues. I got my hands on CAT6 which is usually difficult to trace because of the twists and jacket. I ended up wiring up the whole house with CAT6 and tossed the stuff they provided.

They should sell the cameras without any cable and lower the price. I literally didn’t use any of it.

The cameras are good quality. They don’t have a permanent locking mechanism like a screw. It’s just a click to lock. You may need to supplement with silicone or get creative.

The image was no longer grainy with the right wiring and there was also no lag. There was plenty of it when I used their wire.

The cameras and nvr are great. The cameras get decent images at day and night. The NVR is a little loud but that’s fine since I have mine stored away in a well ventilated area. The software is also easy to work with on the tv and on the APP.

Next is the test of time. My last Night Owl system lasted 5 years and was never powered down. I’m hoping to get around the same lifespan for this system.

(I uploaded a piece of what the cable should look like *blue cat6 compared to their gray cable)