Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

So, as the title suggest, these are good cameras but there are a few things which can be a detractor for some...but I will go ahead and give these cameras a 5-Star rating. Think of it as grading on a curve though as I have tested a large number of cameras and NVR systems. Security: First and foremost, the security designs on these cameras is really good. At least better than all of the others I have tested. Security Pros: 1. Cameras are shipped with a default admin password of “admin” but owners are immediately forced to change this. There really isn’t a password policy in place so what the owners selects can be very “hackable” or not if desired. But the fact that they force a password change out of he box is a very good thing. 2. SSL/TLS security. This is the only camera I have found which allows the configuration of SSL. I was both slightly shocked and impressed to see this. Definitely a big bonus for those concerned about security as web cameras are pretty much the number one attack vector right now due to the industry as a whole having such poor security standards. Good on Amcrest for being a leader here. 3. User accounts. Owners can add multiple accounts with varying degrees of control. This is good. Security Cons: 1. Phone Home. These cameras do like to “phone home” but these functionalities are NOT REQUIRED for setup (like many other cameras and camera systems on the market) but most of that can be disabled. For my solution, I did disable (or leave disabled) the phone home settings on all my cameras and I also blocked all outbound traffic from all cameras to the Internet on my firewall. Cloud Services: This kind of goes hand-in-hand with the “phone home” topic. The cloud services are there and go through Amcrest’s own cloud services. They are disabled on the camera when new from the factory - but double check them always in case you get a refurbished camera. I’ve heard of horror stories where someone didn’t want a NEST cam and sent it back and it got “refurbished” but apparently not “factory reset” so when the new owner plugged it in, it sent images to the old owner. But that’s NEST though...and they have horrible security. All of mine came with the cloud services disabled and were left that way. Setup: Setup of these cameras was fairly straight forward for someone with network/computer experience. I just used the web browser (didn’t install any software from the CD which came with). I did have to download a browser plugin for various browsers but this was only to view the video image. Otherwise, I just let it pick a DHCP address then browser to it and walked through the settings I wanted configured. 1. Set the name - this is defined both under network settings for name resolution and under video settings for channel appearance. 2. Wireless network - I appreciated the fact these support both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz networks. 3. Static IP addresses for both wired and wireless - NOTE: these are different so keep that in mind. Many cameras will use one IP address for either wired or wireless (and disable wireless when wired is plugged in) but Amcrest has supplied two full NICs in these cameras so each must be configured if both are to be used. Also, wireless setup was quick and easy from the browser. 4. Video settings - Along with channel title, there are also overlay settings (Channel and Date/Time), masking (really cool for non-moving), detection areas (very nice for the home/#1 preset), and more. Advanced Setup: I did go through a lot of the specific settings of the camera to hard code them to my systems - such as primary and secondary streams, frames per second, IR settings, Black/White/Color switching (way cool), etc. these are needed when teaming cameras with NVR software such as Blue Iris or Security Spy in order to not overload the NVR with CPU intensive video processing (note: daytime color Auto Color mode switching One of the cool features these cameras have is the ability to switch from color during the day to black/white at night for better resolution in low light. Send/Recieve audio. This is another feature I really like that all Amcrest cameras now support. It does require some tweaking on the NVR software to make it properly work. ONVIF Support - all of the Amcrest cameras have support for ONVIF standards. While this makes it extremely easy to setup with an NVR, be aware that not all NVR software will properly detect the camera capabilities and you may want to specifically switch to the “Amcrest” profile within the NVR software to obtain better functionality. Note: both Blue Iris and Security Spy have “Amcrest” specific profiles. I’m sure there is an “easy setup” option with these cameras for those less computer network inclined but I highly recommend not going that route as those “easy setup wizards” generally do not go through all necessary security settings in my opinion (this is an Industry-wide opinion and not specific to these cameras or manufacturer). As for a mobile app, I believe there is one by Amcrest for use with their cloud services. As I am not using the cloud services (and am using my own NVR systems), I did not evaluate it. Wrap-up: Overall I was very pleased with these cameras and with how Amcrest designed them. The fact that they do SSL is awesome and I will be using that. Ultimately I have built my security camera system with Amcrest cameras (minus one or two old and one new one for the front door) as these cameras really do meet all my needs and are decently priced. I am teaming them with Blue Iris (Windows) and Security Spy (Mac) as a test right now and both are very nice pieces of NVR software which fully support these cameras. Both pieces of software also have auto detection capabilities to help make the setup a bit easier if you have a multitudes of cameras from various manufacturers.