Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Overall, I would rate this product 4.5/5 I bought one of these wireless security systems two months ago. I’ve been thoroughly testing it and decided to write a review about my findings so far. I‘m pretty sure it’ll be very helpful for anyone thinking about buying this product. Lessons Learned • This is a US$200.00 NVR. For such a price the functionality, usability, stability, and features are very good. • Please DON’T use a regular desktop hard drive with this or any other NVR/DVR system. You MUST use a hard drive specially designed for surveillance purposes, like Western Digital Purple Series or Seagate Skyhawk. • Wireless systems are sensitive to wireless interference and this NVR is not the exception. Please read the Signal Strength and Quality analysis in the Detailed Analysis section to learn on how to identify if your NVR is affected by wireless Interference and how to prevent it from happening. Quick Evaluation Overall: 4.5/5 • System Setup and Documentation: 5/5 • Product Quality: 4/5 • Video Quality: 5/5 • Night Vision: 5/5 • Signal Strength and Quality: 4/5 • Recording and Playback: 5/5 • Remote Access from Smartphones, Tablets and Computers: 5/5 • Seller Communication and Support: 5/5 • Email Notification: 5/5 • Motion Detection: 2/5 Detailed Analysis System Setup and Documentation: 5/5 System setup is pretty straight forward. Just follow the steps specified in the user manual and you’ll have your system working in 10 minutes. The user manual is written in poor English, but it is not difficult to understand. It contains very specific and easy to follow instructions to set up your equipment and to configure the main features of the system (Recording, Motion detection, Remote access and Email notification). Please note that this system has some other advanced features that are not documented. You’ll have to learn those while exploring and experimenting with the NVR. NOTE: DON’T forget to change your password. Product Quality: 4/5 Cameras and the NVR case are very sturdy. You can quickly see that these are made of good quality material. However, the cameras are not IP66. These are maybe IP64. I installed two cameras outdoor and after several days of heavy rain, both cameras got water inside and the night vision on one of them failed (the photocell was broken). Lucky for me, the seller was quite responsive and sent new cameras, no questions ask. Video Quality: 5/5 This is a 720P system with 720P cameras. Video quality is really good. The system has two kinds of video streams with fixed settings: Main Stream: This is the video that you’ll see on your screen, and the one that will be recorded. Bitrate mode: Variable Resolution: 1280x720 Limited Rate: 2Mbps Quality: Highest Framerate: 15 fps Encode format: H.264 Sub Stream: This is the video that you’ll see remotely (You can also see the main stream remotely). Bitrate mode: Variable Resolution: 640x360 Limited Rate: 256Kbps Quality: Highest Framerate: 15 fps Encode format: H.264 Unfortunately, the system doesn’t allow you to change video quality parameters. Night Vision: 5/5 I must say that my hat is off to the IR leds that are installed on each camera. Night vision is incredible clear. The seller says it reaches 65 feet; however, I’m able to see objects as far as 80 feet. Signal Strength and Quality: 4/5 The most frequent problems you’ll probably experience with this system are related to signal strength and quality. I was not able to confirm if the cameras can connect to the NVR from the distance specified by the seller (350 ft with obstacles) because all my cameras are in a radio of about 40 ft from the NVR, but I was able to play a lot and learned how to identify signal strength and quality issues. It looks like this system is very susceptible to radio interference, and it tends to happen even more in houses built entirely with concrete blocks (like my case). But wait, don’t freak out. I’ll explain what I did to solve my radio interference issues. • In order to assure good signal quality, stable streaming and recording, the NVR should not be close to a wireless phone, WIFI AP, electric motor, engine or electric transformer. These create a lot of wireless interference and cause signal quality from the camera to vary a lot. • Make sure you install the NVR in a place as open as possible, like your living room or a room with plenty of open space. • Good video quality and uninterrupted video stream from cameras will be achieved with a signal strength of at least 25, or 3 out of 4 signal bars (I’ll show you how to view this levels in the next paragraph) The system shows signal strength only. You have two ways to see it: The signal bars, or by going to System Setup > Network Setup > Wifi Setup (See the attached picture). The other variable to consider is signal quality. Unfortunately, this system doesn’t have an indicator for this parameter, and this is probably the most important one. The only way to determine if you have signal quality issues (I’m assuming that your signal strength is at least 25, or 3 out of 4 signal bars) is if you experience at least one of the following issues: • Cameras are randomly disconnected from the NVR (the NVR says No video). • Video stream is randomly paused. • During video playback, you have a lot of frame loss or the NVR randomly skips time intervals on several cameras. Please note that this situation can also be caused by the Hard drive. That’s why you MUST buy a Surveillance hard drive. If you experience this condition and already have a surveillance hard drive, you are definitely experiencing WIFI interference/signal quality issues. In my case, I experienced all 3 conditions explained above. I relocated the NVR away from my WIFI AP and wireless phone to an open area in my living room. All problems were automatically gone and now I have perfect video streaming and recording, and an extremely fluent video playback. The system is working as expected. Here are some tips to improve signal strength/reception: • In some cases, I achieved better signal on cameras pointing the antennas downward. • You could face situations where your camera doesn’t have good signal strength. You can extend your antenna by using a SMA Male to SMA Female Antenna extension cable. I bought a 3ft extension cable from a local store for one of my cameras. The relocation of the antenna helped me improve signal strength from 6 to over 27. Recording and Playback: 5/5 The system offers two recording options: Triggered by motion, and Constant Recording. I’ll elaborate on constant recording. If you don’t have the signal quality issues explained before, and your hard drive is a surveillance one, the system will record with no interruptions. Video playback starts right away and is very smooth. Each camera can consume up to 12GB per day. All 4 cameras will use up to 48GB per day. This means that you can have a video retention of 20 to 22 days with a 1TB hard drive. Remote Access from Smartphones, Tablets and Computers: 5/5 You can access the system from a web browser, smartphone or tablet. Web access is pretty straight forward, just type in the IP address of the NVR and you are connected. The web interface has a very simple functionality. You can view the real-time stream of your cameras and the recorded videos. If you want to access your NVR from your smartphone or tablet, you’ll have to download an app. For android phones, you can use IP PRO or Eseenet Esee Eseenet+. I highly recommend using Eseenet Esee Eseenet+. It connects to your NVR really fast and lets you view your NVR recordings. If you want to access your NVR from the Internet, there is an easy way using cloud access (follow the instructions in your user manual). This method will create a session with an unknown server. Even though this is the easiest method, I don’t like it. I like to configure my remote access by forwarding the corresponding port on my router to the NVR and configuring a Dynamic DNS. Seller Communication and Support: 5/5 The seller really excels at customer service. I contacted customer support since the very beginning due to some signal issues I had. Communication was always by email and they replied always a day after due to the time offset (seller is located in China). They always addressed my concerns with high priority and speed. When I reported the signal issues I had, they sent two high gain antennas for free. They also sent two new cameras to replace the ones that were water damaged, no questions ask. All parts where fulfilled by Amazon, so I received them in less than two days. I highly recommend this seller. Email Notification: 5/5 The system sends you email notifications for motion triggered events. I tested it with Gmail and Hotmail without any major issues. I recommend using Gmail. It allows you to send more messages than Hotmail in a day. Motion Detection: 2/5 The only real complain I have about this NVR is the motion detection. It works in a way that I still don’t understand. It detects motion but the picture it sends by email is delayed several seconds after the event happened, so you won’t see what really triggered the motion detection. It also detects motion using some kind of inefficient algorithm. Even the slightest change in illumination is detected as motion and gives you a lot of false positives.