5.0 out of 5 stars
Great picture and IR night vision
Reviewed in the United States on 21 May 2019
I have bought 13 of these now, I believe, between the 2 versions: Black with zoom and Black without zoom. Although I gave them 5 stars, I would have really loved to have a 4.5 star option. Here's the good and the bad. The picture is great! The setup is simple. They work great with Linux Motion and with iSpy and with VLC, so they do everything I need. Where I found issues is in the "Waterproof". I put some of these outdoor, and after a couple of colder days in rain, I've now had 4 of them get full of condensation on the inside of the lens area. So calling them "waterproof" is really not fair. They absolutely can't handle a direct hose of water, and if they are exposed to rain or even high humidity, you'll be likely to have fogging. BUT, I was able to fix that. What I did was: First, order a 50 pack or so of the 2 to 5oz silica gel packs. Then, disassemble the camera. Pull off the top white plastic..it is easy to pop out but best is to slide it rearward. Then loosen the 2 screws on the back of the camera that allow it to rotate. Once they're loose enough, the mount comes off the camera, giving you access to the nut that the CAT5 cable passes through. Use some clear silicone and seal around that nut seam, and the cable to the nut. Then, Pull off the shield on the front of the camera, and then remove the 4 screws that hold the front on. The camera comes right out. If your'e real careful you can remove the attached wires but it isn't 100% necessary. Remove the rubber gasket between the sections. Fill the groove with clear silicone, and then insert the gasket again. Then put more clear silicone over it. Pack the camera body with 5 or 6 silica gel packs for the future. Then re-install the face on the camera body. After its installed, seal up the lens area. The camera lens is NOT the outer glass. That's a glass or polycarbonate ring around the IR LEDs and a plastic bushing and then another piece of glass in the center of that. I didn't want any vapor in there, so I smeared clear silicone around the outer edge of the big glass, around the outer edge of the inner lens bushing, and the inner edge of that bushing. Then, used a paper towel to wipe away the excess so that just a tiny bit was left in those seams.
With that, the cameras have now been sealed up and I have never had any moisture in any of them after sealing.
The other bad thing may be quality control. Most likely I got customer returns for a couple of cameras. All functioned, but, I found inconsistency in the cameras I bought. One camera had yellow/white RCA jacks while some of the others only had the red. So one clearly was a little different. THen on the non-zoom cams, internally the various boards are connected by 4 towers of standoffs. On some of my cams, only 2 of the holes actually had these standoffs in them. So somewhere, someone got cheap and decided to cut the parts count. It's not critical, but clearly not built as well as the completely built ones I got. Then on one camera that had 4 standoffs, 3 of them had the screws and washers floating around in the body. So someone had disassembled it and not tightened them again. Easy to fix, but, all of this just goes to show that you can't necessarily trust these cheap chinese products to deliver on quality. In the end though the cameras work well, so I'm still happy. I also blocked with my firewall, any access to the internet by these cameras. In todays day and age, you don't want these cameras sitting on your home network unless you know what they are doing...they could easily be hijacked and used for nefarious purposes. When I connected to one on a different network, I monitored the firewall and saw it instantly try to get to 5 or more outside IPs. That's fine, if it's required, but again, best to not trust it. Just allow it to your Surveillance box.
I'm very happy with how they worked out. Would have preferred 100% quality, but got 90%, and that's good enough for me. The picture quality is excellent, they work with POE switches well, and they run great.
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