REOLINK 4K Security Camera System RLK16-800D8

UPDATE: I did a previous update a week ago tearing into this because just nothing was working right. I almost returned it. Instead I pestered customer service (they're saints) for almost 3 weeks to have them help figure out what was wrong with it because this set up has the best night vision I've seen. It's all been resolved now (I think...). But come on, I paid a LOT of money for this - for it to not work right is unacceptable. That just can't happen. So, I'm deleting THAT update and replacing it with this one - but I'm leaving the pictures up showing the system turning off constantly when it was apparently getting wet. - 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 ----------------------------------- 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...

Our club purchased this system to replace an outdated system that was causing us nothing but problems. I had 2 quotes from other companies. One for $6,000 and the other for $9,000. Both were way out of our budget. This was well within our budget. This camera and NVR system works very well. We already had the wires from the old cameras, so replacing them was very easy. I installed everything myself. It's totally plug and play. No configuration at all. Video is extremely clear and good detail. I mainly use the client and the PC App. The phone app works well, but like any other phone app it's small and hard to see. It is handy, though. All 3 apps work well and are very user friendly. Just takes a little playing around. One thing is that the system refreshes in the apps if they are dormant for a while. To me it's not a big deal. Our old system didn't refresh at all, but it cost a whole lot more too. It's worth the short wait. Customer service is very good. It's all done by email, which is probably good, because you probably wouldn't be able to understand them, anyway. I had 2 of the original cameras quit working and they replaced both, no problem. Even questions are answered promptly by the next morning. That's probably because our day is their night. I have 10 cameras on the NVR. I ordered 2 additional for the parking lot. I'm going to add a wireless one for the kitchen, so I don't have to get in the attic and run Cat5. All in all with the NVR and 11 cameras, we'll have roughly $1,400 in the whole system. Overall I'm very happy with the system. For the price, you can't go wrong.

The REOLINK 4K PoE Security Camera System has blown me away so far. The video quality is incredibly sharp, the setup is straightforward, and the app makes checking in feel effortless. Motion detection is responsive without being annoying, and the system runs reliably day and night. I’m genuinely impressed with the clarity and overall performance it delivers exactly what I wanted and then some. Loving it so far and expecting great results long-term.

I wish I had tested more before I ran the wires, cut/installed new connectors, etc all through my house. The daytime picture is okay. It is better than my old 720p cameras, but not great. These are indeed 4K, but not like the 4K video you see on the TVs as you walk into your local big box store. More like a 2MP photo blown up to fit a 65 inch screen. It pixelates at distance. When you get within about 30 feet, it sharpens up. So, the daytime is more than acceptable for security purposes. The phone app and NVR software are amazing compared to my ancient wisenet system. It is actually useable and works. The night vision was where this system falls apart. And this is when it is most needed. At first, I set these up on a table on my back patio and left them out overnight. Video is crisp and the night vision was amazing. You can see pretty much everything in the camera view. Even well across the street at 100-200 feet. So, I went forward installing these over the next few days. Big mistake. Anything moving is almost unidentifiable. The ghosting is horrible. In the attached photo is myself, circled in red, walking toward the camera. I am nearly invisible. Only when I get to within 15 feet of the camera can you finally see well enough to make out who it is. For privacy, I left those out. Also, there is no way to distinguish cars driving by. I can see them, but no way to make out the brand/model. I had no problem with this on my old 720p system with a camera in the exact same location. I have attached another photo of a car passing on the road. I cropped it down for the privacy of my neighbors homes. But, you get the idea of how badly the car appears in the image. I am going to reach out to support to see what setting can help with this awful night vision. Not sure there are any from what I have since read. Some reviewers claim turning off the 3D NR helps, but that makes the night image far too noisy. If there is a fix, I will update this review with what I find. Otherwise, these are going back in the box and being returned. Update 07/24/2021: Reaching out to tech support resulted in the obvious, there is no cure for the ghosting and smearing of images at night. Their solution was to turn of the 3D NR which results in a very noisy picture. I came up with a solution, though. I have 1 camera that has an overall view of the front of my property and street. There is a street light, malibu lights and a front porch light all on at night. I turned off the night vision and there is enough light to leave it in color mode. Cars and persons moving can be easily identified and do not smear. It is a bit grainy, but far better than what the night vision produces. This is acceptable.

this system works great, cameras are crystal clear. as the cameras are POE devices, took a while to start up and show image. if camera is connected to recorder's subnet, delay is less than one minute but if connected to same net as recorder, takes several minutes to find and connect the camera. one bad thing, The package i bought come with 18 meter cables, they are horribly squeezed into box so inner winding are fold too badly impossible to straighten, creating zig-zags, kinks and twists.

WARNINGS: 1: (Critical) Can be removed by anyone in under 2 seconds easily. 2: (Serious)These are dirty, dirt on inside of lens ruins night viewing. EDIT: 3/3/21 - Unit has been returned. It finally warmed enough to test the other 4 cameras and so I swapped out two in the dark to see if they were dirty like the two I replaced and the two replacements were also foggy from dirt. One of the ones I replaced seemed to have gotten foggier. I am now wondering if the plastic lenses are not degrading outside if hit by sunlight as one camera would catch the setting sun. It was getting foggier and it could not be cleaned up to remove it. Also those cheap plastic mount that barely held the cameras in the first place are even looser in warm weather. I don't know if the bullet style are more secure but these dome unit can be snatched up in under two seconds from their placements. I cannot recommend these Reolink units in any way shape or form. They can be stolen in under two seconds if someone can reach them and their QC issues with dirt inside the cameras disrupting night viewing is apparently completely out of control and lacking. EDIT: 2/27/21 - I have removed the image quality warning. While it still does have blown out spots in bright areas the total lack of daytime quality was related to some playback settings. If your playback quality is horrible run it in clear mode not fluent. We were over 2 weeks sub zero, I have yet to test these more or install the rest of the cameras. Got this in, set it it on the table to make sure everything functioned before starting the install to replace my 1080P system. Ok the first thing that I realized was the mount quality is simply non-existent. THIS IS CRITICAL: Once installed you can walk up to this camera and grab, twist, drop and unplug it in less than 2 seconds. One second if you have done it more than one time. Its simple, a small child could do it. This thing attacked to the mount you screw into the structure with 3 small thin plastic tabs. Are you kidding me? There is nothing SECURE about a security camera that can be removed in a second by anyone. Night mode is great but almost immediately I notice one of the four is very foggy and the picture is nearly useless because of this and another has a large white ghost in the middle. Turns out two of the four cameras I have installed so far have dirt or dust inside of the camera on the lens like another reviewer has mentioned. One is distracting, one is so dirty it is useless in night mode as well. The low frame rate at night means you will not be identifying anything moving at any speed though because its a blur. A vehicle going by cannot be identified by model or make much less ID anything for any useful purpose. I had already ordered 2 of their 5MP cameras to add to the garage so I will see what they are like but this system will be headed back. I am disgusted with the fact I spent about four hours removing porch ceiling panels and such to route these cheap cables just to have to send this chineseum trash back. I knew after dealing with the ZOSI brand that this chineseum was a big risk but I got bit by these fake positive reviews again. As long as Amazon allows their sellers to bribe the buyers with free items when they write bad reviews, and promises of half or full money back for 5 star reviews this will never end.

As an electronics design engineer, I have experimented and installed several systems from different manufacturers in recent years for friends and relatives. For my home I bought the 16 channel NVR with 8 of the RLK16-820D8 cameras as a kit. It's an impressive system. The cameras are well designed to allow mounting in all orientations and point the camera as needed. Day and night high-def images are great. They look better than those bullet cameras. My house is large so the longer 100 Feet cables that came with the system were still not long enough for 2 on my cameras on opposite side of the house. I had to buy a couple of 150 feet cables for those cameras. The biggest difference I noted is the better software for personal computers and smart phone app than competitors. Some other brands like GW and Dripstone have really terrible viewing software that is hard to use and has poor "Chinglish" grammar done by someone with Chinese natural language, but poor English translations. The Reolink software has perfect English usage and has been solid so far in the first week of use. The only thing that caught my attention is there was no CD in the package with any instructions. I had to go online for that manual and the one I downloaded did not visually match my NVR although it was not a big deal. The online screens were easy to understand and follow. I did like the fact that with the computer software I could change some of the camera settings without need to go back to the NVR to hook up a monitor again. Many competitor software don't allow that. As for power usage, it uses a little less than other systems. The unit has a very quiet fan, very little heat, and uses about 42 Watts with 8 cameras during the day and around 52 Watts at night assuming all 8 cameras are in infrared lighting mode. Overall the best system I have seen thus far especially for the price.

I couldn't be happier with this REOLINK 4K Security Camera System! The image quality is phenomenal ultraclear 4K resolution that captures every detail day or night. The 8 dome cameras cover every angle around my property.Installation was easier than expected thanks to the PoE setup, which required only one cable per camera for power and data. The 16-channel NVR with a 4TB hard drive gives me peace of mind knowing that all footage is stored and accessible 24/7.The system runs smoothly, and the app is user-friendly and responsive. I can check live feeds or recorded clips anytime, anywhere. This is a top-tier security investment, and I highly recommend it to anyone serious about home or business protection!