REOLINK Indoor Security Camera, 2.4/5 GHz Wi-Fi, E1 Pro 4MP HD Plug-in Pet Camera, 360 Degree Baby/Pet Monitor with Auto Tracking, Person/Pet Detection, Night Vision, 2-way Audio, Local Storage

Good bang for the buck
I am redoing my review as I have spent more time with the camera and figured out the errors of my ways. Actually now have the 5MP version with zoom and like that one a lot better, but this still has its uses. First of all, the main thing I did wrong with this camera is get the video stream over UDP. It looks like with Xeoma when you let it auto select a transport protocol, it defaults to UDP, not TCP. The other security cameras I am using with Xeoma are wired in and the packets through the main switch are prioritized, so UDP works just fine with them, but with this camera it goes over lossy WiFi, so TCP is a must.The pros of this camera are:1. Good quality picture.2. Motorized movement of camera.3. Mounting is quick and easy.4. Easy to pop off mount and set down somewhere.5. Quickly switches between day and night mode. That is one issue with the higher end model is it is a lot slower to switch modes than this one.The cons of this camera are:1. No zoom. This feature is really handy for monitoring the baby while in the crib as it can be hard to tell if his eyes are open when mounted above the crib. Really only a few more $ and you get this. However this camera is still good when I need to monitor away from the crib and a wide angle view is fine. Actually now it is the better camera just lives mounted above the crib and this is the one I drag around.2. The two way audio is really pretty lackluster in both directions. I mean it ‘works’, just they probably spent about $1 on it when $2 would have been so much better. Then again also have a traditional baby monitor which works really well, so not that big of an issue for me.3. No Ethernet port. Actually have an Ethernet switch right where I mount over the crib and so would be nice to take advantage of that, but sadly I can’t. However I have a heavily wired in home setup, which minimizes the load on the airwaves, and I have multiple APs around the house due to the walls in this old home really absorbing the signal, so have really good WiFi to use this camera with, just gotta do it in TCP mode.So the final verdict for using for its intended purpose, watching the baby from another room either from a phone or from my desktop computer (say while I work), well it does the subset of the baby is in a random place with my wife or I am with the baby and my wife is keeping an eye on things. It fell short on the watch the baby from a fixed position above the crib due to the lack of a zoom feature that I didn’t realize I would need until after he was born.

Great value (features + capability, versus pricepoint)
TL:DR version:Will I buy/try more Reolink products? Absolutely.Do I expect perfection? No.Is this an amazing value? Definitely.Full review:This is not a perfect unit. For the price point, it is an amazing unit. I initially bought just one to test with and try out. After using it for a few months and being happy with it, I purchased two more of these (and their doorbell, which I will review later in that product).Before I bought this, I saw some people were having issues with the connectivity. I don’t know why. The setup is clever and at first I thought “is this going to work” and it did. The way I did it was by installing the application on my phone, plugging the camera in, scanning it’s QR code, and providing the app with my router credentials. It found my camera trying to talk to the network, pushed the settings, and it was ready to go.The follow and record feature works very well on two of the three of these I now own. The range of settings in the cameras is impressive, and can take a little time to find and understand in the menus. You can adjust video quality, how long it records after motion has stopped, setting a “home point” for the Camera to face, even set minimum and maximum sizes to trigger the motion sensing recording.It also has some ‘smart’ features, where it can try to determine if it sees a person versus a pet (or with outdoor cameras, versus a car) so it will record only when it sees what you want it to see. It has sensitive sliders for all of these things. Including how dim it must be to kick on the nightvision.Drawbacks. One camera sits in a hallway, and even with no min/max object settings and sensitivities all dialed up, it doesn’t always detect-and-follow. It also won’t record to the memory card I have in it, though I haven’t swapped in another memory card to see if that’s the issue yet.Another camera has another odd habit that it does at least once a day. At first I thought it was resetting (power-cycling, not factory reset), because the camera will suddenly turn to one extreme, then return to normal behavior. When you first plug these in, they do a “x/y/z position check” to know where to center themselves. However, this isn’t what’s happening. It only turns all the way to the left for a few seconds, then returns to normal. I know it isn’t a power cycle because I’ve looked up recorded history when this happens, and it’ll be recording the whole time.I then thought “Maybe it’s seeing a reflection through the window, a ‘lens flare’ or something and it’s ‘chasing’ it.” But it’s also done this at night, when shades are drawn. So while it behaves a bit erratically, it’s not so often to be a problem.The two-way intercom feature is neat, but does take some adeptness with the software and your phone to utilize properly. Unmuting the device, adjusting volume and mic sensitivity on the device and turning up your phones volume (in the right ‘volume control slider’), etc. There is also a little lag. I have pretty quick internet here (1 gigabit) and no Real-time MMO players or anything like that, the devices are connected to the 5Ghz frequency on my router, there is a few seconds delay between when someone speaks and you hear it, and vice versa. If you know this and you’re patient, it can be useful.I’ve tried adjusting the video quality to a lower one, to reduce bandwidth usage to see if it would reduce the intercom lag, but no luck there.Oh! The cameras also have a programmable “time of day” rule setup, so you can literally set them up to be mini-alarms! If they detect motion they’ll go off… and that alarm is LOUD. It does also mean if you ever need to get up in the middle of the night and go downstairs / into the field of view of your alarm-camera… don’t forget to turn it off on the app first!I haven’t tried this feature on the camera that likes to do it’s odd counter-clockwise turns. I don’t know if it’s own moving, which would make the image move, would trigger the alarm or not. I suspect this feature would be better suited on a camera not setup to track motion, and that’s in someplace that isn’t frequently visited late at night, like a workshed or garage.

I bought this cuz there is an alley in front of my window. Since I’m in the basement. I can no longer climb my step ladder to see outside so I needed something that I could check and see what was going on. We sometimes get homeless people that come in decide. They’re going to try and camp out for the night that’s not happening in this alley. I live in a seniors building. So the only other idea was to put a camera in my window. So I knew what was going on when to be concerned and when not to be concerned. Camera works great and I feel a heck of a lot safer. Camera works off of my phone and I can see clearly what I’m aiming at. And that’s day or night. It doesn’t matter. Can still see clearly. This camera is worth the money and it wasn’t easy setup. It’s just a matter of matching it to my phone which is an Android and to my Wi-Fi. It worked out great. It was set up no matter of a about 15 minutes.

Works great