REOLINK Floodlight Camera, 4K Dual-Lens Outdoor Security Camera with 180 FOV, 2.4G/5GHz Dual-Band WiFi, Plug-in for Continuous Power, Not AC, Smart Detection, Color Night Vision, Duo Floodlight WiFi

This camera replaced a $45 4K PTZ camera from AliExpress. It was a good camera, but didn't show my whole driveway, the app was questionable, and human/vehicle detection simply didn't work. This camera, on the other hand, shows my whole driveway at all times without panning, the app is great, and detection has been working stellar for me. The floodlights have been working well, and I have them turn on when it detects a human or vehicle at night. It even integrates well with Home Assistant, which was surprising. You can change all of the settings via HA, and even trigger automation when it detects a human, motion, or a vehicle. I was using my Synology NAS with this for a while and it was working fine. The downsides? Pet detection never seemed to work for me (not a big deal), I really wish this was PoE capable, there's only one stream available via ONVIF, and the picture gets blown out when sun is hitting my vehicles and garage. The web interface doesn't require anything weird like IE, Flash, or Silverlight, but it's only streaming for me in low resolution (Firefox/Linux&Mac). I had to turn off hardware acceleration in the Android app for it to display a stream, so keep this in mind.

Wow am I impressed with Reolink. I recently installed the 5mp Reolink cameras set ups at a couple of customer’s homes and was pretty blown away with them. One of the customers asked for a floodlight camera and I had been eying this one for a little while now. So I picked one up and man the 4k is actually quite a bit more impressive then the 5mp ones. I mean obviously they would be being that 4k is higher resolution then 5mp but I figured while viewing them through the app any better resolution on paper would be negated by the compression of the video while viewing it on your phone. I can confidently say I was wrong there is actually a big difference and this cameras is very very clear. The floodlight function of it works amazing as well I only wish it had the ability to be wired directly instead of having to use a power adaptor that needs to be plugged into a wall plug to drop the voltage down to the correct voltage for the camera I wish that was built in since most of the time you are going to be installing this where you already had a light and wiring it directly would be much easier then having to fish the barrel plug through the wall into the light then having to run that cable all the way to a wall plug. Especially if your looking to have the cleanest of installs. Other than that I thoroughly recommend this floodlight camera.

The good part: Set up was easy but you do need to hook it up to Ethernet in order to set it up. The unit is well build and quiet heavy. One of the best features is it is always recording and only save when it detects something. So when it saved, you get 20 to 30 seconds before the event. The software is limited. For example, you cannot set how long the light stay on after detection. I timed it, it stay on for 20 second if no or minimum motion is detected. Then it come back on in 5 second if motion is detected. Yes, it is being recorded. The bad: It has too many false positives. I let it running in the basement. The first night, it detected person, but no one was in the basement. Then it got worse during the day. It detected a person every 5 minutes when everyone was upstairs. It ran like this for an hour. I gave up, unplug it and send it back for return.

There is a way to hard-wire this camera without plugging into an outlet in a completely self-contained manner. One can get a small power converter typically used for powering LED lights that converts 110 V AC to 12 V DC. Make sure the power converter can support at least about 20 W close to the rating of the Reolink supplied power adapter, and is compact enough to fit inside the base cavity of the camera. (Lustaled 24W LED 12 V Power Supply on Amazon is the one I bought) Connect the input side of this converter to the wires coming out of the wall for the original light fixture with say wire nuts or Wago connectors. On the output side of the converter, connect an electrical barrel plug as shown (size #5, 5.5 mm OD, 2.1 mm ID) and then plug it into the DC port of the camera. The base cavity of the camera is quite large with a lot of empty space, a compact power converter and barrel plug will fit inside with no problem. Have been using this setup for half a year now, so far so good. Another challenge is the mounting bracket doesn't work with standard junction box, so had to get a vinyl siding mounting block first and mount the camera onto the block. The final setup looks pretty neat with no visible wires. Hopefully, Reolink will update this floodlight camera with hard-wire option and junction box mount in the future. The ultra-wide field of view and high resolution are great. It also supports 5 GHz wifi. However, there are a lot of false motion alarms. So, it is used as a floodlight and backyard viewing manually. This camera does not have motion sensors, it relies on image processing to identify motion. One little quirk is if the floodlight is turned on manually, the light won't stay on for long, it will go out after about 3 minutes, need to use the timer mode to bypass this problem.

I saw this product when I was looking for a floodlight/ security camera that didn't connect to a proprietary cloud or store video on a 3rd party server. This only connects to the intranet or via remote access, the latter I haven't mastered yet. After installing it, I have been extremely satisfied with the image quality, easily customized app, and SPEED. I have a doorbell camera from the home security service we use. It's garbage. In large part because of how incredibly slow it is. And the footage is definitely going through or ending up on one of their servers, for sale or free to cops. This is the opposite. Effort: This is an outdoor floodlight, so it probably will require being comfortable using a ladder, maybe cutting a piece of wood and painting it to make sure the camera is installed flush to the wall, and making a hole in your house. Its speed comes from the direct connection to your router or a wifi repeater with LAN ports. That's Cable A. It can't be hardwired to your house, even if you know how to do that, which I do not, but if you do you can definitely put this thing together. ANYWAY, because it can't be hardwired, it has to be plugged (Cable B) into an outlet. Even if you have outdoor outlets, this is not the kind of thing you want getting wet all the time or being easily unplugged. So you will almost certainly need to make some kind of a hole in your walls. Not renter-friendly, this model. It's not a small amount of work, but I am 100% satisfied with the product and the app so far. Remember, too, it records to a microSD card. If you want to record in 4K I would recommend at least 128gb or larger (check their website for compatibility) because when it's full you'll probably want to it to just start over and it's been up about 24h at max resolution and gone through 30gb. I'm sure you don't have to have it do that, tho but less convenient.

I normally don't write reviews but this need explanation. No average person has extensive knowledge about electronics so I figured I help. In the box, it came with a USB cable. I thought to myself, that is not enough power. So I tried it, thinking it is upgraded. NOPE, it did not power on. I have a collection of power bricks so I tried a 12V 1A brick, it turned on but the lights flicker. Then I tried another power brick, 12V 1.7A, it turned on and the lights turned on perfectly. Another thing that upset me, out of the box the camera and the light housing are two separate pieces. You have to screw both together to complete the assembly. However, the camera was missing that screw. It does come with a bag of screws but none of them fit. So I had to make a trip to Ace Hardware to get a screw and a washer. This is my fifth Reolink camera that I owned. Tells you how much I like their cameras. It has been two days and this camera still works. So please Reolink, make changes that make sense for your customers.

This is a cheaply made product designed by engineers who have never had 1 day of real world experience. I'm not even sure why this product exists to be honest. They make 2 versions of this camera, wired and wireless. The wired one connects to POE power and can be plugged right into an NVR, this one is SUPPOSED to be designed similar to the reolink doorbell. You plug it into power and connect it to wifi. This unit however is special. You need to connect it to LAN through your router then set it up on the app, then setup it's wifi connection. Which is completely idiotic and reflects poorly on every software designer that worked on this, and the higher ups that actually let it through. The ring floodlight camera is 10x easier. You plug it into any existing wires, connect to its Bluetooth network, find your wifi and put it in. THATS IT. And seriously, if it absolutely needs to be set up before it's mounted MAYBE PUT THAT IN THE INSTRUCTIONS SOMEWHERE. That's another thing, the instructions are poorly translated jokes. All it says is "on phone download app". I had to look up a seperate video just to figure that out. Everything said though, the camera itself is very good. It's a very crisp 4k and can be seen flawlessly, even if it's far from any routers or extenders. Another thing I really appreciate is being able to put in an SD card and record from that. Its very convenient not to need to pay anything to see your own recordings. All said I would give it 3 stars, but I have to take 1 away immediately for the device not supporting rich notifications, and for the doorbell to need a SUBSCRIPTION JUST TO SEE IMAGES IN NOTIFICATIONS. "Whos in the driveway?" "OH, I don't know let me just click the notification.... okay its loading... stilllll loading... whoops hold on that's the live view, let's just go to the playback.... and loading... still loading.. oh it's Steve!" IT SHOULDNT TAKE 45 SECONDS JUST TO SEE MY OWN DRIVEWAY. Seriously, just get the ring system unless you're connecting this to an NVR.. but sometimes a monthly payment just really isn't that bad.

*** EDIT/UPDATE 9/19/2024* Both cameras were still in working order The WiFi range extender that they connect to had gotten "confused" and was not accepting WiFi connections from anything. Also, one of the 120VAC to 12VDC power supplies I use had failed. My apologies, Reolink. I leave the original review text so others might troubleshoot more before returning or giving up on the device. Suggest to un-mount and plug it into your router with hardwire ethernet cable and do a factory reset (pushbutton) and re-do setup. ______________________ Original review follows: I ran two of these for about a year. Impressive image quality and they ran flawlessly. Until they both died within a couple of weeks of each other. Upon power on you can hear the lens shutters click, but they never boot up or make any visual or audible indication that they have powered on. I watched the footage back on BlueIris on both during the moment of failure, and there was nothing out of the ordinary going on, they just stopped streaming and never came back up. Unfortunate, and I am hesitant to purchase more or even bother with a warranty claim.

Perfect product for front of the house security.

The item arrived before committed date. Happy with night vision and picture quality. But motion detection seems to be a bit lagging, particularly at night. Not sure if settings need to be tuned.