Amcrest UltraHD 5MP Outdoor POE Camera 2592 x 1944p Bullet IP Security Camera, Outdoor IP67 Waterproof, 103° Viewing Angle, 2.8mm Lens, 98.4ft Night Vision, 5-Megapixel, IP5M-B1186EW-28MM (White)

I have been learning and getting into PoE cameras and have purchased a Netgear GS308EPP PoE switch for it. Purchased this Amcrest with a lower price for testing purposes to see how IP cameras work with a PoE switch. After I installed their IP Config Software named ConfigTool, I honestly did not understand it, so I I sent a long email with the steps that I was taking and the error message I was getting "invalid username or password", no matter what I did it would not work. I read on their forum someone mentioned to removed the screws and hit reset which I did and after that I was able to login with the default user/pass. The next day I called support and spoke to Sofia ( I still have not received a reply for my long email ) and explained to her what was happening, and what I did during the night which was resetting the IP camera, and after that I was able to login, but I still had issues understanding the ConfigTool application. The rep asked if she could connect to the computer remotely and that was OK with it. Once she saw the software open, I explained the issues that I had and the rep responded and assisted me understanding their ConfigTool application. Quality: The camera has great colors during daylight and great view at night. It does not have a direct white spot in the middle from the infrared, its just perfect view at night. The quality of the camera itself seems great and its not plastic, the case is metal. No connectivity issues once I was assisted with their ConfigTool application. Once the program is running, it displays the IP address assigned to it and you make the changes like the user/password and connect to it to view it. There is a small glitch on the application and it is one of the icons ( I think its Chrome ) to connect to the camera, when the admin clicks on it, it displays the following error message: Whoops, our bad... The page you requested was not found, and we have a fine guess why. If you typed the URL directly, please make sure the spelling is correct. If you clicked on a link to get here, the link is outdated. Clicking on the E icon ( me thinking it would open Edge ) will open the default browser on your computer, so clicking E will open Chrome if you have Chrome as your default browser, and clicking on Chrome icon on the application does not open the page, it gives you the error mentioned above. Other than that, I am happy with the camera. Thanks to Sofia from customer support and her assistance with the application and Steve from tech support for following up on email.

Esta marca es muy conocida y la verdad está muy bien hecha para exteriores lo instalé y funcionó tipo plug and play (obvio estaban bien ponchados los conectores y el cable). Lo recomiendo para los NVRs

Using it with Frigate and Home Assistant. It works great. Multiple streams so one can be used for viewing / recording and the other for detection. Two minor gripes. First is the extra power cable just hanging there when running PoE. Second the cap for the network cable isn't large enough to fit the cable through if it even has a small boot. The view angle is slightly narrower than a blink camera. The image quality is better.

On the plus side: 1) Very good image quality, good night vision and range of view 2) Inexpensive 3) Responsive tech support On the negative side: 1) After adding this model to two other Amcrest cameras already in use (one an identical 5 MP, the other an 8 MP), I found that the third camera kept dropping off my network every few days. Unplugging the POE cord and plugging it back in would get the camera back on line, but it would eventually drop off again. Eventually I replaced it with another manufacturer's 5 MP camera, which has worked fine. 2) Motion detection is WAY oversensitive, significantly more so than any other brand of camera I've used. This model comes with a default setting of 60 on a scale of 0-100. I figured that would be too sensitive so I reset it to 30 and got a ton of false alarms. I kept dialing it down, eventually to 1, but still got a slew of false alarms. I blotted out a lot of the field of view using the region setting tool, but there were still too many false alarms. 3) The Amcrest View Pro app has a lot of features and is relatively easy to use, but is glitchy in some respects. You can assign a name to each Amcrest camera, but with more than 2 cameras on the network the app would frequently assign the same name to two different cameras. When trying to exit the app you get a box asking you to tap OK if you really want to leave and Cancel if not - but neither allows you to exit (had to use the home button on my phone to do so). Overall it's a nice camera with limitations, deserving of 3.5 stars (which rounds to 4).

The picture quality is more than enough for me, and I even turn the resolution down a little to have more time stored on my nvr, but these cameras produce clear video at high or low settings. This camera definitely has a starlight image sensor as it continues to show perfectly clear color video until its completely dark outside. The nightmode (black and white with IR lights) is good but as this only has 2 IR lights it will probably only sufficiently illuminate 20-30 feet at night. The firmware for this is outstanding as well. It has HTML5 video playback when you access the camera directly through an internet browser (no plugin or flash is required). It has all the necessary settings that I was able to get the camera to communicate and work great with an outdated Grandstream NVR. So in other words it is very customizable and follows the onvif standards close enough to play well with other equipment. Amcrest is an American company but these cameras are made by companies in China that often are closely tied to the Chinese government. So I would advise using a firewall to prevent the cameras from accessing the internet. And use an NVR or NVR software like blue iris to view the video from cameras. Amcrest only releases a couple of firmwares per model which makes me believe that they spend a lot of time making sure their firmwares are stable and checking for any holes before distributing them. I don’t see the lack of firmware as an issue because their firmware are very stable and aren’t lacking any features. I cant speak to the long term quality which is often a problem with cheaper cameras, but in terms of hardware and features this will be the only camera I buy going forward.