Amcrest 5MP Turret POE Camera, UltraHD Outdoor IP Camera POE with Mic/Audio, 5-Megapixel Security Surveillance Cameras, 98ft NightVision, 132° FOV, MicroSD (256GB), (IP5M-T1179EW-AI-V3)

I purchased this camera to replace an older Reolink that cover my Deck. The 2.8MM sensor in this camera has a great field of view. I`m able to capture the entire deck and a portion of the back steps. I`m running it connected to Milestone via its ONVIF feed. Picture out of the box is great, I did not have to make any tweaks. Night vision is far superior compared to my old camera as well. The microphone needed a small adjust of the gain so it didn’t pick up the noise from my heat pump. I would imagine not having the heat pump nearby I could have left it as it. I would give this camera a 5 out of 5 rating. Great performance for a great price. Oh yea, the Amcrest app on iOS is also free. I plan on putting an SD card in it as a backup of my recordings as well.Follow Up 12-17-2020:This is a follow up review to my prior purchase. I`ve since bought another one and have converted all my cameras over to Amcrest. For $50 you can go wrong. The 2.8mm lens has a very wide field of view and actually replaced the 2 Reolinks I had for the same area. Night vision is much better than the Reolinks and the microphone can pick up a conversation from over 50 feet away. I now have all 5 of my Amcrest cameras (two 8MP 4K and 3 5MP) recording 24/7 to Milestone via the ONVIF feed. The H265 compression is a must if you are hosting your own recording server. I dropped the frame rates down to 10FPS for recording but have them maxed out for live view. It’s a top-notch product and their customer service is great. I have been eyeing their WiFi doorbell (currently $80 here on amazon). Reviews looks good and that will be my next purchase. its great to have all my cameras the same brand now. I use their iOS app for live view, its flawless and the quality in real time is fantastic. I would not hesitate to purchase more products from them. Also, they routinely do firmware updates and security patches. A huge plus! Bottom line, don’t hesitate, can’t go wrong for the price!!!

The media could not be loaded. I got this camera as an upgrade for the Amcrest IP3M-956 that I use to monitor my driveway. The IP3M-956 is a nice camera, but it didn’t have the resolution to read license plates on cars driving by, and the night vision left a bit lacking. I could see pretty well at night—particularly after adding a separate IR blaster to widen the illuminated area—but only in black and white, which makes it much harder to identify people or features.This camera was a definite improvement in overall resolution; the colors are much brighter and more vivid and now I can use color mode at night. I’m attaching a short video at night with the old camera, and also some snapshots with this camera to highlight the differences. I’m MUCH happier in that regard.As you can see in the attached daylight photos, the daytime resolution is better, but still not enough to make out a license plate in good light at 60’. I guess that’s just more than can be expected from a camera at this price point. But the other big difference, one that I wasn’t anticipating, is the much larger field of view with this camera. I’m much happier with the more “square” picture that provides a much wider view down the street.I’m using this camera with AI-HomeGuard surveillance software, rather than Amcrest’s own software. While I noticed the Amcrest software is significantly improved from the old model (including working just fine with Chrome, whereas the old one required a clunky add-on), the AI-HomeGuard is simply genius in identifying meaningful motions and pretty much eliminating false positives. I previously used Blue Iris surveillance software, and found all the options overwhelming—and still creating way too many false positives. But whichever software choice you make, this camera works fine with them (and also works fine with the Amcrest Pro mobile phone software which can be handy).Since this was replacing an already-in-place hardwired camera, installation was easy. This is not clear from the product description, but you don’t HAVE to use POE (power over Ethernet); it also allows for connecting to a wall-wart power supply (but it doesn’t include the power supply, and the connector is semi-proprietary). If you do want to install with POE, you’ll need to purchase a separate POE injector or POE switch. Note that there is no wireless (wi-fi) option with this camera, though I personally see that as a plus. (Since you have to provide a source of power, it might as well be an Ethernet cable, and then you have a more reliable connection and don’t bog down your wifi.)The camera itself appears to be solid construction. It remains to be seen if it’s as weather-resistant as my old one (which has operated fine for 2 years), but the design looks good. I was coming from a “dome” camera that has the advantage of being vandal-resistant, but since this is mounted pretty high up, I’m not worried about someone reaching up and changing the aim of the camera. (Whereas I’d have second thoughts about this design on my porch, where it would be easy to reach.) For that application, it’s much easier to adjust the camera aim, and if need be, to change the micro-SD card (which is MUCH easier to do on this camera than my old one) or hard-reset the device. Speaking of which, I love that this camera allows for recording to the internal SD card (up to 256GB). I have it set to record 24/7 to the SD card, and then use the AI HomeGuard software to record motion only.Overall, if you’re looking for an IP camera and don’t want/need a wifi-connected model, this seems to be an excellent choice.