Reolink 4K Indoor Camera with 3X Optical Zoom, Pet Camera, Baby Monitor, Crying Sound Detection, Privacy Mode, Human/Pet Auto Tracking, 2.4/5GHz WiFi 6 Home Security Camera, 8MP Night vision, E1 Zoom

I've had several brands of IP cam in the past, each one with its own issues such as poor build quality, horrific setup and poor support. I've always managed to get them working but I pitied anyone going through the same experience if they didn't have a background in IT. Now the Reolink E1 Zoom. Must haves for me were good image quality, email and FTP support, and no sneaky tie-in to subscription services. Oh and easy remote access. It ticks all those boxes. I have had to contact support to discuss HTTPS browser niggles but they were responsive and I feel assured if anything more serious needs discussing they are there to help, which is more than can be said for some of the cams I've had in the past where support has been non-existent, even if you use the documented routes. For some reason 1 of my cams put up a small fight during initial setup, but that was sorted with a little perseverance. On top of the features I really needed, other details are handy and easy to configure. I've seen comments about poor picture quality but that's not what I have experienced. There are options to calibrate and focus, as well as image quality settings via browser or app (Windows or iOS) I've not even bothered with night mode and IR as I am getting decent colour images at night in daytime mode. Main use is via internal positioning to monitor car and driveway, and it's all good. I'm now making more use of tracking function and it seems pretty decent too. In terms of design it is a tidy unit, and doesn't even have an ugly Wi-Fi antenna as my previous cams have had, so it's a single cable install for power only. Only disappointment is that unlike other Reolink cams, there is no power extension cable available, and whilst the standard cable is decent length it would be good if they sorted that out. I've not made use of audio functions so can't comment on that, but all in all I am pleased, so much so, that I bought another.

Absolutely brilliant piece of equipment Day and night modes excellent clarity. Beats doorbell cams any day Use it to watch over my cars from inside.

I got one of these to monitor my home while on holiday. Setup kept failing at the set password stage, until I realised it was automatically connecting to my Reolink NVR on the same network. The video quality is good, but movement is a little smeary due to video compression, but it recovers quickly and should be fine for capturing faces. My fixed Reolnk CCTV cameras don't have this issue. Anyway, I ended up buying a second one as it was in a sale. All in all another decent product from Reolink.

Working perfect after more than a year. App is easy to use and they are easy to set up.

This product launch was hyped with a future release date with all the high end features. It is worse than the other alternatives available for less than half price. To start with, it does not connect to the wifi via the app when you configure. No matter how much I tried it kept failing taking me back to try again screen. I finally had to connect the camera to the router using ethernet cable and then configure the wifi. It's inbuilt wifi seems to be of extremely poor quality. Even though its in the same room as the wifi router the connection drops significantly unless its kept next to router. If I move it slightly away it looses connectivity, both on 2.5 GHz and 5 GHz. It takes a while to load the video stream on the app owing to the wifi connectivity issues. The video or the photo seems stretched and the clarity is extremely poor, definitely not 5MP quality and clarity. The 3x optical zoom is rubbish, seems more like digital zoom. The camera tilt angle towards floor is very less and won't go beyond certain angle limiting its coverage, it turns reasonably towards the ceiling and back though. The horizontal rotation is good but the 2 antennas do come in way of the lens in certain positions. The alert is a bit of shame, as in other reolink cameras, as it sends alerts detecting change in light or picture and not motion. You end up getting lots of useless alerts and finally turning it off! The build quality is poor for price, made of cheap plastic and light, unlike the dome and bullet ones which are in aluminium casing. The overall look is good. I would like to warn the potential buyers of reolink cameras about the "warranty" from reolink. I had water damage in one of outdoor bullet cameras after a year of use. Since they discontinued the model I have they asked me choose another camera from the ones available. I selected the next available model. I was asked to pay extra $30 via pay pal as price difference for a different model and also arrange for damaged camera to be returned to them at my own expense. Only then the replacement will be dispatched. Or I choose a much lower spec camera, which is no where close to what I have. I have refused to do this. If I am paying £100+ for a camera I expect it to last few years and not just over a year. And why do I have to pay for a faulty product return. They have refused to replace this even after a number of conversations and are now saying if I buy a new product they will do me a special discount of 30% instead of replacing the faulty camera. They have thrown their T&Cs at me which are no way in favor of customer and something which I was never made aware of when buying the product. A big let down.

A good little camera used to watch the dog when we leave her for a while.

Needed a decent camera to use as our baby monitor which we were watching via our phones and iPad I have tried eight or nine different cameras all of them claiming to be 1080p but in reality nothing like that when you actually set them up. If ever you tried to zoom in instantly you would see the blockiness and couldn’t really see the picture properly. Finally found this one with three times optical zoom and boy does that make a difference the picture without the zoom is a markable improvement on the other cameras we have tried including the ring indoor camera which I expected to be very good but it really wasn’t. With this camera having the added three times optical zoom feature I was really hoping that the picture quality zoomed in would be just as good And it didn’t let me down at all even fully sending the picture is still an amazing 1080p full HD allowing you to even examine your screen digitally picture still looking amazing. The build quality of the camera and the app that you use are both excellent & simple to set up. Certainly won’t be returning this camera as there are no other cameras on the market that do an optical zoom For anything like this price. This really is one amazing bit of kit and at an in believable price

The camera was very easy to set up out of the box, with the app, even if it was extremely loud in shouting out setup instructions, in various languages before I could get logged in and get it to shut up. Don't try and set this up initially near a sleeping baby (or anyone else that is sleeping for that matter). I wanted to set this up with for directly accessing with RTSP streams on Linux/open source tooling and my heart initially sank with reading initial online documents suggesting this was not possible. Luckily it is absolutely possible, but I had to do a lot of manual playing around before I could get it to work. I will have to write a tutorial/blog post on doing this, but I'm sure that even if I do, the APP interface will likely have changed again, rendering my instructions out of date. Just know that at the current time, you can enable HTTP/HTTPS/RTMP/ONVIF, and then you can acccess it through your web browser or ONVIF client. I found that I had to reboot it after having enabled these, for these to become accessible. It is also good to look up the IP address from directly within the app, and use that for your browser. Somehow I was getting it wrong with my nmap scans but that may just be user error. The optical zoom is dead useful, but less than I had thought it would be. I was disappointed that it did not have a traditional thread-screw on the bottom so I could use some of the mounts I have around the house. In the end, I ordered some reolink-specific mounts off of amazon, and will then screw those into some wood to get the desired effect. I find that I need the mounts, in order to be able to tilt the camera down enough. The pan/tilt covers most angles well, but it does not want to face down much, which is exactly what I need for looking down on the baby in his cot. In the meantime, I just put a thin instruction booklet/leaflet under one side of the base to tilt it enough for what I need. Overall a great camera that is "open" enough for what I need. It would be great if it had a base screw to easily mount it, if it was a bit cheaper, and if the optical zoom zoomed in a little more, but you can't have everything.