RLC-823S1

1 Customer Review

(3 out of 5 stars)

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  • Great picture quality with some major trade-offs

    cgh001 - Aug 24, 2024

    Verified Purchase

    First off, this camera is BIG. Seriously, you don't know how big it really is until you pull it out of the box. Imagine a basketball - that's the minimum space you'll need to mount this thing with its mounting bracket, and how big it's going to look once mounted. And that's being conservative.

    The optics are great; actually the best of any of the 10+ Reolink cameras I have. The image on a good network in "High" quality is super sharp and colors are appropriately saturated. This comes at a price though. Depending on your use case, the price could end up being prohibitive.
    * The camera "hunts" for focus constantly. Once it zeroes in, most everything in frame is sharp, but it can take a LONG time for the unit to stop moving lenses to get there. Sometimes it seems crook could move out of view before focus occurs. With as clear a picture as this thing is capable of, that's a shame.
    * If you move the camera with the PTZ controls, you start the "hunting" process over while it does its 'vision test at the eye doctor's' back and forth dance with the focus. Same with zooming in/out.
    * Reolink falsely advertises this camera to have "Color Night Vision." It does not. It's standard monochrome-ish with IR assist. When set to "Color" mode, the image has some faint color, I'll give it that but it is far from justifying calling it "color night vision." And it is CERTAINLY NOT the ColorX night vision on the Argus 4 Pro (which is downright spooky good.) Its night vision is average, I'd say. The IR spot is good enough to give a practical 40-ish foot clear view.
    * It is LOUD. If you are physically near the camera (within 20') when any part of it moves, you will hear it. And if you're monitoring the video and moving the lens around (PTZ), you will hear nothing but stepper motors whining and moving. It's so loud that it's disturbing, and there is NO way you will hear anything that is happening in the frame/picture while any motor (focus and zoom included) are moving. Of course the recordings suffer this malady.
    * You can set many programmed presets to move the camera to desired areas.
    * The presets have an edit feature (change camera's aiming point associated with the preset) but it literally does not work at all. No change is ever retained,, so if you need to move the position of a preset, you will have to delete it and create a new one - which moves it to the bottom of the list of presets, which you cannot rearrange. So presets are easy; changing them is not.
    (I've noticed this on ALL my Reolink PT/PTZ cameras, which is frustrating and disappointing. Don't put the feature in the system until it works... just sayin'.)
    * Microphones on Reolink cameras are usually pretty bad TBH. This camera seems to have a decent mic on it (you can hear a TV down a hallway in the video attached.) It does also seem to be easily overwhelmed by wind, distorting to pure noise on occasion. Baffling for a camera clearly designed to be outside.
    * The mount only allows 2 positions (mounting from a wall, or a ceiling) but that's really all you need, and changing the mount is super easy.
    * Aside from being HUGE, this camera does present nicely and looks to be of good build quality. It's also intimidating (it really does announce its presence) - which could be a good detriment to n'er-do-wells alone.
    * It comes with a security strap - that mounts between the base mount and the camera housing itself. Good to have on a camera this heavy.
    * It makes the impression that it's truly industrial grade by aesthetics and "feel in the hand."
    * Because it's POE, it's always connected to software (like the Reolink App), so it is more responsive than its WiFi connected cousins, albeit there is still a baffling delay - see video. I'm tapping but it's pickup time to my requests is inconsistent and often sluggish. On an enterprise level Gb Ethernet network with low traffic, I would expect close to immediate response to commands. Nope...
    * Tracking, like all Reolink cameras is sluggish to get started. While this camera, being POE is quicker, there is still a lag between the time it detects motion and when it starts recording. Often, so sluggish that by the time it starts recording, what tirggered it is completely out of frame, rendering the recording useless. The motion tracking feature is jerky and sometimes inconsistent - missing its target by under/over-shooting and not correcting, or simply not moving at all. For recordings, it would be great if they did like Ubiquiti/UniFi and had an adjustable "pre-roll buffer" that actually printed the X number of seconds selected prior to the trigger occurrence, so that nothing is missed in the recording. This can be something of a show stopper when using the cameras for their intended purpose - security.
    * It doesn't always track the moving object fully through its motion path either. Sometimes it just stops mid-tracking and it's done. When it again detects motion, it moves/tracks, so I don't know what's "distracting" it on odd occasion.
    * They let you adjust object min/max size for motion sense triggering is quite nice.
    * That said, I sometimes can't tell if adjustments of the object size in the sensitivity settings makes a difference.

    Overall, it's a good camera; it just has some pretty serious quirks and unpredictability. I was debating sending it back all the way up until the 30th day of ownership, but decided to keep it due to its sharp/clear picture (an ACTUAL 4K camera! - not claiming 4K that's oddly distributed and often a low-MP) and significant 5x optical zoom. I'll just end up relegating it to an out of sight area that can benefit from a PTZ but it won't be an eye sore when people come over to visit.
    No matter where it goes, once it's locked in on focus, it does deliver a superb image.

    Transparency on the video I've uploaded:
    Video was shot while camera is on temp mobile mount I use for testing cameras. It had been moved inside at recording time. This means there's a plate of glass between it and outside. This can complicate focusing, no doubt. In this case, it seemed to have minimal effect, thankfully. I can assure you the camera "hunts" for focus like this and worse when outside. There's better than average performance in this video.

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