Amcrest UltraHD 4K (8MP) Outdoor Security IP Turret PoE Camera, 3840×2160, 98ft NightVision, 2.8mm Lens, IP67 Weatherproof, MicroSD Recording (256GB), White

Update 12/10/202:Amcrest reconsidered:”I have consulted with our techs and they have assured me that our firmware updates are working properly and this issue is mostly likely caused by the power being disconnected during the install process. However we have decided to issue a one time replacement.”Note, the firmware update was done via the web interface while the camera was still mounted on my house and connected to an Amcrest POE injector installed in my garage and continuously powered, so I’m not sure how the power could possibly have been interrupted. On the bright side, they are RMAing this camera and sending a replacement. Thank you Amcrest!Update 12/9/2020:Sadly, I updated the firmware on this camera and now it is stuck in a reboot loop. The camera was working perfectly until I pressed the Upgrade button on my browser to update the firmware to V2.622.00AC000.0.R.201022.bin. Now the camera starts up, displays live video for a few seconds, then reboots. I contacted support who were unable to resolve the problem. They suggested contacting the RMA group which I did. They said the camera was purchased 1 year and 6 months ago, so it was out of warranty and Amcrest does not warranty firmware upgrades.Maybe it was a coincidence that the camera failed during the firmware update and has nothing to do with the firmware itself. My experience tells me the camera would be working perfectly today if I hadn’t put Amcrest’s latest firmware on it….sure seems like just a software problem.I am still very satisfied with my other Amcrest cameras, but I won’t be updating their firmware.*************I’ve been using Amcrest IP cameras for several years now for home and business security. I purchased this camera to be the primary camera covering my driveway and front yard. It has a 112 degree field of view which is perfect for my application. The daytime 4k video is amazing but I was surprised by the great night vision quality compared to the other models I’ve used. I highly recommend this camera. Now for some more specifics of my experience.This is a POE (power over ethernet) camera which also has an optional 12V power connector. I went with Amcrest’s POE Injector for ease of installation. I just connected an ethernet cable from my network to the DIN port on the injector and then connected the camera to the injector with a second cable. I was delighted to find the weather seal has been re-designed to allow the ethernet cables RJ-45 connector to fit through the seal cap so premade cables work great.The camera has several options for where the video is recorded. I wanted at local copy stored on the camera which requires installation of a micro SD card. I’m using a Samsung 64GB 100MB/s (U3) card. Using motion/sound triggered recording at the highest resolution, highest frame rate, and highest quality on my active street, this gives me about 4 days of stored video. Installing the SD card was a bit more of an operation than I had expected. Other Amcrest cameras I have used have small a weather sealed panel which can be removed revealing the sd card slot. This camera requires not only removing the back cover, but also the camera board inside. It is not a difficult process, just 5 screws to remove, but the documentation is not very specific. Fortunately, this is a one time task so it is not a big deal. Just make sure you don’t touch the camera lens itself, or if you do, make sure you clean it before closing it up.I used the free Amcrest View Pro app on my Android phone to setup the camera. It is very straight forward and walks you through the process step by step. Once complete, I was able to view the live video and audio feed from anywhere. I can also playback the stored recordings as well. In addition to the app on my phone, I use Amcrest Surveillance Pro on my pc. This app is also free and the primary way I monitor multiple cameras simultaneously during the day.Once the camera was setup, I went the the extensive customization options provided by the camera. Amcrest has done a great job giving you access to nearly every aspect of the cameras operation so you can set it to meet your needs. I went through the more detailed configuration options to specify motion detection recording and sound detection. The options provided are excellent. You can specify the times/days you want motion detection to be active, the thresholds for the amount of motion require to trigger the recording, up to 4 separate regions, etc. Likewise, the sound detection allows you to define your schedule and threshold by viewing a live graph showing the sound level.Once the sun went down, I was able to check the night vision capabilities of the camera. It was immediately clear that this camera does a much better job than the 3 or 4 MP models from Amcrest. I’m not sure if it is the new Starlight sensor or the improved built in IR illuminator, but I have no problem seeing people walking 70 feet away at night. Not only that, but the camera maintains a good shutter speed so moving people/cars are not a blur. I am very happy with the night vision performance.The built-in microphone is very sensitive. I have no problem hearing people in my yard, dogs barking, birds singing, sirens, etc. The camera has a noise reduction option to filter our some of the background noise, but I found the audio quality to be better without noise reduction.Overall, this is a fantastic, versatile camera. The daytime 4k video performance is excellent, the night vision is great and the audio recording is impressive. The android app is very good at home or away. The PC app works well, but I’d say it is due for an update. Alternatively, Amcrest suggests purchasing Blue Iris software which works well with their cameras. Considering the features and performance this camera offers for a relatively little extra cost, this is an excellent value.

To give a little backstory, I’m a security camera hobbyist and I have installed multiple camera systems throughout the years. From box systems to piecing together systems, I’ve had experience with quite a few cameras in my business, home, and helping others as well. Full disclosure, this is my first time with a 4k camera as well as PoE. My parents home is in an area that seems to be trafficked by a lot of unsavory people, and most recently, had two cars broken into in the garage. I had installed a Night Owl 1080p BNC system as well as a 1080p Wyze Cam as a backup. While it alerted me to the burglary in progress, the video was too blurry to use to ID the thieves, and they were released. This has made me interested in something better than what I currently use, which is how I found the Amcrest 4k PoE on Amazon. I’ve never used a PoE before, but it seems it’s the direction that the industry is going.I was told I needed a PoE infuser (1 camera), or a PoE switch (multiple cameras) to provide power over the ethernet cable, so I picked up an infuser as well. When I finally received the camera and opened it, my first impression of it was how well made it was. Most of the cameras I’ve installed were made of plastic, but this Amcrest camera was entirely metal. Very solid build quality right off the bat. Next thing to do was to connect everything up prior to the installation. Honestly, I didn’t even read the instructions, but it took me about 5 mins to connect up everything and another 10 mins to download the app and get the picture on my phone. Extremely simple hook up, and I can see why PoE has become the default nowadays. The QR code setup definitely contributed to the speed of the setup. Once I confirmed that everything was working, I saw that the camera could take a microSD card for internal storage. This is probably one of the only drawbacks of the camera as you have to physically open up the camera to install the SD card. If you’re haven’t done something like this before, it would be easy to pull the wrong wire out, or not put everything back together correctly again as the weatherproof seal needs to be lined up exactly. Not a major issue, but just something worth noting.On to the camera itself…the images that it produces are extremely clear. I mounted the camera pointing at the driveway as I wanted the best camera at the point of entry to be able to see detail. I’m used to using 1080p cameras, so the level of detail the Amcrest has is definitely much clearer. Here is a still picture of the level of detail in 4k. You can see the license plate clearly when you magnify it.While pictures in full sunlight are usually decent quality on 1080p cameras, my main interest was the details the camera could take at night. Here are two side by side comparisons of a Wyze Cam vs the Amcrest in the same area.As you can see, the Amcrest has a wider field of view and a lot more detail at night. One thing worth noting is that the Wyze Cam picture seems brighter, but only because of the infrared light from the Amcrest. The infrared light on the Amcrest floods the entire area much better than infrared lights on any camera I’ve ever used.While the camera does have a motion detection notification feature, it doesn’t differentiate between shadows and real people. I’m still trying to tweak the settings to minimize or eliminate false alarms, but I hope that there will be some type of person detection features in the future. Still, the notifications are a useful feature that alerts me to motion when its triggered.Amcrest Cloud is also a very nice feature that will get you up and going without much setup. I do prefer the Amcrest View Pro app over the Cloud app as I found that the Cloud app does have a pretty substantial lag. The View Pro app has almost zero lag on notifications and live view. I also use the Surveillance Pro program for PC which is great for live view as well. All the programs used seem to be pretty user friendly although I couldn’t get the email function to work. There does seem to be a discrepancy between the phone app and the PC program when trying to adjust the motion detection area.All in all, I am extremely impressed with the build quality and the amount of detail this little camera puts out. Out of all the cameras I’ve used in my years, this is by far one of the best cameras for the money. Easy to setup, easy to use, and awesome build quality. If you’re looking for one of the best PoE 4k cameras available now without buying a box set, this would be the one. I know comparing a 4k camera to a 1080p isn’t fair, but 1080p’s were the standard for a while, and what I had. If you were on the fence about upgrading to a higher resolution camera, 4k is definitely the way to go, but keep in mind it’s currently about 3-4x as expensive.

Hey everyone, I wanted to give a review of this camera as it may help others that are in a similar situation of picking a new cam or just adding one to their existing environment. The camera that I decided on for my front walkway was this Amcrest turret cam and I have to say that right out of the box I am highly impressed. I have recently (maybe 4 months ago) got into setting up an NVR (Blue Iris) and PoE Cameras. My first purchase I made was multiple Reolink 510 turret cams which ended up being a pretty decent cam for my use, but I wanted more pixels (4K). Now there is a price point difference of course but you are getting not only higher quality image but seems to be better quality materials.The first thought I had as I opened the camera was impressed due to the fact that the entire chassis is metal and had a much higher quality feel than the Reolinks I started out with. The camera has a memory card location that is inside the camera meaning you will have to take it apart to get to it. While this is inconvenient to access, from a security aspect this is quite nice and much more secure as most people aren’t going to walk off with your camera. Especially this one if it is mounted properly and out of reach. Some of the other cams I have and even considered before this have a door/cover that provides access to insert a card, which is ok but also could be compromised some what easier.The physical install of the cam was quite easy, there is a sticker template included that you can stick on the surface where you are planning to mount it and then just drill through it, put in your (included) anchors and then mount the base. The outer piece that holds the camera is also full metal which made me feel better about mounting it as it did require some force to hold the cam in place and secure the Torx bolt in place. Once the bolt was tight the cam was solid and would not move even with a lot of force, this is most likely due to the rubber used to cradle the camera to the base.I installed the camera above front door off to the side so it watches my main walk way. There is a overhead door light that comes on at night to help with lighting at night. The quality of video in the day time has been phenomenal everything has been sharp and looks great and no issues capturing or frame stutter etc. It’s not going to read license plates by the street, but it is more for the closer coverage at the door. At night performance does take a little bit of a hit but its much better than anything I had leading up to it. The image is still very sharp, however with light sources coming at the camera does tend to make things hard to see clearly. Close up the quality is more than acceptable with a camera of this price point.My install of adding the camera to my NVR setup was extremely painless, I logged into the webgui, set a new password and static IP and pointed Blue Iris at it and that was it. I of course checked for updates and did make some other changes but as far as adding the camera that is all that was needed to get it going. My current setup may be a little different than most as I run a full reporting server that I use to watch most of my network and hardware allowing me to also watch network bandwidth and have it report into a dashboard. This allows me to Compare file sizes with regards to quality, resolution and bandwidth used.I am using Blue Iris to do my captures and am using motion triggers vs doing a 24/7 record. With my Reolink cams I am running 2556×1920 @ 15FPS and 6144 kbps using H264 codec. Typical file sizes were between 20-30 MB per clip (varing 20-30 seconds). The Amcrest I am running 3840×2160 at 15 FPS using the highest quality setting and the same 6144 kbps with H265 codec and my file sizes are coming out around the same size. SO because Amcrest has supported the use of H265 I am getting a much bigger frame size and everything else being the same, I am getting a better quality image at the same storage cost. Furthermore when looking at my network usage my Amcrest is running a pretty constant 10 Mbps where all my other cams (Reolnks) are running similar bandwidth. So better over all performance at the same bandwidth and file size.Overall since installing about 3 weeks since writing this, I am still highly impressed with cam, I find it has become my favorite one to watch as the wider angle has allowed me to see much more than just walk way, I can actually see most of the drive way and even into the street. I played with the audio feature a little bit and it seem to pick up quite a bit and can be even used as a record trigger. The web GUI while I haven’t used it much since my initial setup, I found has a LOT of different settings that were available. In fact, there were much more than I expected. You can control everything from quality, encoding, audio & video settings like brightness, hue, profiles, alarm, cloud settings all of it available right inside the gui, so even without a NVR system you could check in on this cam or even the app, and see events. Amcrest has a done a phenomenal job of having all kinds of ways to utilize the camera in a way that works for you. There really seems to be no wrong way to use this camera as it can be used as a single stand alone camera all by itself or you can add it to a system like I did. This would make a great addition to anyone’s existing setup or even as a first purchase camera that they just want a little added security.One last thing to keep in mind will be you will need power adapter (if not using PoE) and a wired network connection. If you are possibly adding this camera to an existing setup like I did, this camera has a 10/100 Mbps requirement is great as you can use a PoE rated RJ-45 splitter (2 pairs of wires to each camera power/data) using your existing (4 Pair any Cat5/6 etc) cable run if installing near an existing camera saving you a lot of time to add the new camera. I am currently doing this and has worked out excellent.Hope that anyone reading this has found it helpful!

About a year ago, we purchased an Amcrest doorbell camera. It’sbeen a great investment, so we decided to try this Amcrest security camera. Itis well packaged, and the camera appears to be good qualitywith the housing and outer shell cast made of aluminum. It comes with atemplate on a sticker so you can easily place it in your desired camera location and drill right through the sticket template. It has four screw holes andone center hole for the wiring. The camera has onepower input and one POE (ethernet) input (which can also provide power). Thepower supply is not included if you need to power the unit with thepower port, otherwise you will need a POE switch or POE router. Wefound a 4 port POE switch on Amazon for only $20 which was plug & play, no setuprequired. I should also note that if you are also using the switch withnon-POE devices, some of the extremely cheap POE switches cannotdetermine if you are plugging in a POE device or any other device whichdoes not require power, so make sure that the one you get has autodetecting if you want to keep things simple. One ethernet from therouter to the switch, then you can have four cameras fed off of theswitch. Setting up the app was pretty straight forward, other than thedirections stating that the serial number & QR code was typically on theback of the camera, which it was not. After a phone call with techsupport, he insisted it was there somewhere. I found that it wasactually on a sticker, wrapped around the wire, quite a few inches awayfrom the camera. This portion of the wire happened to already bestuffed up through the hole in the soffit, but once I found it andscanned the QR code, setup took minutes. The picture quality in 4k farexceeded my expectation. You also have the option to digitally zoom/panquite a bit before major degredation. The night vision is pretty goodas well. Our driveway is about 60ft. long and there is enough infraredlight to show a clear picture up to about 40-50ft. out. The bestfeature is the push notifications to the app for events such as motionor sound detection. You can easily set the dead zones to prevent falsealarms. The microphone seems to pick up sounds very well, although I’veonly tried it out a couple of times. We have used the basic cloudservice on the doorbell in addition to storing on the SD card, but wehave not setup the cloud service on the turret camera yet, instead we’re just using anSD card. I should also note, if other cameras are added, the appallows simultaneous viewing of multiple cameras with the ability to fillthe screen with just one. If you prefer, Amcrest also offers an appfor PC which can do it all, as well as some 3rd party software that canalso be used.On the negative side of things…. The motion detection at night usinginfrared seems to only pick up motion up to about 25′. There are someadjustments for the sensitivity, but I haven’t been able to sense motionbeyond 25′ yet. I couldn’t find an in-depth user guide for the AmcrestView Pro app which details all features, only a handful of guidesshowing a handful of features which is found in the support area ofAmcrest’s website. The app is fairly clean, but could use some work.A lot of Amcrest’s other cameras use the same app, so for a camera likethis with fewer features, the app still shows the buttons for the moreadvanced features which other cameras would use. I feel like theseshould at the very least be grayed out. After using the app for ashort time, you get used to which items are available and which arenot. In reality, once you get things setup the way you want, you reallydon’t do a lot on the app. When a clip is recorded to your phone, yourframe rate is limited by your internet connection. A 4k recording mayoutput only a frame every few seconds if you are not on your homenetwork, making the recorded video very choppy. You can choose to sendthe files or export to view on a computer. For some reason, when clipsare exported, the delay between frames is removed, so you get all theframes quickly one after another right away, then the remaining time isjust the last frame on the screen, so something is off there. Keep inmind, this is only when you click the record button on the app, not whenevents are recorded straight to the cameras SD card. My biggestcomplaint is that there are three main subcategories to view live video,saved video/pics, and recorded events. On the live view screen, thereis no shortcut to view any recorded video, events, or pictures. Inorder to view automatically recorded video from a triggered event, youhave to click the menu, find “push notifications”, “event list”, thenchoose which event to view. However, once you are on the screen andviewing your recorded events, there are shortcuts at the top to switchto snapped pictures, and live video feed. It would be nice to have themall accessible anywhere in the app. It seems like a lot of work to getto your recordings. I should also point out that the Amcrest smarthomeapp does have shortcuts to your recordings from the live video feed,which works really well. Both apps are very different, and I’d assume theAmcrest cloud app is also different.All in all, it’s a great camera and easy to get used to once you runthrough the app front to back a few times.

Disclaimer: Amcrest reimbursed me for the price of purchase of camera for my honest review, but it does not influence my opinion about itIn the past I purchased TRENDNet TV-IP662PI as my main cameras for home, now I need an upgrade and I was given chance for comparison. Also, I am using QVR Pro software on my QNAP NAS to provide me with NVR capabilities.Let us compare cameras in capabilities we can do direct comparisonFeature – TRENDNet – Amcrest – WinnerMax resolution – 1280×720 (HD 720p) – 3840×2160 (UHD) – Amcrest (9 times more)Max frame rate at max resolution – 30 – 15 – TRENDNet (2 times more)Best video codec supported – H264 – H265 – AmcrestPOE class – 0 – 0 – None (both bad)Observed max POE usage – 3.9W – 4.9W – See belowObserved max bandwidth usage – 5.5Mb/s – 8.5Mb/s – See belowDisk usage at random hour – 1.45-1.8GB – 2.67 – See below (average 1.64 times difference)Average daily disk usage – 31.38-39.31 – 63.78 – See below (average 1.80 times difference)Warranty – 3 years – 1 year – TRENDNetWhat we have here is 5 years difference in technology and it shows. Ability to use H265 video codec makes huge difference. What we have is 4.5-fold difference in a minute of video files max resolution at max frame rate difference, but files are only 1.48 to 1.84 times bigger for a random 1 hr recording time. For 24 hrs the difference is 1.62 to 2.03 times. And that is impressive and shows how good H265 codec is.Firmware of Amcrest camera is far more advanced than TRENDNet, not to mention that it allows sub-streams (if you use multiple NVRs with different storage or retention policies), automatic firmware upgrade notifications, better e-mail authentication for major providers and so on. The bad thing is my eyes is requirement of manual entering daylight savings time settings which TRENDNet is taking from NTP server or ability to show DST in timestamp.Additional bad thing in my eyes is POE implementation – it shows Class 0 which is a big no-no if you are running multiple POE devices from Switch with certain power budget. Just put proper chip so switch can assign camera proper power allocation. Connected to this is physical cable. As we can see now there is RJ-45 jack and independent power jack. I understand that this is due to power redundancy or you are using this for all of the cameras, but this is POE – I need only RJ-45 as my POE switch has UPS. Alternatively, you can have like an adapter, but I don’t need more cables, just the one I need.Now let me compare styles of cameras – TRENDNet is bullet style vs Amcrest is Turret one. Different style is lack of Pan and Tilt abilities, but this can be mitigated by better placement of camera. Of my current 2 bullet styles cameras I could replace 1 at will with Turret style, the other one would need to be relocated. This is important during planning stages to know which camera to use know all positives and negatives.In conclusion – I love Amcrest IP8M-T2499EW IP camera. It ticks all important boxes and in the future, I will use more of their cameras. I would appreciate if Amcrest would upgrade its warranty period to 3-5 years, solve POE concerns, change cable to RJ-45 only. Even this those shortcoming this camera is highly recommended.