Amcrest UltraHD 4K (8MP) Outdoor Bullet POE IP Camera, 3840×2160, 98ft NightVision, 2.8mm Lens, IP67 Weatherproof, MicroSD Recording, White (IP8M-2496EW-V2)

Bought 5 of these for my home security system. Terrific camera. POE operation is very straightforward. I am recording them on my Amcrest 8 channel NVR and have an 8 port Amcrest POE switch in my attic. You can use these cameras without the NVR but need to set them up that way if you want to.The 4K (8MP) resolution is incredible. Daytime color is amazing and the night vision works great as well. Glad I made this investment in high end cameras. I can see where it is easy to go cheap and then find out you have a blurry image once you zoom in. Not so with these. Can’t recommend them enough.Only downside I have found is the documentation/manuals/software apps are a little different from one to the other. So expect to spend a little time with them.Update 10/11/18:I have had these 4 cameras in operation for several months now. 4 cameras, an Amcrest POE switch in my attic and an 8 channel NVR in my “IT closet”. The cameras provide e-mail alerts as well as Amcrest App notifications on my iPhone. So I typically look at the picture in the e-mail alert and check to see who it is. If it isn’t who I was expecting I use the Amcrest App for remote playback of the video that triggered the event. It has worked extremely well. I caught Amazon contractors dumping packages on the bench in my driveway instead of at the front porch. I hammered Amazon and now all is well. No more packages on the bench.I found out also that the cameras have settings for motion and can e-mail alerts directly from the camera. So if the NVR goes down for whatever reason each camera will send it’s own alerts. It’s a great feature since these cameras can operate stand alone or with an NVR. I did not install the memory card in the camera, but you can have even more redundancy if you choose to by doing so.I have had to tweak the settings in the NVR to get the sensitivity to motion setup as well as adjust the sensing area. I’ve had spiders create webs over the front of the camera and birds fly into the lens. This will be the case regardless of whose cameras you buy. So expect to do some work to tweak the operation and you will be very satisfied.I record continuously to a 6 TB drive in the NVR at full 8 MP resolution at 15 frames per second. I have 12 days of storage on tap and that is plenty for me.Be sure to backup your NVR config file to a USB drive on the NVR. Also you can backup each camera config by connecting directly to the camera. It’s a 10 second job that will pay dividends in case you have issues.

Tl;dr: Good cameras except for the garbage firmware and app. Great for DIYers.I have been running two of these cameras for about a year and a half now. After some initial quirks with the setup, I was able to get both uploading still images to an FTP server. The app (both phone and browser) is garbage and filled with spyware so I don’t bother using it at all. I do not use the video mode on the cameras because these cameras do have one important limitation: the upload speed really matters. If it takes too long to get an image or video uploaded to an FTP server, they fail silently and just don’t upload the image or give you any sort of error warning. Now this could be gotten around by having an NVR or similar on-site to upload to and then have the NVR upload to a remote server. That wouldn’t be a bad idea since these cameras do try to call home to China all the time and then you could isolate them from seeing the internet. Another issue is that every time they restart (you’ll want to have them auto restart about once a day so they don’t freeze), they delete all the old images on an FTP server. The company’s documented way to “fix” this is to disable the ability to delete images on a server. That… doesn’t work very well for a variety of reasons. Oh another weird quirk is that you can’t set it to upload to a specific file name, such as if you wanted to point a webpage at a specific image. Instead I use a PHP script to identify the latest image that’s been uploaded and serve that image to people looking at the webpage where I share the two camera outputs. One other thing to note… I have to use port 21 to get these to upload to an FTP server. I use a special account just for these cameras that’s isolated from the rest of my server for this reason. There isn’t anything particularly important that these cameras are taking photos of so it’s okay for my use case. Your use case might dictate that you need more security.But for my application (periodic still images uploaded to a server), it works well enough. The image quality is surprisingly good for a $90 camera. The IR night mode is fine out to about 30 feet. After that, you’ll need a secondary IR light source.If you were to pair these with a DIYed NRV that isolates the cameras on their own network, then these cameras would work great for a lot of applications. Just don’t bother with the company’s apps.Oh also these do NOT come with a POE injector. You’ll need to grab one of those which costs about $25. Or plug in a wall wart transformer to the dongle off the back of the camera. I have chosen to go the POE injector route which has simplified my wiring setup. If I were running a bunch of these for a security system, I’d buy a POE switch.I have had these cameras out in the weather including down to 3F and up to 90F (in direct sun), with rain, snow, hail, and whatever else nature can throw at the cameras. So far the biggest issue was when a spider built a web in front of one of the cameras.

The Amcrest UltraHD 4K (8MP) Outdoor Bullet POE IP Camera, 3840×2160, 131ft NightVision, 2.8mm Lens, IP67 Weatherproof, MicroSD Recording, White (IP8M-2496EW-28MM) is my 11th Amcrest camera I’ve purchased over the last 3 years (all are still in service). I added the IP8M-2496EW-28MM to my barn group to better monitor our miniature therapy horses in their turnout. This is a POE camera that I have connected to a WI-FI network that’s P2P linked from the barn to my home WI-FI mesh. I use a TP-Link PoE injector and a TP-Link access point in the barn. The P2P from the barn to the house is with Ubiquiti Nanostation M2’s. I installed the Orbi mesh and everything else to have a separate high performance network to handle the video load to my Amcrest NVR and I’ve been really happy with it so far.Installation: As with all the other Amcrest cameras, the actual setup of the camera was the easiest part, once the twisted pair wiring was run. This particular model gives a little more room to mount the camera with the mounting screws without mangling the bullet body, which has been a rub for me on previous versions, so that’s a plus. I also give Amcrest a thumbs up for making the connection kit opening large enough to fit the cat5/6 tip through. It’s the small things that make a difference. Overall setup time once the twisted pair was in place was about 5 minutes.For my network I always set the camera configuration to use static IP addresses otherwise it’s chaos, and I ensure the camera is set to reboot once a week whether it needs it or not.Edit: this was my error. Got it working.I did notice that something changed in the last couple of months that won’t run the Amcrest web view plugin in Chrome or Edge but I haven’t taken the time to figure it out as I always use the mobile app to view my cameras.Viewing Angle: One of the feature I rely on is a wide viewing angle. This camera has a 112 degree view and not much distortion in this view. Sometimes with wide angle lenses you can get a good bit of a fish-eye effect, but there’s very little of this with this camera. I’m able to see nearly all of the horse paddock with one camera, and I see the little bit that’s not covered with this camera with an older camera in a different location.Video Quality: I’m pretty impressed with the quality of the video on this unit, both daylight and night vision. There’s no chop even when zoomed in. Even the nigh vision is pretty crisp with the horses within 20-30 feet of the camera. In the photo i’ve uploaded you can even see the fencing at the far end of their paddock which is about 70 feet from the camera.Build Quality/Reliability: I’ve only had the camera installed 24 hours, but it’s made of rugged materials (steel/aluminum I suppose), and is IP67 certified for weather resistance. I have several Amcrest cameras installed that are directly exposed to the harsh northern Illinois climate, and as long as you protect the power/network connectors, the cameras are durable.So far I like this one. The video quality is great, super easy setup, and a nice, wide viewing angle. Keep up the great work Amcrest.

I have installed multiple security cameras and NVRs (640, 720, 1080 and 5M) frommany different manufacturers.The key requirements for this project were upgrade from existing 720 and 1080 camsVery high quality image — eg 4k/8MpPC viewing — ‘all day’This was not about security.Recording, Motion Detection, alerting and alarming were of interest, but a distant 2nd.It is a remote location that needed to monitor continuously — to be able to “park” the image on a PC screen and leave it there — all day.Unfortunately, some manufacturers don’t offer 4k cameras.Some 4k Cameras only send 4k locally.Some are best viewed on “mobile device”. Problem is there are VERY (very !!!) few devices (read as phone or tablets) with 4k capable screens, and since a 4k image wasn’t being sent, any ‘zooming’ in would be done on a downscaled image. Didn’t make sense to pay for a 4k camera only to view a 1080 (or whatever) image.Also the “totally wireless” cams — the very popular ones that run on battery power, can’t stay on ‘all day’ and though most have external power options, they don’t tend to send 4k over the internet.The Amcrest web sight offered a chat function and I was assured, the image sent is 4k and that it would work well on a PC. I bought on Amazon so that I could easily return if this wasn’t true. I was very skeptical as this was the first (and only?) camera that seemed capable of doing what I wanted and the Amcrest App ratings were poor. (Ultimately I tried the Amcrest mobile apps (both iOS and Android) and though my use was limited, they seemed fine to me).But, on my PC (with a 4k screen) this Camera does what I wanted *REALLY WELL* !That said, my initial connection/setup via browser did not work well.I contacted Amcrest CS who called me back, and then pointed me to their (FREE !) Amcrest Pro program (for windows). Configure, set alarms, view, zoom (something not easily done with a browser) all-in-one. Image quality is great !My remote location has *horrible* internet so the frames/sec is extremely limited — about 1 or 2, but this is a function of my remote locations internet speed (approx. 1.5Mbs up). The connection stays up ‘all day’ unlike the 1080 and 720 cams already installed and scales really well. With a 32″ TV (720p) acting as a 2nd monitor to a 4k laptop I still have a gorgeous pic and can zoom in for details.As I said, Recording, Motion Detection, alerting and alarming were of interest and worked well.I was able to setup multiple zones and sensitivity for each zone for motion detecting. This was key as part of the area monitored is water which constantly shows motion (waves and/or reflections). When Motion was detected, an audible sound (configurable WAV file) was followed by email received is a photo attached.There is a slot of an micro SD card for recording.Cons:The camera is easy to setup, but has a ton of options ( a good thing !) but the documentation is limited. What does what, and best options for settings is not clear, so some of it ends up being trial-and-error.The lens is wider than I would like.For some, this could be an advantage, but for me it makes the image smaller/further.It also causes some fish-eye effect on anything within about 12′.The night-vision is also limited. I would guess about 50′ of effective range.

The AMCREST IP8M-2496EB is a decent, mid-priced option for most surveillance systems. Full disclosure, I was reimbursed for this camera by AMCREST. My surveillance system uses exclusively AMCREST cameras as I have found them to be of reasonable performance and value. I have multiple resolution cameras in my system – 960H, 2MP, 3MP, 4MP, and 8MP – and a combination of wired (both coaxial cable and ethernet) and wireless connections. The IP8M-2496EB camera is the first PoE camera that I have added to the system. As with all previous additions of AMCREST cameras, connecting this camera to the surveillance system was very straightforward. Use of their mobile app to add equipment is simple and quick, and has worked this way with every one of the dozen cameras and recording devices I have added to my system. The PoE functionality of this camera worked perfectly directly out of the box – truly plug & play. The camera clearly states that it does not have the power supply included, so you must supply power either through an adapter or through a PoE switch. I use a PoE switch in my system, and it works very well – no signal dropouts and good speed (dependent upon your switch speed). The IP8M-2496EP camera has a significantly wider field of view than any of my other cameras, and the image is reasonably good over the entire field of view. In my evaluation of this camera, I compared it to a 2MP camera (IP2M-841), which has a 90° field of view. The full view resolution of the two cameras seem to be very similar, but if zoomed (using the scroll function of the mouse rather than the digital zoom function) the image of the 2MP camera does seem to be slightly better when the image is adjusted for the size difference. I’ve attached a photo illustrating this – the two pics were taken using the IRillumination from the cams which were mounted about 18″ apart. The pics were adjusted to be approximately the same size using Photoshop, but no other changes were made. Since the 8MP camera has a significantly wider field of view, this means that the pic is zoomed to a higher degree to be the same size – and this may be a reasonable explanation of why the 2MP camera seems to have better zoomed resolution than the 8MP camera. I am working with the AMCREST product development team to determine whether my hypothesis makes sense. With this limitation in mind, I have set up my system to use narrower field of view cameras where it might be necessary to zoom in for something like facial recognition. This IP8M-2496EB camera has 112° field of view and offers a very good wide view where the zoomed in limitation is of lower significance. Ultimately, this camera will be mounted to provide a wide-angle overview of my property rather than to provide protection for specific entrances and buildings.All-in-all, I have been very pleased with the performance of the IP8M-2496EB camera. I will be adding at least one more of them to provide a very wide field view (~ 225°) of my property and out buildings. A significantly larger amount of money can be spent on setting up a security system, but I have found the AMCREST cameras and recorders to be a very good value proposition – a proper balance of price and performance.