At night, focal length and resolution are still important, but so is the physical size of the sensor, so lets see how they performed at night, first in color night mode with a walking subject at 25 feet. The worst performer was definitely the Annke FCD600 which mutilated my face with distortion, then in 5 th place the Reolink Duo 2 was just extremely blurry. The Duo 1 was significantly better, but still ended up in 4 th place, then in 3 rd place the Uniview’s lower resolution helped it collect more light, but it was still overall very blurry. In 2 nd place the EmpireTech B180 didn’t have any real issues, but was just a little too blurry to make out details in my face or the sign, and first place went to the Annke NCD800 again which was oversharpened, but still had quite a bit of detail with no ghosting.

Fourth, all the cameras have on device person and vehicle detection, and I was able to use the ONVIF triggers of the Annke, UniView and EmpireTech cameras to trigger recording in blue iris, but couldn’t get that functionality working with the Reolink cameras. If you’re planning on using these cameras with a 3 rd party NVR I’d suggest the Annke or EmpireTech, but if you’re planning on using them in standalone mode with an SD card the Reolink app delivers a significantly more polished experience for things like notifications, live view, changing settings, and viewing recorded footage. Sub Stream When WDR is On:50 Hz: 12.5 fps (1920 × 536, 960 × 272)60 Hz: 15 fps (1920 × 536, 960 × 272) For a running subject at 25ft the results were mostly the same but with each of the Reolink cameras falling one position. That put the FCD600 in last, the Duo 2 in 5 th, the UniView in 4 th, the Empretech in 3 rd, the Duo 1 in 2 nd, and the Annke NCD800 in 1 st.

These results weren’t particularly surprising and the results correlated almost perfectly with their lens focal lengths. The only one that was a bit of a wildcard was the Uniview which uses a 4.0mm focal length, but ultimately the 2 megapixel sensors were just too low resolution to compete. Adding in movement with the running subject test at 25ft the Reolink duos really struggled and the duo2 finished in last place with the duo 1 only slightly better than that in 5 th place. The Annke FCD600 in 4 th placed managed an almost usable image but with a lot of oversharpening, and again in 3 rd the uniview was nice and bright, but barely had any detail. The Dahua did slightly worse in the running test than it did with walking, but was still very decent and more than enough to take 2 nd place and the Annke NCD800 finished first again with an image filled with digital noise, but no blurring, and quite a bit of preserved detail.

Although there are no ventilation holes, there is a speaker located at the bottom of the FCD600 and it’s a fairly loud one, reaching up to 95dB. Paired with the front-facing microphone (from in between the lenses), you can have a two-way conversation with a courier or just scare off a trespasser (and then listen to their faint distant cries).Additionally, don’t forget to set up the way you wish to be notified and whether the videos should be saved automatically using the Linkage Method – you need to do it for each of the four smart motion detection features. As you can see from the video, it does work nicely, but yes, you do need to take time and configure them which can be a bit complicated for a lot of people (again, Reolink has found a way to do it without it feeling like an intimidating process). Second, form factor: The NCD800 and EmpireTech B180 come in bullet or turret forms, and I significantly prefer the turret form of these camera because they don’t feel as imposing and conspicuous, but the NCD800 turret design is not as good as the EmpireTech T180 because there’s no way to adjust the roll of the camera, only pan and tilt, so you won’t be able to level the image if your camera isn’t mounted to a level surface.

I personally prefer a 32:9 image because it tends to look less distorted, but the other big advantage to a 32:9 aspect ratio is that in a multi camera view it neatly takes up two camera positions instead of leaving a blank space in a row, which as my 10 year old would say is “very satisfying”. The EmpireTech B180 does have the option to output in 32:9, but only at a resolution of 3840×1080 which is unfortunately almost a 50% reduction in total resolution when using that format. Both the Video/Audio and the Image settings offer way more options that the mobile app, but what interested me the most was the Event section. Here, it’s not just the possibility to enable the four types of Detection, you can also set them up the way you want them. It’s possible to set regions, the sensitivity of the motion sensor and the Target Validity, there’s scheduled detection, and the way the user will be notified about it. ANNKE FCD600 – web based interface extra settings.

Covers All Under 350° Pan & 60° Tilt Viewing

Seasoned NVR users will find much to like in this camera, but average home users will likely be put off by its complexity. Smart EventLine crossing detection, intrusion detection, region entrance detection, region exiting detection, scene change detection,(support human and vehicle detection) The ANNKE FCD600 uses two 6-megapixel camera lenses, each pointing slightly on the sides, allowing for a perfect 180 degrees coverage. And by perfect, I mean without any distortions on the sides and corners – as you can see from the photos and videos, the FCD600 does offer a better performance than the Reolink Duo in this regard, which is excellent. About the image quality itself, the default settings are fine as long as you don’t mind a brighter image. The ANNKE FCD600 is a bit less straight forward with its smart motion detection feature than the Reolink cameras, so you do have to go deeper to properly adjust them. Before anything else, know that it’s necessary to enable the four Smart Event features because they’re disabled by default and even doing so, you can’t configure their behavior from the app. No, you need to use the web-based GUI to do so. And each section has a Detection Target that can be Human or Vehicle (or both), you can set a Detection Area in the image (you need to do it, especially when using the Line Crossing Detection) and you can also set the target Validity and the Sensitivity.