Lorex4K Security Camera System, Fusion 16-Channel 3TB NVR with 8 Indoor/Outdoor Wired IP POE Metal Smart Deterrence Cameras, Motion Detection

This is my 3rd POE security camera system in about 8 years and it is by far the best. I will try to save the reader some time and money with this review.First, if you are disillusioned with Chinese security cameras and want to find something American made, forget it. You won't find American systems online, and even if you find "review sites" claiming that certain cameras are made in the USA, a simple search will reveal that they are not. I went as far as to contact a local camera installer and they admitted that the closest thing is Chinese cameras assembled in the USA. There MAY be some very expensive commercial companies (used for DoD, etc.) which are all-American but the average consumer will never be able to purchase these. Thus, your best option is to find the least-bad Chinese made camera system. Moving on.Being disillusioned with Chinese systems and having realized that there were no American made options readily available, I researched the best Chinese systems. Here Lorex comes head above shoulders above the rest. I read multiple review sites and from what I could gather, Lorex had the best feature / satisfaction to cost ratio.Thus I took a leap of faith. I found the 16 port NVR and 8 camera package extremely reasonable compared both to what I had paid in the past for systems and also for what professional installers were quoting me. (Note that professional quotes did NOT include POE cabling which can be a significant amount of work.)First, the bad points which have been covered elsewhere. FAN NOISE. Wow is this thing loud. I have a full size gaming PC that sits right next to me on my desk and it is MUCH quieter than the fan on the NVR. I mitigated the sound by building a simple muffler out of some of the flexible packing foam that came with the cameras. Plan to situate the NVR somewhere where the noise won't be a factor and also be sure not to impede air flow in/out of the unit.Remote access: Although I have seen this question answered both ways, in my experience while you can LOAD the app on multiple smart devices, you can only USE it on one. You must authorize any new device, whereupon the old device stops working until you again reauthorize it... which unauthorizes the other device. You should be able to install multiple viewers on a laptop/computer with Windows or similar OS.Motion sensing: For me this hasn't been an issue. You absolutely WILL get false positives, and if you have motion sensing active on 8 cameras you will get a LOT of them. However I do not think they are excessive in any way. The vast majority of alerts were legitimately something the size of a bird or larger. Do not expect human or vehicle-specific detection as advertised.HDMI cable for external monitor: My system doesn't seem to support HDMI so I am using a VGA cable. I cannot be sure if this is specific to the NVR or something I did - it may be fixable. This only affects the attached monitor and does not affect remote display.Customer support: I cannot speak to this because fortunately I haven't had to use it. However, I haven't seen ANY POE camera system that has great customer support so plan accordingly.On to the good: Video quality is outstanding day or night. Be sure you are getting the camera you expect, Lorex and other mfg can make it difficult to tell if you are getting 4K or "HD" or some other resolution. Check the specs before you buy. The 4K is ultra clear day or night.Setup and programming is generally easy. I have had a lot of experience with other systems and while not being "simple," at least the setup is fairly straightforward and intuitive. A huge plus was 100% DHCP support (automatic IP configuration on my network) for all cameras and the NVR. I was able to plug and play all 8 cameras plus an additional camera I decided to add later on.Playback mode: After a total nightmare with my old system which forced me to find and load individual files organized into one hour blocks on each separate channel, playback on this system is a dream. I mainly use playback on my network-connected PC, which is straightforward. The alert system for mobile has a very handy feature which allows it to play back a short clip of the motion detected, which saves you from scrolling through recordings.Audio (bullet cameras only): The audio quality of microphone and speaker is weak and muffled. The "alarm" is only moderately loud. I cannot speak to the audio quality of the Lorex doorbell cameras which are supposedly designed to integrate audio.OVERALL: This is a great system for the money. It does everything I wanted it to do (ease of configuration, playback, and image quality) and I don't care about the stuff I don't really use (motion detection, audio, simultaneous mobile device viewing). Consider YOUR needs and make your purchase accordingly.Final note: This is absolutely NOT a paid or compensated review. I am merely paying forward the probably hundreds of hours I've spent installing and troubleshooting several POE camera systems over the past years. BY FAR this is the best I have used.

The HDMI does not work so am not able to view the cameras and they are so expensive

System is simple to set up and connect to your phone for remote viewing. I had been putting this camera install off for a couple of years until my car got broken into. The power over internet (POI) helped my decision. Only had to run the eithernet cables from the box to the camera and I was all set up. 4k is also the way to go.

The hardware of this product seems to be very good. The picture quality of the cameras is great. In my opinion, the issues are mainly with the software, documentation, and support.When I first tested the system, no notification was being pushed to the app at all. I tried a million different things, until I was finally able to get it to work by unregistering all the cameras and re-registering them in the app. Nothing in the documentation suggested how to troubleshoot this anywhere.Aside for the numerous other little bugs with the web interface and app that make it a little inconvenient to use, but have some workaround, there are 2 major issues with some basic features that I can't get resolved, no matter how many times I call support. The first one was that the cameras' "smart" motion detection was going off constantly, detecting people if only a tree or anything else moved. After trying multiple things, someone from support had me reset the cameras to defaults and play again with the threashold and sensitivity settings. I had to drastically lower that sensitivity below the recommended range (to 15, where the recommended range is 30~70) and the threashold to 70 (recommended range is 10~50). Now less events are recorded, but it still thinks it is a person when my dog or cat passes in front of the camera.Finally, the third issue is that the setting to select the active area/region is completely ignored. To prove this, I have disabled the entire screen of one camera except for one little square, and, sure enough, events are logged when anything moves anywhere on the screen.Now, lets get to support. The only positive is that they answer right away. The first person seemed helpful, but could not resolve the issues. Every other person I spoke to after (4) was completely clueless. I mean 30 minutes just for them to understand the issue I am having, re-asking the same questions over and over, and re-offering the same solution (basically, reset everything, which I had already done multiple times).I feel these are simple software issues that could be fixed with an update, but I cannot believe this company would ship a product with its most basic, and most advertised features not working at all. I have another Arlo wireless system at a different location. While I am trying to stay away from wiress system here, the smart motion detection worked out of the box flawlessly since day 1. After spending 2 weekends in my attic to wire the whole house I would hate having to return it, but I may not have a choice. Not been able to tell when it is a person in front of the camera means that I cannot set an alarm to notify me at night, as it would wake me up constantly for no reason.

Good sound and video