Installation + Footage – Reolink’s AMAZING 12MP Security Camera Review

1. A paper on certifications.
2. Drill template so you know where to drill your screw holes for installing the camera’s mount in plate.
3. A window or fence sticker. Make that 2. Maybe it’s 4. Nope, we have 5 stickers, nice! Interesting, they are all in different languages (ah, for the multi lingual thief)
4. The user manual in multiple languages.
5. A short network cable, which could be used for testing your camera when setting it up before installing it in its permanent location.
6. Under the foam we have a weather sealing coupler or gland to protect the network connection from the elements.
7. At the bottom of the box, some screws and anchors for installing the camera on its mounting surface.
8. Lastly, of course, the camera and I’ll twist off the mounting plate and slide the wires out.
9. I’ll slide the mounting plate back on and attach it to the base and secure it with a click. You can see it’s locked in here pretty good. Remember that click is required when installing the camera to know it’s attached to the base plate.
10. Once the camera is installed, it can swivel 360 degrees and the camera position can also be adjusted within its turret in all directions. I really like this flexibility without having to loosen and tighten hinges and joints (like you would need to on the bullet style cameras) or open up domes and risk getting dust inside the device.
11. If your install location doesn’t have a hole to accommodate the wires, you can feed them out the side through this little slot. The mounting plate fits on over this just fine. Keep in mind however your wires are now exposed.
12. There are 3 leads attached to the camera; an RJ-45 network connection to plug the camera into your Network Video Recorder (NVR) or your home network. This port does accept Power over Ethernet (PoE) where your PoE switch can provide electricity to the camera through the network cable. The next cable is a 12v DC connection. This camera does not come with a power adapter, but one could be used if you are unable to take advantage of the PoE port to power the device. The last cable is a reset button. To reset the camera back to factory defaults, press and hold the button for 10 seconds while powering up the camera. This can be done using a power adapter or like I am doing by plugging in a PoE charged cable. The default username is admin and the password is null if accessing the camera through the web user interface for the PC app. If accessing it through the Reolink app on your phone, the app will recognize that the device is not initialized and will ask you to create new credentials.
13. Turning the camera around, on the back of the camera’s metal shell, you’ll find the door for the micro SD card. Simply open the waterproof door and click in your card. The maximum card size for this slot is 256gigs which can hold over 72 hours of footage. The card will however only record when motion is detected.
14. Just below the camera’s lens is the environment lighting sensor which tells the camera to use daytime color or nighttime black and white mode with night vision.
15. There is a small a hole just below the light sensor which is the camera’s microphone. We’ll test that out here shortly. FYI – There is no speaker on this camera.
16. Looking at the camera lens, it’s a 5mm fixed lens with a horizontal field of view of 67 degrees and a vertical view of 41 degrees. The 12mp CMOS sensor is 1/2.49 inches in size and can stream video up to 20fps at over 8000Kbps (kilobit). For a better understanding of what these numbers mean and everything you ever wanted to know about security camera lens, do check out this video.
17. Surrounding the lens, we have the LED night vision lights. They are rated for 30m or 100ft. We’ll test that in a bit.
18. The camera’s operating temperature only goes down to -10 degrees C or 14F. At this point I have tested the camera well below this temperature without issues.

The first option and the easier solution to hook up this camera is to add it to a Reolink NVR. Make sure the NVR supports 12MP cameras. To check, go to the Reolink site and find your NVR. I’m using the RLN8-410-e. Scroll down and look for the note saying the NVR will work with “our IP cameras – including 12MP”.
You will also need to ensure your NVR’s firmware is up-to-date. Make sure to check out my video on how to do that.
To connect the camera, using a network cable, simply plug it into a camera port on the back of the recorder and it will start working automatically and recording footage to the internal hard drive. The camera will now be accessible through the NVR’s user interfaces.

Here it is on the NVR itself. Now on the web user interface. Here in chrome, I’ll enter that IP address and login using an empty password and that’s in, we are in.

Moving on to the PC app. By default. Reolink adds connected cameras automatically, so no action is required by me. Lastly using the iphone app. Again, added automatically.

Connecting to the NVR couldn’t be simpler and that means expanding my system, down the road, will be very easy.

The last note about this option is you cannot access this camera using 3^rd party camera management tools when it’s protected behind the NVR.

I have factory reset the camera to demonstrate the next option to get this camera up and running. It’s the standalone method. All you need is the camera and a way to power the device. That could be an adapter or a PoE switch. Here I am using a PoE switch which is connected to my home network. I’ll add links for the adapter and a PoE switch below. My iphone is on the same home network as my switch (and camera). When I open the Reolink app, I can see the uninitialized device. Let’s get it activated. Next add credentials. In our first option when we connected the camera to the NVR, the NVR took care of this step if you are wondering why we did not have to go through these steps when we were connected to the NVR. Now give it a name. And now we should be able to see the live feed. There I am.
Now that the camera is activated.
This might be all you need for your surveillance system. Nothing else is required for this basic security camera setup. You can now access your camera anywhere using the Reolink app and even playback motion detected footage from the micro SD card.
You can even access the camera on your PC using the web user interface… or the Reolink PC app. You can follow the same process to add additional cameras to your network.
In addition, with this standalone option, you can use a 3rd party camera management program like Blue Iris to record and playback footage. This is my go-to software and I’ll add a link in the description if you are interested in testing out an evaluation version.
If you were going to add the camera to BI, here’s how. Get its IP address through the Reolink app, like so…….
Then in BI add the camera, using the IP address. I’m going to skim over this pretty quick. Enter your credentials, select Reolink and remove this part of the main stream address. Going to the Record tab and set this to record 24/7. Now here on the video tab, there is image format – size. If you leave this as-is, the camera is going to display in its native 4:3. I’ll show you. See how the image is a little squat. Let’s go back into the setting and change that to 3840×2160. That looks much better and fills the screen nicely. Here is a quick side by side comparison.

The recorded footage will still be 12mp with these 4:3 settings. In fact, the camera’s saved footage on the NVR will be exported in that 4:3 ratio. I did notice that BI did drop a few frames and I did experience some minor glitching. BI is my go-to software but in this case, I think the NVR handles it better.

Another interesting fact, when the camera is connected to the NVR, you cannot use BI to access that camera. Only Reolink cameras directly connected to the network can be seen by BI and not Reolink cameras behind an NVR.

Our first test location is here on the back deck looking onto the empty field. The daytime footage looks perfect. Great colors. Nice vibrant sky. Let’s fast forward while I set up my distance markers here. If I zoom in digitally let’s check out the details at 300 ft. Not too bad. Having a high MP camera allows you to capture so much detail. I really like it. Now, I’ll walk towards the camera. Here we are at 200 ft, the shadow on my face does make me a little difficult to identify but that’s expected in the bright sun. Now at 150ft, 100, 75, 50 and 25.
Here is some sample footage at night. Remember it’s totally dark here. No moon, no house lights or other camera’s LED lights are on. Just to set some expectations, Reolink produces consumer brand cameras at reasonable prices. Don’t expect to see quality images in pitch black, in zero light looking into a wide-open space without paying close to a thousand dollars or more.
Here we are outside and I’ll turn the IR night vision lights off so you can see how dark it really is. Now, I’ll turn them back on again and start here at the 25ft mark and work backwards. Now at 50. 75 and I’m hardly visible. Now at 100. 150, 200, 250 and 300. So, as expected the limit here for the night vision lights is about 50-75 ft. If there were ambient lights, like street lights here, the visibility would be further.

For the next location, we’ll place the camera here over the door. I just have the camera mounted on a pole, near the ceiling to get a good sample of footage. I’m not going to really install the camera here because with the amount of cameras I test, I’ll have thousands of screw holes in the ceiling.
Again, the daytime looks awesome. Good detail and this camera provides good coverage for this area.
Using the iPhone app, let’s turn on the audio and grab a sample.

Awesome audio quality but there’s a little too much wind hitting the mic. Sounds like they need a windscreen, like a piece of foam to filter out that noise.
Here is a quick look at the nighttime footage.
So yeah, I will be leaving this camera in color since my dawn to dusk house lights will always provide enough light for this situation even through the camera wants to be in night time, black and white mode. Thankfully the app makes it really easy to control this.
After looking at the footage more closely here, in black and white mode, the details outside of the deck are much better than in color, but overall, color is still my preference in this scenario.

Let’s do a quick star test. I love looking at the stars and recording any nighttime events in the sky, like fireballs or northern lights. Let’s point the camera towards the sky and record 24 hours of footage. Let’s start the time-lapse… now.

Ok, so it’s morning and the sun is just coming up in the east. The clouds move off and it’s a clear day. Before we know it, it’s evening and the lighting sensor turn us to black and white mode. Starts are out and there goes the moon. Clouds are back. I’m actually impressed with how little noise or grain that was produced at night and the overall quality was better than I expected. I was kinda thinking only a couple stars would show and there would be ghosting, but no.
Before we move on, I was lucky enough to capture some northern lights with this camera. The footage here starts off cloudy but here we have the Auroras in the background shining through and eventually the clouds move off. Since the camera is in nighttime, black and white mode, we didn’t capture any color. I did switch over to color mode for a minute but the Auroras were not bright enough to be captured. Pretty impressive none the less.

My last location is going to be a permanent location. I’m going to replace this old 3mp camera with this one. I get asked this a lot; does the soffit provide enough support for the camera?
Yes, I have aluminum soffit and the cameras have ever moved or even vibrated in the past 7 years. They are screwed into the metal and in my scenario here, I have never needed additional support using these small, lightweight cameras.

This will be my 5^th outdoor turret and I’m starting to see advantages to this type over the dome in an outdoor environment, but we’ll save that for a future video.

As you can see there is a downlight or a floodlight here. Installing any security cameras near lights can destroy your nighttime shot. Let me show you. I placed the camera on my tripod and positioned it in front of the light source. When the light turns on at night, it will be shining on the camera’s lens. Let’s jump into the camera and here we are in the daytime and it’s getting dark out. Now at night, the image has a huge glare.
I’ll run outside and show you what it’s like.
Now a look through the camera.
Now we’ll turn off the house lights see the difference. The glare is gone. So, if you are unsure if your cameras will be impacted by other lights, do a test like I have done here to prove it out before permanently installing the cameras. Make sure nearby lights don’t shine on the camera lens.

Let’s time-lapse the install where the house light will shine on the back if the camera and will not impact the image with a glare. Let’s jump into the camera and do the license plate test.

I start off here in the trees at 100 feet. When I scroll the mouse, I zoom in digitally. I make my first stop here at 75 feet. The plate isn’t readable until I hit 50 feet. Facial features are also pretty clear. Which is not too bad. I was hoping for better detail at a further distance but still no bad. When I get closer obviously, the deals becomes crystal clear.
Now we’ll do the test at night in total darkness with the exception of the camera’s own LED night vision lights. The license plate’s reflective surface is preventing us from seeing much.

Facial features are however recognizable, especially here at 25ft.

During the test phase of this camera, it was nice and windy out, with gusts up to 70km/hr or 45miles. I just wanted to demonstrate the stability of the camera when attached to the soffit in windy conditions. No movement from the camera whatsoever. Ok, back inside.

Lastly let’s do a quick water test here with the garden hose. No issues since this camera is totally water proof. The camera endured the torrent of rain just fine.

One last thing we didn’t touch on was how much bandwidth and space this high MP camera consumes. Here is a live look at the bandwidth. We are seeing about 1Meg/sec with H.264 streaming. I have a gigabit network, so that means, 1 12mp camera consumes 1 of the 1000 megs available or .1%. For disk space, we are looking at about 3600megs per hour, or 86gigs per day, for one 12mp camera. That means a 1TB drive can hold just over 11 days of continuous recording. The last additional consideration is PC and RAM is you are using Blue Iris as your camera management software on a PC. Processing these large MP cameras will soak up more resources but you can alleviate that pain by following some simple performance tips from this video here.