Reolink E1 Outdoor Review – 5MP PTZ – Specs & Footage Review

1. We have our mounting template in case you need to drill pilot holes for the camera’s mount.
2. A window sticker to let visitors know you have cameras and you’re watching them.
3. A 1m long network cable to test the camera before its permanent location in you’re not using Wifi.
4. A security bracket to install the camera on a wall. Feels nice and sturdy. There is a locking screw here, when you remove it, you have the ceiling mount. The hole on the back it to accommodate the large RJ-45 network cable. Also, looks like a slit here for the belt I see in the box. Cool, perfect for attaching the camera to a location that I don’t want to damage with screw holes, like a tree or finished metal surface.
5. A pack of screws and anchors. Inside this pack we have a reset needle, I’ll show how that works shortly.
6. Up next, an adapter to power the camera. So, let’s stop for a second. Pretty much all my Reolink cameras to-date don’t have power adapters, so what’s up here? This camera doesn’t support PoE. If you connect this camera to your network over WiFi or a network cable, you’re going to need to run a power cable too. We’ll try to bypass this in a future video, so stay tuned for that.
7. Here is a 4.5m or 15ft power extension cable, if the power adapter is not long enough. I’ll recommend an even longer one in the description but with longer cables you do run the risk of losing some power in transmission and running into glitching or unexpected restarts.
8. Lastly, we have the star of the show, the camera. Let’s check it out.

1. So yeah, it’s pretty small in size at about 11cm high or 4 1/3 inches.
2. Feels like a nice quality plastic. If using this one outside, I’d recommend installing it under an eave or under a deck, somewhere to protect it from directly getting pounded with heavy rain and wind. It is waterproof but this opening in the back for the speaker, I would keep it protected just to help extend its life.
3. So, like, I said PTZ earlier, as you may know, that’s for Pan, Tilt and Zoom. Using any of the camera’s user interfaces you can turn or pan the lens; you can point the lens up or down (or tilt) and you can zoom in. This camera has a 3x zoom which is great for the price point of this camera. With 1x zoom, the lens is at 2.8mm with a horizonal angle of 90 degrees and vertical one of 68. When zoomed in all the way, we have an 8mm lens and a horizontal angle of 48 degrees and vertical angle of 37. For more on camera lens check out this video to see what all that really means.
4. Behind that lens, the image is projected onto a CMOS sensor 1/2.7 inches in size. It supports an amazing 5mp resolution at 2560 X 1920 pixels up to 25fps. So why is this a big deal? Normally wireless cameras don’t transfer a lot of data and usually stick to the 2-4mp range. It’s just safer that way because if the WiFi signal is poor, a low MP camera will still transmit an image. This camera supports both the resilient 2.4GHz and faster 5GHz. We’ll do a range test in a future video, for now, I’m just excited to see this option in camera at this price range.
5. Continuing on the tour, around the lens we have 2 sets of lights. First off, we have 12 infrared night visions lights good for up to 12m or 40ft. We also have LEDs to act as a little spot light. These little extra features are awesome, can’t wait to try ‘em out.
6. Right below the lens, we have an environment lighting sensor to tell them camera when it needs to switch to black and white nighttime mode.
7. On the top of the camera there is a status LED. When it’s flashing, that means the WiFi connection is not configured or it has failed. When solid, the camera is booting up or the WiFi is connected.
8. Since this camera supports 2-way audio, there is a mic located here and speaker here on the back.
9. Next, we have the micro-SD card slot here at the bottom of the camera. There is a watertight hatch and the maximum card size is 256gigs to record motion detection footage. That’s about 72 hours of motion detection footage.
10. Next to the card slot there is a reset button. Use that needle and press on the little button for 5 seconds to reset the camera back to factory defaults.
11. Lastly, we have the 2 leads. There’s a network connection to hard wire this to your NVR or network. Like I mentioned it doesn’t support PoE, but that’s ok since I will be using this wirelessly anyways. The other connection here of course is the 12v DC connection to power the device. Just as an FYI, I connected the camera to a power meter and it uses just over 4 watts unless the spot lights are on, then it uses 7.

Our first install location is here inside, looking at my front door. I’ll log into the Reolink app and point the camera so I get good coverage of the door and inside steps. I’ll also be using the camera’s audio to review the footage.

Let’s jump into the app and Fast Forward adjust the PTZ setting to frame in my scene.

Daytime: As I open the door and enter the house, the camera picks me up. Good colors. The blinds are open so the sun is shining in here and the camera doesn’t like the contrast and there is a little bit of a purple fringing around the edges of the windows. Pretty standard for consumer level cameras when dealing with such contrasts.

Here we have the camera setup inside on my dresser pointing toward my front door.

Daytime looks perfect. A little fringing around the edges of the windows, but not a big deal. Let’s stop right there, not only do we have a decent image, how about that audio quality? No static or breakups. A little hollow sounding but pretty good in my opinion.

Here are night, the IR lights are illuminated. Not a bad image. This camera is well suited for an indoor setting as this is a pretty small space and the camera captures it all very well.

To allow the spot lights to turn on automatically when motion is detected, go into the app and see the advanced setting.

Ok, I see the IR lights and the camera picks up my motion. The IR lights shut off and are replaced by the spot light and the camera switches over to color. The camera was a little slow to adjust itself once switching to color daytime mode and a little grainy, but as you may know, most consumer level cameras have some quality issue dealing with low light scenarios.

Not a perfect image, but I’m not expecting a professional quality image here either.

The next test install location is on the back deck to keep an eye on the patio door, the deck and the stairs. In this temporary setup, the camera is mounted on a tripod and the cord just runs along here and under the door.

Daytime: Looks awesome. The outdoor colors have perfect saturation and everything pops. Let’s swing the camera around and look at the yard. Now we’ll zoom in and again it all looks awesome.

* So I’m going to interrupt here. The PTZ motor is really getting picked up by that sensitive mic, and I’ve noticed that the audio is about a half a second out of sync. Not a big deal, but just something to be aware of. I’m also going to FF a lot of the PTZ, to same time.

Since this is a PTZ camera, the lens actually moves until it senses a focused image. It’s a little slow, but not really an issue here in the daytime.

Here at night, there is no ghosting but since the shutter speed is a little slower, any motion will be blurred. Let’s zoom in and check out the details.

Wait now, I spoke too soon, the camera wants to go though the range of focus and find the sharpest image. It seems all vari-focus cameras struggle a night with this, even a $800 speed dome I featured on this channel a few years ago.

The IR lights are lighting up the deck pretty good but beyond that my huge year looks like empty space. When I zoom in here in the pitch black, the camera actually does a good job of picking up the fence, trees in the distance and I can see my neighbor’s shed 300ft or just over 90m away. Very nice.

This next test location brings us to the front of the house where I want to keep an eye on the front door, garage doors and the driveway. (Install the camera by the Christmas lights plugin) I will be creating a video on how to professionally install this camera in various permanent locations.

Again, this is just a temporary location for the purpose of this video. Here is how it look after the install. Let’s jump in and see what the camera can offer from here. That’s actually pretty decent coverage from such a close distance. The awesome thing about this camera, I can now turn on the auto tracking and allow it to follow me around.

Here I am outside, (fast forward me walking out the driveway). I’ll turn off the auto tracking since it will get confused if I start telling it to go other places.

Here I am, 90ft (or just over 27m away). Let’s use the 3x zoom and see how the license plate looks. This is pretty neat, the camera is able to pick up that level of detail from such a distance. Impressive!

I’ll keep walking, and the daytime details are spectacular, even with all the shadows. Let’s go over by the garage doors and zoom in again. Perfect details. The benefit here is pretty obvious, one camera can take the place of 3 or 4. A great option if you don’t have the space or budget for multiple outdoor cameras.

At night, in this scenario, I only have the camera’s IR lights on, to see how bright they are and what the range is. Let’s zoom in and allow the camera to focus. The license plate is reflective, and the IR lights are blowing it out, which is expected. There is some bad ghosting as I walk towards the camera. This seems only be an issue for far away motion as all my other motions from 60ft (18m) and closer are much better. On the far side of the garage, I’m identifiable. Not bad within this range.

Let’s reset and turn on the spot light to see how that works. When I swing the camera around close to the pole and ceiling, I am getting some glare. Here at the end of my driveway, not great on the details and again, the plate is causing a pretty big reflection. Focus is a little slow, but again it’s pitch black here. Here at the garage, it’s pretty good, some details are visible. As I walk towards the camera, it’s getter clearer. Now here on the front step, it’s much better.

The night time footage did have some issues. Focus was slow and details were lost at a distance. This camera would be better if there was ambient light, like street lights. It would also perform better in a smaller space, like a driveway up to 50ft (15m) in length.