Amcrest NightColor AI IP PoE Bullet Camera w/ 66ft Full NightColor, Human/Vehicle Detection, Face Detection, Two-Way Audio, Cloud, 113° FOV, 2.8mm Lens, 4MP@30fps (IP4M-1046EW-AI)

Amcrest NightColor Camera - IP4M-1046EW-AIPicture quality and general thoughtsFirst off, this camera met and exceeded my expectations on the night time picture color and quality. I install cameras daily for work, so for me to be surprised by a camera that is in this price bracket is saying something. An entry level camera on a commercial scale generally ends up being $500 plus and this camera in general has equal and better picture quality during the day and blows a lot of them away on the night time aspect of it at less than half the price. I have only used this camera for about a week and half but I only needed the first night to see what it could do. Most cameras will switch over to the black and white or "night vision" mode whereas this camera doesn't need to and stays in color, hence the name "nightcolor." I have installed in our back yard and at 2 in the morning with it being almost pitch black outside, I can clearly see all the way out to the edge of my fence and be able to see what our dogs are up to or if there's anything that needs my attention in pretty good detail. In the middle of the night it's just as bright as if the sun was just beginning to set, which is something that only my Dahua starlight cameras could do and not as well as they don't have the built in LEDs and tend to want to switch to IR at night. It also doubles as a patio light with its white LEDs, which is convenient and saves me from leaving a porch light on. Enough to illuminate the yard, but not distracting like a floodlight/spotlight that would usually pop on when it sees motion. The lens is a wide enough field of view to capture all of our yard besides directly under it which is about as good as you can get without going with a fisheye or a 180 degree camera and losing detail.Look and feelThe camera feels sturdy and tough as you would expect for an outdoor camera. It is bullet style which is not my favorite aestethically, but looks good enough to still put where it can be seen. The body is fairly compact compared to the HIKVISION and Axis cameras I have installed, so that's a plus. If they made this in a turret style camera, it would be even more of a winner.Installation and SetupAs mentioned, I am used to installing security equipment for work, so running cable, terminating, and mounting of the camera for me was not much of a challenge, but might be a challenge to someone that is not experienced with it. With that being said, if you're up for the install or would rather have someone who knows what they're doing, it's worth having your footage be able to be stored locally in the case of internet outages. With a lot of the cheap cameras, you can't integrate them with other NVRs or have local storage to save to like Amcrest cameras, which can be problematic. Software setup was easy and simple enough for just about anyone to understand. I monitor all my cameras through Blue Iris software, so it is important to be able to access the video stream from the software to record and monitor and adding it to my other cameras was also straight forward. If you're a person that just uses the Amcrest smarthome app, it seems to have come a long way from previous versions that were buggy and wouldn't let you use fingerprint login, which is a definite plus. I only wish there was a way to access older amcrest camera streams through an update so that I could view them all from one app. The web portal to the camera itself is easily accessible and although a lot of the options are similar to Dahua type of interface, the Amcrest versions are better looking, better documented, and function much better than them. Minor things, but it helps seeing the extra aesthetic touch in the software and being able to navigate it without a bunch of guessing. Having h265 encoding also saves a lot of bandwidth on my network and for storage.Bottom lineThis camera is a little more than other cameras but offers better picture at night than most cameras that cost 2 or 3 times as much which makes it a pretty good value overall. If you can catch it on a sale, even better but it’s worth the money IMO either way. Usually I wouldn’t spend this kind of money, but after seeing what it can do, I definitely recommend it for anyone who can use it’s functionality and won’t be bothered by the LEDs that it uses to illuminate the area it covers. If anything it may provide an extra layer of security in an area that is normally dimly lit. The only thing I can say on a negative note and it’s really just a preference is that it doesn’t yet come in a turret style model, and if or when it does become available I may be replacing some existing cameras on the outside of the house.

Philip was a great help on the phone getting my system fixed up via Splashtop.

the "color" part of the night vision requires some led lights to be on during dark hours...i'm not crazy about having bright lights beaming from all corners of my house all night long... this is bad for coastal users who are concerned about sea turtles... (actually would be illegal in some places)...you can turn these lights off, but the "color" part of the night vision does not work.... i dont care about this, so its not a big deal.......picture is fine and the rest of it functions with my nvr, so 4 stars it is.

So, unlike many others, I have a niche need for this security camera and that is to literally watch my small 'server room' while I'm gone. I travel quite extensively for work and while I'm gone, my kids like to go into my server room and mess with stuff. Sometimes that means unplugging something, sometimes that means turning something off, and sometimes that means spilling drinks on stuff. In any case, I wanted a camera that allowed me to remotely monitor and ensure I'm able to disrupt the burgling when it happens. Unfortunately, I didn't capture it in my screenshot because my KVM was switched to the wrong machine when I wrote this review but I most often leave the camera feed up in BlueIris on the monitor pictured so that when they walk in, they see themselves on camera (they think I watch it nonstop) and often that's all it takes for them to leave it be, thankfully.As far as the hardware goes, this camera is built rock solid. There's no cheap aluminum housing to be found here. This is built was a steel alloy (as far as I can tell) with intent to weather the worst storms or abuse. On that note, having a look at the overall construction, I'm finding very few design flaws as far as I'm concerned. With an IP67 rating, I'm finding no points of egress for water or moisture to get inside.Beyond that, there are wires built in to allow for security systems or analog RCA recording to occur but I'm just using the standard POE networking with mine. I love the value-add of a built in SD card slot tucked behind a rubber gasketted door as well as the support for BOTH h.265 and h.264. The ability to record in h.265 allows for more recordings and less consumed drive space which is a huge plus.Lastly, as dumb as it sounds, the thing I'm MOST impressed with on this camera is its low-light recording. I don't mean that the built in lights turned on. I mean while pointed somewhere that's nearly dark, it still does an AMAZING job of capturing video with less noise than I'd expect. You know how you may go to take a picture with your phone late at night or with the lights off and when you pull out your phone you find that you can't make anything out without hitting the flash? I was fully expecting that to be the case with this camera but not so. I don't know how Amcrest did it, but, kudos to them.Over all a well rounded security camera that can easily plug into your home security system or leverage Amcrest's cloud offerings.