ONWOTE 8-CH 4K PoE Security Camera System 3TB Hard Drive, 8CH 8MP NVR, (4) Outdoor 8.23MP PoE IP Cameras, Record Video Audio 24/7, Power-Over-Ethernet, 8 Channel Simultaneous Playback

I am remodeling a home to sell and wanted to up-scale the property with a good surveillance system. I spent a bit of time looking around and found this 4K system from Onwote stood out. The house is in a pretty nice neighborhood so I wanted to get the best system I could afford. I chose 4k because it seemed like it would add the most value to the home.The box the system came in was tightly packed inside a second box. The outer box was double thick cardboard. This is the quality of box I like to keep and repurpose for other things. The cameras are sturdy aluminum base and at about 5" across, a bit bigger than other cameras I have seen. I like the twist-off ring that covers 3 mounting screws and a lock screw for aiming. The recorder unit (NVR) has a few things that were not on the last video system I bought. First, it has both audio in and audio out RCA connectors. The cameras have a microphone but no speakers. It looks like the NVR can handle cameras with two-way audio. By chance, my monitor had built-in speakers, and a common Aux cable I had in my drawer connected the NVR to the monitor speakers. The audio is not bad, but don’t expect to hear people whispering 50ft away. The second nice surprise feature was 2 USB ports. There is a USB2 for the mouse and a second USB3 high speed port for a memory stick. This makes backup simple and fast.The box has just about everything you will need in it. It has a small cheap mouse that will easily get you by, but you will probably want to spend a few bucks on one with a longer cord. The 4 ethernet cables are of good quality and 60ft in length. There is a clever little gland fitting that seals the ethernet cable to the camera so that no water can get into the connection. It seems you could let this connection just sit out in the rain, but it might be better to try to hide it. I ran the cables in my attic and was again happy with the quality. They did NOT have a tendency to coil like a spring. I didn’t even need any help pulling the cables. In just a few hours I had cables at my front door, back door, living room and garage. Just plug and play. I snapped the cables in and the 4 included video cameras all popped up on the screen and looked great. I can add up to 4 more cameras if I need them for a total of 8. The 4K picture quality is impressive and worth the little extra money. The cameras are not just high resolution. They have good color and good image quality in most lighting conditions. I can zoom in and read small print on signs. The night vision mode is automatic and the internal LEDs beam invisible infrared light that makes things look pretty natural even a good distance away.The software was pretty straight forward. It’s similar to the few other systems I have seen but I noticed there was almost no delay when I clicked on things. It seems the processing power in the NVR is well matched for the task. In playback mode you can zoom in on a 30 min section then drag the timeline to any event. It was all pretty smooth. Another indication of the processor power was that there was just a little delay from what was on the screen and what was really happening.I had a few very technical questions and the support staff was familiar with the software and very helpful. Another nice surprise was they spoke decent English. I have included a few stills I took with the mobile app. This app was also surprisingly easy to setup and use. I have only used one other mobile app and this one was quite a bit better. The setup was just pointing my phone camera at a QR barcode that came up on the computer monitor. This linked me to the App Store. Once the app was installed I pointed the phone again at the same QR Barcode and the app made the connection to my recorder. About a minute later the cameras came up on my phone one by one no sign up required. Playback was simple and snapping stills and recording video was all easy enough to figure out I didn’t need to seek any help.This unit easily gets five stars. On a scale from 1-100 I might give it a 99 because the little mouse it comes with worked fine but was a bit frustrating. I think you will be happy with your system. I am happy with mine.

I'm a Network Engineer so no problem running ethernet cables and installing jacks and then running my own Cat6 patch cables to the cameras (Note: Cat5e will work too) which are really nice and provide a nice clear Image. Lots of nice features in the software including recording based on motion and individual camera recording options including a decent scheduler for each camera. I just got mine running for a few days and so far so good; however, the software is a little buggy in that the camera names show up as "Camera" as opposed to the name I gave them and sometimes the correct name shows up. Also, there is an option to set the date format to MM-DD-YYYY but that never works and it always goes back to the default YYYY-MM-DD... Not a big deal breaker, just annoying. Also, the documentation is extremely lacking! First, there is NO documentation on the cameras like how to remove the bottom ring to get to the mount holes at the base... (Hint: Rotate the ring counter clockwise to remove) I had to look that up on YouTube. Also, they claim you can use a PC browser to see your system but their documentation ONLY covers Internet Explorer and older versions of Windows. No Windows 10 information on how to do that and IE is dead and insecure! It's been replaced by MS Edge and I even tried using Chrome and no luck their either. Also, I confirmed that I have the latest version of their software on the NVR (Network Video Recorder). Also, no support for a wireless mouse on the NVR USB ports. Only a wired mouse will work and the one provided is super cheap with a very short USB cable but again not a big deal, I just used one of my spare USB mice and it works fine.... Would have been nice to be able to use a wireless one though. The best part is that you can use your iPad or iPhone to log into your system and view your cameras and/or recordings. Easy to set up and both my wife and I can do this at the same time with 2 different devices concurrently. Very nice! I'm hoping they will provide some updated software for the NVR in the future to fix some of the bugs and some documentation on how to use a real browser and a current OS to view your system on a PC would be nice. Also, the screws included with the cameras are WAY too short but here is a tip: They can accommodate #8 AND the included #6 screw heads. Just make sure you get "Machine Screws". I ended up buying 2" #8's and they were long enough to go through my vinyl siding mount (Purchased at Home Depot) and my vinyl siding and into the wood in the outside wall. Their little #6 screws included are fine for drywall or inside mounting but NOT outside! So you need to be handy to install this and having the right tools to run ethernet cabling is a must in my opinion as opposed to trying to the use the CAT5e 60' cables included. Also, the system did not run the "Setup Wizard" when I first powered it up and the default password did not work either so I had to email support and they were able to give me a method to reset the password which worked and told me their Q/C workers forgot to reset this particular system. Just keep in mind these support folks are in Asia so it can take time for them to reply; however, their reply was quite surprisingly quick and obviously solved my issue. So given all this I can only give this 4 stars based on the poor/missing/Outdated documentation, some NVR software bugs and initial setup "minor" headaches. Otherwise I really like it! Watching yourself in the cameras... Well lets' just say you will laugh!

So far this is a great piece of equipment. We are using it a bit unconventionally. We have a paranormal/ghost hunting group and we needed some cameras that will continually record video/audio without needing an internet or WiFi connection. We received the equipment, hooked it up easily, and tested it out just at the house. Picture quality is great, night vision is absolutely crystal clear, and the audio seems perfect for what we need! Still using digital audio recorders but plan to use this audio as additional backup. We plan on testing it during an actual investigation at the end of this month (August 2020) and will update the rating as need be after that. So far it seems to do exactly what we need with an amazing motion control and zoom features, and plenty of recording space. Also the ability to name and remove files onto a flash drive is extremely helpful. Word of caution, formatting essentially means delete FYI. Glad we found that out during the test run. Also, would have liked better instructions but luckily we have some pretty tech savvy people in our group. Although, even amateurs can figure it out fairly simply after some playing around with it.