I bought two cameras.
The construction is made of white plastic of medium quality, which is not really bothersome, but if it stays outdoors under the sun (and near the sea) for 2-3 years, I don't know how durable or waterproof the whole construction will remain.
The antenna, although small (3dbi), surprisingly has a good range and very good bandwidth, which means good image quality without losing frames or freezing for no reason.
The video encoding reaches up to a Max.bitrate of 8192Kbps! While for the past 10 days that I have been testing it via WiFi, it has been working at a Max.bitrate of 6144kbps (VBR -> Average bitrate 3072Kbps) and 25fps without any problems or freezing.
(Of course, as the WiFi signal quality decreases, the video quality must also decrease due to reduced bandwidth, so if someone doesn't have a perfect WiFi signal, they will inevitably have to compromise the video quality.)
The microphone is surprisingly overly sensitive and picks up distant sounds as well, so one doesn't need to exaggerate with its volume because when you turn it off, an annoying electrical noise can be heard. If adjusted correctly, it doesn't bother anywhere and having sound along with the video is a good addition.
At night, apart from the two large red IR LEDs that illuminate adequately at about 15-20 meters in complete darkness, there is also a flashing bright blue LED (which means that the camera is connected to WiFi and "operating"), so if someone wants to keep it hidden and not easily noticeable, they will have to put a black insulating tape over the blue LED and everything will be fine.
The plug-in for the browser is a bit annoying (It only works properly in Internet Explorer) as it requires entering a username and password every time, and the digital zoom function, although extremely useful (if you have a small monitor), is difficult to use and one of the strangest I have seen.
Overall, the camera can be set up within 10 minutes and works without any problems for as long as you leave it. The image quality is quite good for the price of the camera, but not perfect (despite the high bitrate, I have seen better quality from other cameras that have a lower bitrate), and it has a wide angle with a real FoV of about 95-100 degrees.
One might wonder, if the camera is so good and amazing, why am I giving it 3 stars?
Simply because it is useless!
While live video can be viewed from any device (laptop, mobile, etc.), video recording can only be done with a Hikvision recorder or the corresponding software (IVMS-4200) for Windows (which is one of the most difficult to use, complicated, and full of bugs).
And all this because Hikvision decided to remove the ONVIF protocol from firmware version 5.5.5 and onwards, resulting in the camera being "invisible" to all recorders and NVRs that use ONVIF to receive images from cameras regardless of the manufacturer.
Hikvision claims that they did not remove it, it is just disabled in the default settings, and all one has to do is enable it in the camera's settings. They have even released drivers in PDF and instructional videos.
Well, guess what! It still doesn't work.
With ONVIF enabled or not, the camera remains "invisible" to the recorder, and the worst part is that Hikvision has not released any patch or firmware update to fix the problem.
The camera is a very new model and there is no firmware older than 5.5.5 to downgrade to where ONVIF was supported normally by the company, so anyone who buys a new Hicvision camera is in trouble!
I was forced to install the Hicvision NVR software to test it, but every 1-2 days the software crashes and I have to be there to restart it, and with each restart it loses the camera and I have to add it again from the beginning to continue recording.
A tragic situation.
I hope for a firmware update soon because besides the advertising that Hicvision does by supporting ONVIF, my cameras are now on the shelf and two Chinese cameras that cost almost half the price and have been tested to work with ONVIF without any issues have taken their place.
Update:
I made an official complaint to the ONVIF organization for false claims by Hikvision that their camera supports the protocol.
I should note that this camera is not even on the organization's list of compatible products: https://www.onvif.org/conformant-products/
The response from ONVIF.org was that indeed the camera does NOT support the ONVIF protocol and they conclude: "Unfortunately, sellers say many things to sell products..."
WARNING to those who buy such cameras from China, sanctions have been imposed by the United States and most Chinese products are no longer supported by the ONVIF.org organization, so before you buy anything new that you intend to use for a similar purpose, check first if it is supported by ONVIF from this link: https://www.onvif.org/conformant-products/
If you find a product that FALSELY claims to support ONVIF, inform them and file a complaint here: https://www.onvif.org/contact/report-improper-conformance-claim/
To avoid misunderstandings, the above only applies to the ONVIF protocol.
Unfortunately, I fell for it and bought it before checking.
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