REOLINK Smart 4K UHD Pan & Tilt Dual-Band Wi-Fi 6 Indoor Security Camera with 3X Optical Zoom, Auto-Tracking, People/Pet Detection, Crying Sound Detection, Privacy Mode, and Bluetooth Setup, E1 Zoom

The primary function I have for this camera is baby monitoring through Xeoma. I gotta say, especially for the price, this camera works well, at least once you have it dialed in. I started off with the slightly cheaper version, but found it wasn't quite doing what I needed.The pros of this camera you just won't find anywhere else for this price are:1. Fairly high resolution.2. Full PTZ functions for both movement and zooming.3. Colors are really good.4. Clarity is really good.5. Onvif compliant.6. Two way audio.7. Works well over WiFi.If you are curious what this has gotten me over the slightly cheaper version more exactly:1. Slightly bigger.2. Zoom. This is actually quite a significant feature.3. Slower response to switch between day and night mode. Actually where this is mounted in the house and with it zoomed all the way in, it is almost always in night mode, which is adequate for the need it is serving.4. Speaker for two way communication seems slightly louder.The big reason why I really wanted this camera over the cheaper version was from my cell phone it could be hard to tell if the baby's eyes were open. Sometimes he thrashes around some while sleeping, but if his eyes open, that means he is awake and I need to attend to him. However if his eyes are closed, he usually settles down and all is good for a while longer. (It seems he is dreaming a fair amount.) Xeoma allows doing a digital zoom, but an optical is much better as it can be hard to use the zoom feature right on the go. The digital zoom is really best for stationary use. Actually using a combination of optical zoom and digital zoom as the optical is good enough to have the whole crib in view and not much else while I use the digital zoom to have the baby fill the viewing area in the subsection of the crib he is in. The clarity of this combination is very good and I am able to either see if his eyes are open from a cell phone or a reasonably sized window on my desktop monitors so I can have everything up on my screens at once as I work from home.While everything is working good enough for baby monitoring so far after some tweaking of settings, it has taken some fiddling to get it to work right. For one I made sure to select TCP transport as all of this goes over WiFi. If you set / default to UDP, things will look really bad as packets will get lost and there is no way around that with WiFi except for using a TCP transport. Second I needed to turn on the back light mode when zoomed in or else the picture would be way under exposed. However these options are there, so then it was just a matter of using the motorized movement of the camera while on its mounting point to point it at the crib and zoom in. At this the wide angle on this camera is wider than the cheaper model and the aspect ratio is more squarish. This makes the optical only zoom not quite what I had hoped for, but it is good enough to see if the baby's eyes are open without having to use the digital zoom in Xeoma. As for digital zooming, it looks a lot more crisp with this camera than the cheaper version, so yeah, see every detail up close. The mic on both of these cameras is a bit lack luster, but I can make out the louder sounds the baby makes, which is enough to know if the baby needs immediate attention even if my wife has the more traditional baby monitor instead of it being with me. Really having the traditional baby monitor around is really useful as it picks up everything, so I can be deep in work and hear every little stir the baby makes and am well aware when it is time to say set up for feeding where with the camera audio alone I have to keep a close eye on the video feed to pick up hints it is getting time to do something for the baby. Really the audio on this camera is more of if the baby needs attention right now, that is when you finally hear something. Also with two way, Xeoma does not support audio in the other direction, so have to fire up the Reolink app. The two way audio deal is more of something my wife likes to use anyway where I just go into the room and do if something needs to happen.I really kind of wish I could wire this in, especially as it is mounted right next to an Ethernet switch optimized for video traffic, but sadly I can't. At least this place is heavily wired in now, I have multiple WiFi APs to provide great WiFi coverage, and I can use a TCP transport for this camera, so it should work reliably and so far has.

I purchased 2 of these 1 in white and 1 in black, because Amazon's coupons limited the sale purchase of 1 per customer, but the colors are different SKUs. I immediately noticed the lack of delay that I had experienced with Eufy, and Arlo. I would say there is about 1.3~ second delay. Which I promise is more than adequate. I remember getting an alert on my Eufy doorbell, clicking the notification, waiting on it to load, having whoever pressed it literally leaving, and if I tried to chat with them I could hear it 5+ seconds later, which is far too much to have a conversation, and rendered the whole thing useless. These cameras load quick and are quite good quality, you DO NOT need 4k in the house for almost anything I would say, these are very high quality 1080p. The 3x zoom is awesome and makes them much more versatile, and the auto focus is seriously good. I only wish there was more zoom, but that's a non issue. The app is great and let's you set up multiple preset areas to move the cameras to. Both of these use around 4.2Mbps according to the app, most people won't worry about it, but if you have a less stable or slower internet setup maybe sticking with the wired or local non wifi. Very good, convinced me to use their other products, and these are supposedly not even what Reolink is known for, which is regular security cameras with incredible price to performance.

Why did you pick this product vs others?:Pros:I researched a lot of cameras before I bought and had certain qualities that I needed in a camera. The purpose: To monitor the health of my 94 year old mother who insists on living by herself. This camera did the things I needed: Pretty clear view of living room; picks up and records any motion; sound can be turned on or off; camera can be panned up / down / right / left remotely; it communicates through her internet, and is thus available for viewing from all 4 of us siblings. It can be set up so one person only had admin privileges (and can therefore adjust settings) and others can be users and can only view; or multiple people can have admin privileges.There are a few other features some my like that I either don't use or found cumbersome to use. For instance, you can draw little black rectangles on the screen to block out certain parts of the viewing area for privacy. Once we got the camera set up and got all of us established as viewers, it has worked well for over a year. No problems whatsoever. Cons:So why not 5 stars? Two reasons: Installation process and instructions are terrible, and customer service is worse. Once you GET someone at customer service, my experience with them was medium to good. They were (eventually) able to solve my problems, - BUT --- They often didn't understand the specifics of my problem and I had to keep reminding them. I found out the reason why. At any time a customer service rep who is dealing with you, is simultaneously dealing with several other people! Communication is by text (Chat), not phone. So while you are typing your response, they are interacting with someone else. You sometimes sit 5 minutes after each response ... wondering if you've lost connection, or what is going on. And by the time they get back to you, they've forgotten the details of your scenario or mixed them up with the other person. Very frustrating. More than once, it has taken me like an hour and a half to resolve what could have been handled by phone in about 15 minutes. I'm fairly technical savvy and have done a lot of my own troubleshooting and setups over the years for various computer/ technical equipment. I've had to set this camera up twice: originally, and more recently, due to our internet provider having to change modems, router, and reset the wifi network and passwords, I chose to do a reset on the camera system and start over. Both setups were the setup experiences from Hell. Both times I was unable to get the camera to do what it needed to do to scan this or that QR code to set up. All the time you're doing that - the "welcome" message is blaring out of the camera at a very high volume and there is no way to silence it or turn it off. Tremendously annoying. And it's equally difficult to set up users. One of my sisters, who is in charge of the technology system and devices at a hospice company could not get the user directions to work for setup. I found the instructions contradict / are inconsistent with any videos provided / referenced, and the info is ambiguous. "I have heard the voice response" (Which voice reposes? What was it supposed to say? I'm hearing one, but is that the preceding step or this one?)Similar with "Listen for the tone" ... or "beep". Also - if something goes wrong - how does one reenter and try again? Does on have to go back and delete and start over or can one backup to where things went wrong? (I tried both; both failed again ... and again .... and again ...) Either the instructions are just poorly written - or the camera is very finicky on setup and will simply take multiple trials to set up, likely requiring the dismal customer service chat. The instructions could easily be written more clearly. I'm being generous with 4 stars. Setup: 1 starCamera use, operation, durability, features; 5 stars.Since the setup only has to occur once over more than a year... (twice if you need/want to do a reset and start over), but the vast majority of the time, one is not having to deal with those issues, I gave more weight to the camera function itself. Therefore I generously weighed Camera operation heavier than setup and customer service.