{"id":1071,"date":"2020-04-22T10:59:52","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T14:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/?p=1071"},"modified":"2023-10-10T13:41:54","modified_gmt":"2023-10-10T17:41:54","slug":"finding-the-best-4k-security-camera-with-poe-and-onvif-under-200","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/finding-the-best-4k-security-camera-with-poe-and-onvif-under-200\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding the BEST 4K Security Camera with PoE and ONVIF under $200"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WXD82epDPE4\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Today on the hookup I\u2019m going to put these 8 4k PoE security cameras through their paces and show you why, after countless hours of testing, I\u2019ve decided that this camera from the relatively unknown brand Annke is the best value in 4K security cameras by a significant margin.<\/p>\n<p>In my last PoE security camera video I tested all different resolutions of cameras under $150 and ended up recommending the Reolink RLC-410 as my favorite overall camera.\u00a0 The RLC-410 is still an extremely solid camera at a great price, and I\u2019ve recommended to countless people.\u00a0 BUT it\u2019s only 5 megapixels, and I\u2019ve started to wonder if more pixels is more better\u2026\u00a0 Which brings me to this video which features only 8 megapixel cameras, commonly called 4k resolution.\u00a0 Here are the cameras I\u2019m going test in this video least expensive to most expensive, links to the exact cameras I tested are down in the video description:<\/p>\n<p>First is the \u00a0$69 HView E-800-D turret camera, next is the $89 Annke C-800 turret camera, then the $108 Amcrest 24-93-EW Dome camera, then the $109 Amcrest 24-99-E which I have in both the 4 millimeter focal length and 2.8mm focal length varieties, then we\u2019ve got the $149 Hikvision 2-CD-23-85-FWD, the $169 Camius 8-28-A spotlight bullet camera, and finally the $199 Dahua HFW-28-31-T motorized varifocal bullet camera.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/allcameras.png\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/allcameras-1024x576.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"688\" height=\"387\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>You may notice that popular brands like Reolink, Lorex, and Swann are absent form the list, this is because their 4K cameras don\u2019t support the ONVIF standard and therefore can only be used with their own NVRs, and not with PC based NVRs like Blue Iris.\u00a0 If you are looking for a stand alone 4k security camera bundle I\u2019ve also made a comparison video between the three top selling packages on amazon, but only ONVIF cameras will be included in this video. Ubiquiti\u2019s also makes a 4k camera, the G4 Pro is that I didn\u2019t include in this video because of its $450 price tag, which is just too much to pay for a single camera in my opinion.<\/p>\n<p>The first thing we\u2019re going to look at is field of view.\u00a0 When you look at a camera listing, it\u2019s pretty common for it to list the focal length of the lens, which generally correlates with the field of view, but it\u2019s not the whole story.\u00a0 There\u2019s some complex math that you can do to determine the effective field of view using the focal length, sensor size and lens shape, but the general idea is that field of view is a function of sensor size divided by focal length.\u00a0 Larger sensors and lower focal lengths will yield larger field of view.<\/p>\n<p>To get a feeling for each camera\u2019s field of view I attempted to line up the left side of the image with the corner of the sidewalk so I could compare how far into my neighbors yard the right side would reach.\u00a0 You can see that the Amcrest dome camera had the greatest field of view, even though it has the same 2.8mm focal length as some of the other cameras, and the dahua had the second largest field of view even though it\u2019s minimum focal length is 3.7mm.\u00a0 This suggests that the Dahua has a significantly larger image sensor than the rest of the cameras, which also becomes evident in our nighttime footage later on.\u00a0 You can see that the least expensive camera, the hview, has roughly the same focal length as the Dahua, but the lowest field of view, indicating a significantly smaller image sensor, which is somewhat expected considering the dahua is the most expensive cameras and the hview is the cheapest.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/fov.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/fov-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"688\" height=\"387\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Generally speaking, we would expect cameras with a lower field of view to have a better, clearer image because each pixel needs to represent less space in the physical world, but that not always the case.\u00a0 To test daytime clarity I marked locations on the ground at 10 feet, 25 feet and 50 feet and I held up a sign with 150 point and 72 point font.\u00a0 At 25 feet the Annke and Hikvision produced the clearest images.\u00a0 It\u2019s tempting to say that the hview image is the best if you only consider the 150 point font, but the 72 point font is definitely more legible with the Annke and Hikvision, not to mention the hview is distorted due to it using a 4:3 image sensor to produce a 16:9 widescreen image.\u00a0 You can also see the downfall of varifocal cameras here where some chromatic aberration is visible in the dahua image, in fixed focal length cameras the lens is tuned for one specific focal length, but a varifocal lens needs to be able to be adjusted, meaning it might not always be in a sweet spot.\u00a0 All things considered though, the dahua image is actually REALLY good considering how wide the field of view it has, and it doesn\u2019t suffer from the field of view and clarity trade off visible with the Amcrest dome, which struggled to produce legible image of the 150 point font from just 25 feet.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/daytime-clarity-25.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/daytime-clarity-25-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"688\" height=\"387\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>At 50 feet the results were similar, if not more exaggerated.\u00a0 The Annke and Hikvision still produced the best images, but the 72 point font is no longer legible.\u00a0 In the image from the Amcrest Dome camera you can barely even tell there is text on the sign.\u00a0 The dahua and hview produced comparable images, which is bad news for the hview considering its low field of view.\u00a0 As a comparison, I adjusted the varifocal dahua\u2019s zoom to be similar to the hview\u2019s, and it produced this impressive image at 50 feet, though there is still some chromatic aberration.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/50-ft-daytime.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/50-ft-daytime-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"688\" height=\"387\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I repeated these same tests at night, both with an without infrared illumination.<\/p>\n<p>An increasingly popular and desired feature of cameras is something called color night vision.\u00a0 Cameras are able to produce color images in very low light situations by increasing their shutter duration, sensitivity and gain. The downside to this mode is that moving objects create streaks due to the slower shutter speed.\u00a0 In the color night vision test the Annke and Hikvision performed the best, followed by the two Amcrest cameras and the the Dahua.\u00a0 The Amcrest dome camera performed the worst by far in this test.\u00a0 And even though the camius gave some middle the road results it has another trick up it\u2019s sleeve if you want color night vision.\u00a0 In addition to its infrared LEDs the camius also has two ultrabright white LED spotlights that can be activated by motion to provide a significantly better color night vision experience.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/IR-Clarity-25.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/IR-Clarity-25-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"688\" height=\"387\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>More commonly, cameras use infrared LEDs for their night vision which allows to maintain faster shutter speeds and prevent streaking.\u00a0 In the IR test the dahua performed the best with its large image sensor, then the 4 millimeter focal length Amcrest, then the annke, Hikvision, and the camius.\u00a0 You\u2019ll also notice that the hview shot doesn\u2019t match the rest, and that\u2019s because for some reason I kept magically disappearing from the night time footage, probably due to errors in video compression, which leads me to my next topic.<\/p>\n<p>4k footage requires a ton of hard drive space, and recording 9 4k streams 24\/7 will kill a hard drive really fast without proper compression.\u00a0 All these cameras have the option to use the more traditional h264 compression standard, or the significantly more efficient h265 compression method, but not all h265 is compatible with every NVR. That being said, the hview was the only camera that I had issues with.\u00a0 Not only was it\u2019s h265 encoding completely incompatible my blue iris NVR software, but even using h264 the footage was unreliable and multiple times during my testing I randomly disappeared from nighttime footage. For this reason alone, I wouldn\u2019t recommend the hview to anyone, despite its low price.\u00a0 None of the other cameras I tested had issues with their compression.<\/p>\n<p>Along with compression type, each camera has tons of other options and the web based interfaces are more user friendly than ever before.\u00a0 The Hikvision and annke are fully compatible with the chrome browser without plugin or adobe flash, and the Hview and Dahua offered live view in chrome once flash player was activated.\u00a0 The settings on the Amcrest cameras can be adjusted in chrome, but live view is only available in internet explorer, or after downloading and installing their chrome addon, which feels more like a separate browser to me than a chrome addon.\u00a0 The camius was the only camera that required internet explorer to run, which is disappointing, because it also offers the most customizability and options.<\/p>\n<p>For ease of initial setup, the dahua, camius, and annke cameras were set up from the factory using DHCP, so they join right to the network using a compatible subnet.\u00a0 The rest of the cameras come from the factory with a static IP which means you\u2019ll need to be able to access the 192.168.1.x subnet to be able to configure them.\u00a0 Not an impossible task, but a bit annoying.\u00a0 For the Amcrest cameras, you can also set them up using the Amcrest app which allows you to scan a QR code to access the camera via \u00a0P2P.<\/p>\n<p>Which leads me to my next point: As ironic as it is, security cameras have historically been some of the most vulnerable IoT devices.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve ever set up a security camera using an app, and then accessed that camera from outside your network without setting up port forwarding on your router, you are likely using P2P, whether you know it or not.\u00a0 Unfortunately, using P2P means that your camera needs to be communicating with the manufacturer\u2019s P2P server at all times, which is a bad plan for security, and a vulnerability in your network.\u00a0 How serious is it? Serious enough that the United State Department of Defense can no longer do business with contractors that use Dahua, Hikvision or any of their OEM subsidiaries.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t mean that you shouldn\u2019t use them, but it\u2019s a good idea to block their outbound traffic with your network\u2019s firewall, in fact you probably shouldn\u2019t use P2P regardless of the manufacturer.<\/p>\n<p>So, as I mentioned at the beginning of this video, after countless hours of testing, the Annke 4k turret camera came out significantly ahead of the rest in overall value, with both the best daytime clarity and the best color night vision, all for just $89. So if you\u2019re looking for a great all around camera at a great price the Annke is the easy choice, but I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t mention some of the important features of the other cameras that I will personally be taking advantage of.\u00a0 The Dahua\u2019s motorized varifocal lens makes it perfect for mounting on my second story roofline where I\u2019ll be able to adjust the zoom as needed to account for the large viewing distance and even though the camius spotlight camera didn\u2019t perform quite as well as the Annke it has the added benefit of a motion based spotlight which will go perfectly into my dark side yard that has no other lighting.<\/p>\n<p>If you want audio from your security camera, unfortunately neither the Dahua nor the Annke have built in microphones, so you\u2019ll need to look elsewhere.\u00a0 Out of all the cameras the camius had the clearest audio, and it also includes 2-way audio, though only only through the RXCamView phone app, but the Amcrest audio was acceptable as well.\u00a0 The hview\u2019s audio was choppy and terrible, but I think I already mentioned that there is no reason to every buy this camera.<\/p>\n<p>The last question is whether the increased file size and price is justified by the increased image quality associated with 4k cameras?\u00a0 Comparing footage from my previous video to this one tells a pretty convincing story.\u00a0 The reolink RLC-410 produced this image from 25 feet and when compared to same image taken with the 4k Annke, not only isthe field of view significantly wider, but in general the image is crisper and the text is more legible\u2026 so it really comes down to a question of price.\u00a0 The RLC-410 costs around $43 these days compared to the $89 Annke, and even though the Annke produces a much higher quality image, I can\u2019t tell you whether it\u2019s worth over twice the price, because that\u2019s a personal decision based on your own budget.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/4kvs5mp.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/4kvs5mp-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"688\" height=\"387\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you have a high quality 4k ONVIF camera that I missed, make sure to let me know down in the comments so I can check it out.\u00a0 Thank you to all of my awesome patron over at patreon that enable me to buy products and make videos like this one to help you make the best choices for your situation.\u00a0 If you\u2019re interested in supporting my channel please check out the links in the description.\u00a0 If you enjoyed this video please hit that thumbs up button so the youtube algorithm will share with other people.\u00a0 Please consider subscribing, and as always, thanks for watching the hookup.<\/p>\n<h5>Cameras Tested (AmazonUS):<\/h5>\n<h5>#1: Annke: <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2RVOsQ2\">https:\/\/amzn.to\/2RVOsQ2<\/a><\/h5>\n<h5>\u00a0#2: Hikvision: <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3cwJLEg\">https:\/\/amzn.to\/3cwJLEg<\/a><\/h5>\n<h5>\u00a0#3: Dahua: <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2yrjoB4\">https:\/\/amzn.to\/2yrjoB4<\/a><\/h5>\n<h5>\u00a0#4: Camius: <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/34S0hMs\">https:\/\/amzn.to\/34S0hMs<\/a><\/h5>\n<h5>\u00a0#5: Amcrest 4.0mm: <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2XO50NP\">https:\/\/amzn.to\/2XO50NP<\/a><\/h5>\n<h5>\u00a0#6: Amcrest 2.8mm: <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3cyji9l\">https:\/\/amzn.to\/3cyji9l<\/a><\/h5>\n<h5>\u00a0#7: Amcrest Dome: <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3eztDUx\">https:\/\/amzn.to\/3eztDUx<\/a><\/h5>\n<h5>\u00a0#8: H.View: (Don&#8217;t buy this): <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2KnufOV\">https:\/\/amzn.to\/2KnufOV<\/a><\/h5>\n<h5>\u00a0Previous Winner (5MP) Reolink RLC-410: <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2yzV1ks\">https:\/\/amzn.to\/2yzV1ks<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/reolink.com\/product\/rlc-410\/?aff=50\">https:\/\/reolink.com\/product\/rlc-410\/?aff=50<\/a><\/h5>\n<h5>\u00a0(AmazonUK)<\/h5>\n<h5>#1: Annke: <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3aoOxlJ\">https:\/\/amzn.to\/3aoOxlJ<\/a><\/h5>\n<h5>\u00a0#2: Hikvision: <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3aloiwJ\">https:\/\/amzn.to\/3aloiwJ<\/a><\/h5>\n<h5>Follow me on Twitter: @TheHookUp1<\/h5>\n<h5>Support my channel:<\/h5>\n<h5>Patreon: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/thehookup\">https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/thehookup<\/a><\/h5>\n<h5>Music by www.BenSound.com<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today on the hookup I\u2019m going to put these 8 4k PoE security cameras through their paces and show you why, after countless hours of testing, I\u2019ve decided that this camera from the relatively unknown brand Annke is the best value in 4K security cameras by a significant margin. In my last PoE security camera [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2539,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"acf":[],"mb":[],"mfb_rest_fields":["title","gutenberg_elementor_mode"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1071"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3796,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071\/revisions\/3796"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesmarthomehookup.com\/test_install\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}