Reolink Argus

Poor App design, PIR triggers too often and image quality is lacking – This could've been a great camera. It had the right combination of price and specifications going for it, and it's build quality too also feels solid. However, what stops it from competing with other (better) products such as the Netgear Arlo or Nest, would be the software / firmware that drives the camera. The image quality on these $99+ cameras are frankly, disappointing. My $20 Xiaomi Xiaofang cameras produce a slightly less pixelated image at only a fifth of the cost (although it too, has other major issues as well).

The PIR sensor is a touch too sensitive and it seems to trigger for absolutely no reason at all, meaning you'll have moments where the camera is woken up to a false alarm because it thinks it has detected motion.

This is of course, a big issue if you intend to use phone notifications or audible sirens to alert you of a possible intruder, since you'll be checking your footage only to see nothing going on. Then there's the fact that these are true wireless cameras that run on battery power only -- you can't attach a wired power supply, and the camera PIR sensor is also jittery, so expect some more frequent battery changes depending on how you've placed your unit.

Let's talk a little about the app. The current version of the app is poorly designed and requires the user to tap on a view to see the live feed. Rather than allowing you to simply launch the app and get a view right away, they've somehow introduced an unnecessary step for this process. After viewing the live feed, the most natural response of any user to back out to the main menu is to hit the "Back" button on your phone -- except it doesn't do that!

Rather, the app prompts you to hit the button a second time to completely close the app, and if you want to return to the main grid view you'll have to tap the awkwardly placed collapse button on the top left of the app. Seems the dev don't even understand the principles of good UX design.

Verdict: Attractive price, but ultimately a mediocre product that has a somewhat high running cost and too many compromises.

BE AWARE - Ideal product specification on paper but practically doesn’t work – To add some security in to my home I purchased 3 of this product for below reasons: - No wiring were required - Easy DIY installation (all you need in the pack) - Video recording capability - Picture detection email and video recording capability - Alarm notification on the app in your mobile - Quality picture - 24/6 support - Long life of battery

When I received my items however the set-up was so easy but I had below issues:

- 95% of the times connecting to the camera through the app fails

- Although the email set up successfully but I only got the detected picture emailed to me few times so not reliable at all

- The app notifications coming randomly

- Quality of the picture is much less than my expectation

My biggest issue with camera is connecting to the camera fails most of the times also I am not receiving any notification and picture emails, so I sent a support request I got back an email from someone in china asking for product ID to push a new firmware. After several times I still have same problems. The other downside is the support team only replying to my emails in the afternoon so there is no 24 hours support.

I do not recommend this product to anyone as it is absolutely useless and un-reliable.