Reolink provides one other winner to its estimable steady of house safety cameras. The E1 Pro is the corporate’s first digital camera to characteristic crystal-clear 4MP Super HD video. It additionally packs in a bunch of premium options, however retains the price to a modest $55.
The E1 Pro is a tennis-ball model digital camera that measures about 3 inches large by 4 inches excessive. Most of the digital camera’s {hardware}—together with the daylight sensor, standing LED, built-in mic, microSD card slot, and reset button—are positioned on its shiny black face. The speaker and energy jack are positioned across the again.
The digital camera delivers video decision of 2560 x 1440 pixels, versus the 1920 x 1080 pixels you get with a Full HD digital camera, or the 1280 x 720 pixels that an HD digital camera produces. If all that feels like Greek to you, simply know that the online result’s a considerably extra detailed picture. That’s coupled with a pan-and-tilt characteristic—355 levels horizontal, 50 levels vertical—that provides you whole-room protection.
The E1 Pro helps dual-band Wi-Fi for higher connectivity.
The E1 additionally comes with important safety features like movement detection, two-way audio, and evening imaginative and prescient that gives as much as 40 toes of illumination in the dead of night.
Reolink offers appreciable flexibility for saving safety video. Motion-detected clips are recorded regionally to a microSD card (as much as 64GB). You can pair that with a Reolink Cloud subscription for offsite backup, which is a prudent alternative as it would protect any forensic proof if an intruder compromises the digital camera. There’s a free plan with buy that saves as much as 1GB of clips for seven days. The Standard plan helps as much as 5 cameras and offers you 10GB of cloud storage for with a 30-day historical past for $3.49 a month or $35 a 12 months. The Premier plan bumps that as much as 10 cameras and 50GB with the identical 30-day historical past for $7 a month or $69 yearly. Finally, Reolink provides a Business plan, which helps as much as 30 cameras and offers you 100GB of cloud storage with a 60-day historical past for $10.49 a month or $104 a 12 months.
If you need to allow 24/7 monitoring, you may join the digital camera with Reolink’s 8-channel or 16-channel NVR (community video recorder). These are offered individually for $230 and $330 respectively.
Michael Ansaldo/IDGThe E1 Pro’s pan-and-tilt characteristic permits entire room protection.
Simple setup, easy-to-use app
Virtually each Reolink digital camera I’ve used has been a breeze to arrange, and the E1 Pro continues that development due to a voice immediate that guides you thru the steps. Once you scan the gadget’s QR code with the Reolink app, it’s simply a few steps to connecting it to your Wi-Fi community. Once that’s completed, you may simply set the digital camera on a desk or shelf or mount it to a ceiling or wall with the equipped {hardware}.
The E1 Pro seems on the app’s gadget web page together with some other Reolink cameras you have got related. A devoted cog icon opens digital camera settings the place you may inform the E1 Pro how you can behave when it detects exercise. Motion detection, recording, and notification settings are all right here, as are on/off toggles for the automated evening imaginative and prescient and the digital camera’s onboard alarm .
Selecting the E1 Pro from the gadget record opens its house display screen. The structure is sort of similar to the one used with the Reolink C2 Pro . Under the live-feed pane, there’s a toolbar with controls for the video stream, and a toggle for the digital camera’s decision. Pan-and-tilt, push-to-talk, and video-clip playback controls are all on the underside of the display screen.
Performance
Not surprisingly, the 4MP Super HD video is startlingly sharp. In some situations, I may see particular person hairs in my canine’s coat. If that feels like overkill for lots of throwaway surveillance footage, think about that it could actually make a world of distinction when figuring out the facial options or clothes of an intruder.
One of my favourite options of the Reolink C2 Pro has been ported over right here. If you need to take a detailed take a look at one thing within the digital camera’s present dwell view, you may press a button labeled “Clip.” This opens a display screen seize of the dwell feed on the backside of the display screen, with a small field overlaid on it. Drag the field to totally different elements of the picture, and a zoomed-in view of that crop seems within the digital camera’s dwell view pane. It’s nice for getting a more in-depth take a look at something within the scene that warrants nearer inspection.
The app’s pan-and-tilt controls, which embody a joystick and directional buttons you may faucet, work properly for essentially the most half. The joystick means that you can make steady sweeps of the room, whereas the buttons are for incremental actions. The digital camera would typically take a pair seconds to answer enter, however as soon as it did, its movement was at all times easy and managed. In addition to guide management, the app provides a marking characteristic the enables you to set and identify waypoints, and an “auto” button that rotates the digital camera backwards and forwards horizontally a few occasions to present you an entire take a look at the room earlier than returning to its place to begin.
Michael Ansaldo/IDGYou can set totally different movement detection sensitivity for as much as 4 time frames.
Motion detection was uniformly correct once I used it maintain tabs on my youngsters summertime comings and goings. The movement sensor has a sensitivity scale that’s adjustable from 1 to 50, and you’ll customise it to be larger or decrease throughout sure occasions of day.
You may set up movement zones to limit the monitoring space and scale back false alerts. Usually, it is a fairly surefire answer, however I wasn’t loopy in regards to the implementation right here. Instead of utilizing the everyday grid structure, the place you selecte a collection of particular person squares to dam out an space, Reolink has opted for a pen-and-eraser enter that has you shade in an space to dam it from movement detection.
It’s extra time consuming and fussier, because it’s tough to use uniform stress for any size of time, and that inevitably ends in small missed areas that you just’ll want to return over till the specified space is chosen. Erasing a blocked-out space posed the identical points.
The digital camera works with Google Assistant for hands-free management. Once you add the digital camera to your Google Home good speaker, you may say “Hey Google, show me [tje room where the camera is located]” to view a dwell feed in your Google Nest Hub or Chromecast-enabled TV.
Verdict
The Reolink E1 Pro impresses with its consumer friendliness and astounding video high quality. It was a cinch to arrange, and, a few nitpicks apart, a delight to make use of. If image high quality and worth are your prime concerns, the E1 Pro is an excellent alternative. If you’re keen to surrender its excessive decision, think about the Xiaomi Mi Home Security Camera, which delivers 1080p decision however that has most of the identical capabilities—plus a extra simple motion-zone characteristic.