TL:DR: I feel like the $70 (+tax) I’m paying is pricey for the features I need (FTP, good human sensing motion alerts/recording, NO subscription fees for alerts, and preferably some option for remote playback, PT, good audio). Looking for another camera that has the fairly slick and working features of the Reolink, but perhaps a lower price point?

I know $70 isn’t a ton of money, but I already went from $50 to $70 for just the FTP feature, and I feel like I’m losing other features (better fps) while the other features the Zoom comes with just don’t seem to work that great (namely the zoom).

Currently I’m using it as a stand alone camera, but may eventually (i.e. probably 1-2 years) use it with some linux or PC based recording software (Blue Iris, Frigate, etc).

So I tried a Reolink E1 Pro…

For the most part I was happy with it. Image quality was good and for the most part I liked the software (although improvements could be made). My biggest issues were the audio (though this isn’t a huge requirement for me) and the inability to store the data to an FTP or other local server.

This was problematic because in my scenario I want to set the camera up to be very sensitive to human motion (get anyone being tricky) and in doing so it would also capture lighting changes, etc. The Reolink software is actually decent here in that you can set the sensitivity very high but tell it you only want alerts/recording for “people” motion. This did serve to cut out most of the false positives. The problem is that the E1 Pro only supports this feature to SD card. You can use the PC client to capture “all” motion events, but they don’t allow to filter based only on human motion.

Because of this I switched to the E1 Zoom. This was advertised as a higher tier model as it was 5MP instead of 4MP and most importantly supports FTP upload, which also supports the “people” motion filter. This now meets my needs (in theory at least, I’m still testing it).

However, I am a bit disappointed that the E1 Zoom hid a little fact that it only supports 20fps as opposed to the Pro which actually supported 25. Additionally, the “zoom” feature is mostly worthless (for several reasons, including Reolink’s tracking AI is buggy, and the speed and focus lock of the zoom seems really slow). The audio also doesn’t seem any better.

I am paying like $75 for this camera, and I feel the real reason I’m spending it is to get the FTP upload feature which isn’t available in the other E1 models. I don’t need the zoom.
I also, for my current usage don’t really need the P/T features either, though I feel I may want them in the future. The 2K resolution is also nice, but wondering if I wouldn’t be better suited for just 1080p and a higher fps.

​

So… suggestions for something that has reolink type features but maybe does my prime ones better? And hopefully at a better price point?