I am finally satisfied with a complete camera system. I have purchased different brands and this one surely stands out. Quality, Price, Ease of setup, & Ease of use. Amcrest surely wins for my future camera setups. Packaging and accessories: All included items were present, along with the 4 POE cameras, DVR (hard drive Pre-Installed), and cables; instruction manual is included with all necessary mounting hardware. If you have a larger home you may have to purchase additional Cat 5 cable because the included ones are about 60 feet long.Initial look: The cameras are light weight (not to bulky) and fairly sturdy. They are finished in white plastic and the DVR finished in black. There is no pan and tilt feature for this camera but you are able to zoom in from your monitor/phone. These cameras are able to also pick up audio. With the cameras being POE there are no annoying adjustable antennas attached to them.First time setup: The first-time setup is easy. The cameras are plug and play with the included Cat 5 cables. Once you determine where you want to mount the cameras you plug one end of the Cat 5 cables into the camera and other in into DVR.Application: The app works very well and was easy to set up. The app allows for easy camera configuration i.e. push notifications, camera name, and camera sensitivity. The quick access to enable push notifications for motion is good but could get annoying if sensitivity is set too high.Video and Audio quality: Video and sound quality is excellent. There are various configurations available that allows you to further adjust them to your individual liking. During the day, the image sensor has a good dynamic range and the colors are vivid. Images have wide angle. At night, the IR illumination work very well and are more than adequate to give 50+ feet of coverage. The night-time image remains sharp, something which many cheaper cameras struggle with.Recording and playback: Configuration of the record function is very straight forward and searching for recorded videos is simple thanks to the intuitive timeline. Videos can be search from a specific time period or motion detection. This can be done from either the DVR or App.Negatives:You can’t plug a standard keyboard into the USB port.Don’t need VGA too old, has HDMI Amcrest should add Display Port.No set screw to hold cameras in place? (I did like templet sticker mounting cameras)App can always use update?Summary: Overall I’m very impressed with the camera, DVR and the available features. It represents a very good camera system.

Love everything but the software for remote access. Once you are hooked into your network the remote access should be seamless. Still working on getting off-premise access.The packaging is fine and the 60ft cables are sufficient but 100ft cables are cheap. My primary wish is for a hybrid (wired & wireless) camera system & plug-n-play remote access. Overall a very good system with high quality workmanship. Will buy some 8mp (4K) for super resolution.

This is an excellent NVR and camera package. I actually had the standalone NVR (NV4108-HS) non-ethernet version of this and had a few cameras. So, I got this package and I have to say if you’re considering a non-ethernet version, this is the way to go. I have a full-stack Ubiquiti network, and for whatever reason, the cameras struggle to connect to my PoE switch. With this one – no issues whatsoever. You connect the cameras to the NVR and they just work. Also, the NVR came with the hard drive pre-installed. The last one I had to install a drive – very nice it was already installed.The NVR has (as far as I’m concerned) an easy-to-use and intuitive setup wizard to get it going. When you power on the NVR, it takes you through all the necessary steps to get it configured and set up (including adding the cameras). Then you’re ready to go. Mine shipped with the newer firmware, but if you have to update the firmware it’s not too hard. The user interface on these newer NVRs is so much better than the analog NVRs of the past which makes them an appealing option to many of the “subscription” based cameras such Nest, Arlo, Wyze, and many others. I like having my camera recordings stored locally and I like being able to use them without having to pay anyone.During the setup of the NVR, it guides you through a Peer-To-Peer setup of their Amcrest View PRO app which allows you to access your NVR remotely. Essentially Amcrest facilitates a secure connection between your device and the NVR with no subscription fees. The best part about this is that you don’t have to open any ports or anything in your router. The connection is automatic and transparent without any action on your part.The app does need some work but the notifications work well. They were right on par with my Nest Outdoor Cam and Wyze Cam and you tell the app what to when you tap on the notification. It allows you to select a few options two of which are opening to a live view of the camera or the recording event.The IP5M cameras are excellent! What makes them so excellent is their low-light performance. I really don’t like using IR if I don’t have to – you can see more detail without IR if you have enough ambient light. A great example of this is recently on my neighborhood Facebook page someone posted a video of someone trying to break into a car. The thieves pulled their car into their driveway and if they had IR turned off you might have been able to see the license plate, but because they had IR turned on the license plate just looked like a bright reflection. These IP5M cameras work well with low light and the picture almost rivals my Ubiquiti G4-PRO($449). The cameras have an excellent and high-quality microphone that can provide detailed audio once the “audio filter” has been disabled. The audio filter makes it sound like the microphone is underwater so I would strongly encourage doing that. You can disable the camera's microphone filter from the camera’s web interface.Speaking of the camera’s web interface. The camera's web interface CAN be accessed when they’re connected to the NVR. It may vary but you’ll use a URL similar to this http://:100. It’s the NVRs IP and then a port. You can see this if you use a browser to connect to the NVR and then select ‘Cameras’.Also, I would suggest changing the password again after you have finished the setup. I believe you change the password before adding the cameras. The cameras use a default login of admin/admin. If you change the NVR password after you have added the cameras it will update passwords on the cameras as well. The camera's web interface is accessible even if you’re not authenticated to the NVR.The NVR is fairly quiet and doesn’t run too warm as far as I can tell and with roughly 7 cameras connected with IR running it was using around 35 watts as measured with my kill-a-watt meter.Performance-wise – I would feel pretty confident that this NVR could record from six to seven 4K cameras running at their full FPS and resolution. I connected five IP5M cameras and two IP8M cameras all recording at their highest resolution and maximum FPS and set to record all the time and it was only using roughly 55Mbps out of 88Mbps of its available bandwidth. It doesn’t seem to struggle when recording but trying to playback the recordings you might be able to select 1-3 channels before it will say “Over decode ability”. I don’t really find that a problem as I’m only going to search one camera at a time. Also, a note about the matrix view of the NVR itself – it won’t play the 'main' stream from all the cameras. It will intelligently balance which stream it is showing in the matrix view – pretty smart.Playing back recordings is pretty easy – it’s easy to find motion events as the yellow blocks on the timeline. Downloading videos is tricky though – I would suggest using ‘SmartPSS’ and then watching a video on YouTube called “How to Playback and Export CCTV Video Using SmartPSS’ from ‘Auckland Security Cameras’. Also, be sure to read the ‘EXTRA NOTE:’ in the description.The method in the video works pretty well – as the video is very nice and clear if you can get the original video from the NVR itself.My favorite way to browse motion events is using the NVR itself (the web interface is decent from a Windows PC). The Amcrest App needs a lot of improvements before its usefulness will be on par with its competitors. If Amcrest nails their app down – this NVR with mobile app will be a game-changer.So, in summary: Great NVR, super simple to set up and configure, mobile motion notifications work great and built-in ethernet is life. Also, IP5M cameras are probably the best value in Amcrest’s lineup for quality and low-light performance!