A complete waste of time and money. The actual equipment was not terrible. The cameras were not very good on clarity especially in night vision mode which was grainy at best. The biggest problem was the customer support I never got. It is very difficult to hook up to set up to view with your mobile device. The set up was also difficult. I called 8 times and sent numerous e-mails which as of today still never got one return call or e-mail. I waited till last minute before I sent back to hear from them. Gave them all the chances to help but it never came so I sent back for a refund.
Cons: My DVR and one camera needed replaced. The RMA process was good but the technical knowledge was subpar. I called in for several issues and they do not seem to understand their product in detail. For example, I would like the cameras to take a snapshot when they detect motion. After several conversations and specific emails with pictures, this still does not work. I will update my review if this gets resolved.
In summary, the camera quality is so poor that if someone is more that 12 feet away, it is difficult to tell who they are. And the DVR configuration is not intuitive for any type of advanced configuration. I suggest a system that has at least one to two PTZ cameras.The issues with this unit begin out of the box, when you must enter a password to set up the system configuration options.
From the user's guide (of course, a .pdf from the Q-See website and not included in the box): "Enter the User Name and Password, admin and 123456".
-Unfortunately, the default password is NOT "123456". It's "admin". But only some educated guessing from the domain of frequently-used default passwords got me there. This might have ended the total experience for many users.
-Getting from the password to the configuration option doesn't make your life much better. The menus for setting recording options can only be described as "hideously confusing". Prepare yourself to spend time with the manual and the machine to figure out even the simplest functions (like changing camera names).
-As for finding video and exporting it, two little words: "too hard". I'm still trying, but it depends on recognition of an attached USB device or a successful firmware update, it may not happen...see next item.
-Failed to recognize USB device for a firmware update. A firmware update for this product is available at the Q-See website. I wasn't sure if I needed it or not, since the online description says it (I'm not making this up!) "fixes bugs". When I installed a USB stick with the firmware binary file, the only response from the DVR was a "no USB device found" error.
-One of the four cameras is apparently DOA...but troubleshooting continues.
If you are a patient and tech-savvy user who wants to curl up with .pdf manual and attempt to crack the code on dense user interface option displays, this might be a satisfactory unit. But for those of us with other things to do, I'd explore other products that may have been designed with more attention to the user experience.
The only reason this is a two star review is that the hard drive for this is decent enough(a WD 500 GB AV-GP SATA II Intellipower 16 MB Cache Bulk/OEM AV 3.5-Inch Hard Drive WD5000AVCS), and can be repurposed if the record/playback, interface and USB device recognition issues can't be resolved.Although they say it come with "Indoor/Outdoor Cameras with 400 TV Lines of Resolution", the quality of the image stinks. You cannot make out any details especially faces.
Very disappointed, after running hundreds of feet of cables in the attic only to have poor quality results.
If you shop for other brands, you could do better. We just got this system setup a few weeks ago and I have to admit that the hardware installation was pretty easy.
Since we have removable ceiling tiles in our office, it was pretty simple to just remove a few tiles and run the four cameras to the locations where we wanted them. At that point, we ran the included cable from each camera back to a central location where we keep the DVR & a 26" flat panel mounted to the wall using a wall mount with shelf.
Unfortunately, that's where the troubles began.
The DVR itself isn't very intuitive, and I wasn't able to get all the features working. After a day of messing with this, I just went out and purchased the CIB K808AV500G DVR and hooked it up to these cameras instead. That combination actually works really well.
Overall, I'd have to say that the cameras are pretty good but the DVR needs some work. Having said that, if you can get the DVR working, then this would be an excellent system for the price.
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