Below is my review of the Lorex LH118501 in an outdoor residential setting. See my updates at the bottom.PROs
+ Build quality seems excellent
+ Feature set is powerful and extremely flexible
+ Cameras work great, even in complete darkness
+ DVR features are easy to use and intuitive
+ Included monitor is small & very thin and perfect for surveillance
+ Low power consumption
+ Mobile access let you view cameras on your smart phone from anywhere in the world.
+ Web access let you view your cameras, configure your system, and view recordings from anywhere in the world.
+ Ability to receive e-mail alerts for configured alarm conditions.
CONs
Depending on your ability and house, may require a professional installer.
Cameras have a relatively narrow field of view (50 degrees)
The lorexddns feature (which allows easy remote viewing) quit working after my router IP address changed
INSTALLATION
I performed the installation of this product in my two-story house. I used BNC to Type-F adapters and connected to the cameras through the cable lines in my house's walls. I think that is what most professional installations will do. My house was built with RG6 coax cable runs to the front door and other areas of importance and I used those cables to send the camera signals back to my DVR. If you do not have such coax cabling already in your walls, you may need a professional installer. This is especially true if you do not have a one-story house with ready access to your attic.
Installation of three cameras was straightforward but time consuming. I began by surveying the different connector types and adapters that I would require. I then purchased these online and waited until the next weekend to do the installation. The day of the installation I spent approximately 8 hours climbing up and down ladders to get everything just the way I wanted it. I'm quite pleased with the final result but if you are not patient or mildly handy, or if you are trying to reach high places or don't have coax wiring already routed to your desired camera locations, you're probably going to need a professional installation.
I found the BNC connectors that attach the camera to the DVR to be very sturdy and it does not appear that you would have to worry about anything shaking loose. I would have preferred "Type F" connectors (the kind you screw onto your cable box) since they are much more common in the US.
The included 60' cable (per camera) thoughtfully includes a power run. The cable is surprisingly thinabout the size as a USB cable. This is great for letting you "hide" the cable under the edge of some carpet. In my case, I did not use these cables since I had the RG6 already in the walls.
USABILITY
The Lorex LH118501 has an intuitive GUI that appears anytime you click your mouse or use the included IR remote. From there, a series of very simple menus are available to configure things such as cameras, recording options, internet options, alarms & motion detection, etc...
I found that experimental clicking around with the included mouse often resulted in delightful surprises. I was repeatedly pleased with how the product worked. When I wanted to zoom in on a particular camera view, I intuitively guessed that I could double-click on it and indeed it worked. When I wanted to zoom in more, I tried right-clicking and sure enough, a "zoom" option appeared. This is a well designed user interface that is easy to navigate and explore. I cannot stress how important this is. Many products fail to produce an easy but powerful user interface. This product was designed by someone that understands how to make a product easy to use without dumbing it down and taking away features. I applaud their software development team.
Another example of the fine usability is the prevalent "copy to" functionality. On almost any screen, there is an ability to take the settings for that one camera, and "copy to" to another camera's setting. This allows you to quickly configure all 8 cameras with various settings that are right for your environment. This is a thoughtful inclusion and much appreciated.
FEATURES
The Lorex LH118501 is packed with all the features you could possibly want for a home security system. The first thing that I did was setup each of my cameras to only record when motion is detected. Technically, the DVR is always recording. But the magic of the motion detection feature is that the DVR will only save recordings that are triggered by motion. When motion occurs, the DVR rewinds back in time so you can see what happened just before the motion was detected and then it continues saving the recording for a configurable amount of time. This is important because if you leave all cameras recording all the time, you have WAY too much video to sort through when you want to go back and look at something. In my case, I want my camera at the front door to only save recordings when something interesting is happening. This feature lets me do that. Even cooler is that once you've setup a camera for motion detection, you can even configure what regions in the camera's field of view will actually trigger the motion sensor. For example, the camera above my front door is aimed to view my porch, front walkway, and the street. While I want the street in the picture, I don't want cars driving by to trigger the motion sensor. An extremely simple grid tool lets me tell the Lorex only to detect motion on my walkway and porch. The end result is that if someone walks up to the house I'll get a recording and be able to see their car but I won't have to sort through hundreds of recordings of cars driving by to find this one event. Very cool.
While the motion sensing feature sounds good on paper, it actually works quite poorly in an outdoor area. I have four outdoor cameras and end up with at least 100 "false recordings" per day. Things like the sun blowing leaves on trees (reflecting as shadows on the ground) or even an occasional insect flying by the camera trigger false positives. I think this feature is probably really only of use for indoor situations where mother nature doesn't interfere.
All cameras can be setup with schedules of operation. If you don't want a camera recording during some part of the day or night, you can configure that. If you consider motion in your living room an "alarm" from 8-5 but not otherwise, you can configure that.
MONITOR
The included 13" LED monitor is light and very thin (an inch or less). It will be easy to mount just about anywhere and with minimal support. The picture provided is clear and crisp. Because it is an LCD, it won't suffer burn-in. And because it is LED-based, it uses minimal power and doesn't generate any heat. I was impressed with this monitorit is very nice and not at all an afterthought.
The monitor will let you view 8 cameras, 4 cameras, or 1 camera at a time. If configured, motion sensor feature will let any camera that is detecting motion automatically take over the full screen view. There is also a very handy "picture in picture" function that will let you view one camera full screen (say the cash register) while having a tiny floating window show you another camera. The PIP window can be dragged anywhere on the screen so you can put it anywhere that doesn't obstruct what you're trying to see on the main view.
CAMERAS
The DVR can handle 8 cameras but this bundle comes with 4. The cameras are lightweight but appear to be well engineered and constructed. Each camera requires a video connection and low-voltage DC power connection. The mounting bracket is made of a lightweight metal and can articulate about any direction you can imagine. It should be easy for you to point a camera in any desired direction from any mounting surface. The cameras are very small and not at all intrusive.
The cameras automatically sense ambient light levels and have three modes of operation. In bright lighting, the cameras capture a full color image. If light is a little too dim, the cameras switch to black & white mode to give better clarity. Finally, in darkness, a set of infrared LEDs automatically turn on for a full night-vision. I haven't experimented with the reach of the night vision but it does work extremely well in my limited testing. This is a great security feature.
I'm pleased the report that the cameras are reasonably robust. During the installation I accidentally dropped one of the cameras from a height of about 8 feet. It fell onto a grassy area and took a nice bounce but was fine. Whew!
One thing I don't like about the cameras are their somewhat limited field of view. At 50 degrees, they are only able to view just over half of a room. Realistically, if you want full coverage of a room, you'll need two cameras. Some of the other Lorex cameras offer a 70 degree field of view which seems like it would be more useful overall.
WEB ACCESS
Setting up web access to my Lorex LH110 proved very easy. All I had to do was connect the box to my Ethernet network and then write down the IP address it was given. I was then able to use my Windows 7 laptop (on the same network, in my house) to connect and see all of the cameras. Once the November 2011 firmware update came out, I was also able to view the Lorex web access from my Macintosh as well. The Macintosh GUI is every bit as nice as the Windows version; that made me happy. The web access would not work under Firefox on Windows.
In summary, the web application now (as of November 2011) works fine with Internet Explorer 9 and Safari. It does a fine job of displaying what is showing on my four cameras. I am able to zoom into each camera as if I was using the DVR console.
IPHONE ACCESS
Following the provided instructions I was able to install the Lorex Mobile ECO application from the Apple App Store. It was a free download. Once running, I gave it the IP address and password to my DVR and was able to quickly see the camera views. It worked very well and was quite a novelty. I find myself using this feature almost daily. I check on my dogs and also check for packages on my front door. I love this feature of the product.
One feature that they do not yet have in their iPhone app is the ability to view past recordings. I would very much value the ability to run a report of all "motion alarms" and then view that video from my phone. You can run reports from the web browser.
REMOTE VIEWING
Lorex includes a free "DDNS" service with this product. Without going into technical details, this is a technique for giving you a free internet "name" that you can use to access your home security system from anywhere on the planet. And then from either your iPhone Lorex app or from any Internet Explorer web browser, you can log in and see your cameras.
The procedure for setting up DDNS was easy and straightforward. The only thing that might trip some people up is setting up "port forwarding" on your home firewall. Lorex has instructions on how to do that and they also have a tool on a CDROM that will do it for you. Since I have advanced knowledge in this area, I did not use their tool.
Once I set it up, I initially found that it works as advertised and I had no problems remotely viewing my cameras. It's a really powerful feature. I showed the live camera feed to some friends at work and they were all impressed and interested. Unfortunately, after my DSL company replaced my router, it picked up a new public IP address but the lorexddns.net never updated as it should have. It's stuck with my old IP address. This means it no longer works. I am still able to remotely view my cameras but I had to manually look up my public IP address and write it down. DDNS should have allowed me to avoid that.
SUPPORT
Once DDNS quit working, I decided to look for an answer from Lorex. Forget about it. I couldn't find anything useful on their website and I could not find any way to contact them. They clearly don't want you to bother them if you have problems. If I do figure out how to contact them, I'll update this part of my review. I'm tempted to lower my review to 4 stars because of this but the product has been so reliable, it's hard to punish the rating for this flaw.
GENERAL
The DVR box uses between 9 and 10 watts during operation. This is consistent with other small appliances in my house such as my Apple TV and Boxee Box. I think ~10 watts is a very respectable number for a product of this type. For comparison, my directv DVR uses 50% more power at 15 watts. All four cameras combined use a total of 1 watt of power. This is an impressively low number. I suspect the number goes up when in "nightvision" mode but I haven't measured that.
The system boots quickly after power outage (< 1 minute) and the user interface is very snappy. All operations that I performed while configuring the units occurred instantaneously. Button clicks registered immediately. This pleased me because so many products under-provision the computing power required for even basic interactions and result in a laggy/annoying experience (directv!!!).
Buttons on the front of the DVR allow for basic configuration/control though I found that I most often reached for the included optical mouse.
While the July 2011 firmware update completely erased all of my settings, subsequent updates have not suffered from this problem. Since July 2011, I've never had any settings lost during firmware updates.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Aside from the issues mentioned above, this product "just works". I never have to mess with it or reboot it. The Lorex is always working when I need it. I'm impressed with the level of reliability and very happy with this product.
Setting up the cameras was easy run cables, mount cameras etc.
Setting the system up for remote viewing (watching the cameras on the internet) and exporting the router information for iPhone remote viewing is a nightmare. There are no instructions for it and it requires extensive knowledge of the DVR.
The DVR itself constantly freezes and reboots itself. It also likes to freeze whenever you attempt to watch previously recorded footage. There are large gaps in the footage where the DVR will intermittently stop recording. This system is completely, 100% useless.
The instructions that come with it are abysmal. There is a "quick set up" brochure that explains how to connect cables. The rest of the extensive setup is yours to figure out yourself.
They do have a technical support phone line, which I must have called 7 times trying to get this thing to work correctly. The support staff are completely clueless as to how to address the issues with their product. A couple of times they told me they would "forward my call to an expert who would call me back" but I never received a return call.
I'm taking this back for a refund and going with another brand. What a waste of time.
Update: We returned this system for another identical system (Lorex DVR, 4 Camera, Monitor etc) at a local large box retailer. We had the same identical problem with the second one. What a nightmare! We went and returned this one as well. Sheesh!I have been told by a few salesman that the Lorex Products are overpriced without justification. After studying complete systems for a few weeks, I have learned that Lorex offers a few significant benefits over other brands. One of them is the auto-port forwarding software that comes with their dvr surveilance systems. This proprietary software automatically configures just about any router to enable remote internet viewing of your system. This is complimented by offering their own exclusive DDNS access to Lorex customers at no additional cost. For example, if I choose a username of homesec, my internet website would be homesec.lorexddns.net. From any computer, I am now able to access my system, reliably. I have streamed it simutaneously from two remote locations for over 24 hrs straight and still have a live feed. I am very happy with the high level of thoughfulness that went into the interface. I do not know if this is a feature available anywhere else, but I am able to control every possible feature and function from a remote browser and can set multiple permissions for multiple users.
Aside from the DVR, the cameras are also better than most comperable systems. They include 480 lines of resolution, 122 degree f operating temp, IP66 (very high) weatherproof rating, and a proprietary auto mechanical IR filter cut that helps display the best image at all times. The image is also remarkably flat with a 50 degree field of view. The viewing angle is average, but still better than many. I purchased an additional 4 cameras (sg7530) that have a 73 degree field of view to compliment the system. The cameras also use less power than most at 250 mW with IR on. The LED monitor makes this deal outstanding. It is so light and uses only 9w of power. I have 4 cameras connected along with the DVR, gigabit switch, and monitor to a 900VA Belkin UPS. It only uses 6-7% of load. I ran a 2 hour deep cycle test and the battery only dropped to 62%!!! I can run the system and view the display for a very long time if power were to go out. It would be nice to run this system off of a solar/deep cycle bettery setup to make it completely grid independant for an effectively perpetual security surveilance system.
Anyway, I am not going over all of the features that everyone else has already mentioned. Instead I thoughn it important to diuscuss the ones that sold me after very extensive research and comparison. One other thing I learned about CCTV systems, in general is that cat5 wiring is easier to run and better than coax. It also allows you more options (audio, ptz control, etc) all in a single smaller cable (use solid core 24ga). "Videosecu" offers cat5 breakout dongle sets that convert rj45 to cctv power, video, and audio. The last of the 4 prs can be used to control a PTZ or as an alarm or sensor input. With an understanding of the importance of security and a stubborn never give up mentality, this system can be incorperated to any home and provide commercial quality performance (assuming th HDD is truly 100% duty cycle).
I only gave it 4 stars, because I would like some of the logitech wilife/alert features and options to be incorperated into the software. That being said, at least I do not have to pay a yearly fee like with the Logitech system. Overall, outstanding and well thought out grab and go package. When choosing a system, make sure you seriously consider the number of cameras you may need vs the number of channels on the DVR. IF you are going to put 4, then get an 8 channel. If you are going to put 7 then get a 16. Too late for me, but here is the issue. A 4 channel system provided a max of 120 frames per second, 8channel=240FPS, 16channel= 480 FPS. That effectively means that at the highest resolution and picture quality, you will have only 7.5 FPF if you max out that system's cameras. I dont know about you, but 7.5 fps is very choppy to me. If that does not matter to you, then dont sweat it, but I want the smoothest, biggest, best picture possible on as many cameras as possible. Study it further if this means anything to you. FYInone of thes systems are "easy" to setup, if you plan to use all of the features, but the instructions are excellently detailed and use proper English. Anyway, if there are any problems,I will update. So far, so good.
Hope this helps!!!If you are comfortable stringing wires in the attic or basement you will do fine getting the cameras set up. Have to think carefully about placement. Can't use them in locations that have a mix of high and low light. Make sure they are close enough to the subject to be able to see details. At night this is particularly important. Had to move cameras after I reviewed the output and realized that the quality was low enough that no ID could be made. Over the garage will probably be much too high. ANY motion triggers the email function, including rain or snow. The masking function and sensitivity functions for motion sensing during set up is a joke. For straight continuous recording it works fine. I use Apple products at home and the software really doesn't work well with them. The Mac world was an afterthought for the company. More than anything else, the cameras are visible, the alarm system I had installed is visible so hopefully the bad guys will stay away. Customer service is nonexistent. YOU MUST READ THE MANUAL. If you are going to use the Internet functions you need to be savvy. Having a geek friend to help set it up will be necessary unless you claim that title for yourself.
Update 7/4/2012:
I have been playing with manual adjustment of the frame rate. I have found that the image quality is MUCH better if you take the frame rate OFF automatic and set is at manual. I use 3 frames per second and the detail improvement is HUGE. 6/28/2011 initial impression: I've only done basic setup and configuration so far, more information will follow as I put this through its paces.
First, the manual has no index. I've failed to find several things in the table of contents, so a page-by-page search of the 122 page fine print manual has been necessary. This won't matter once the system is up and running, but an index would be very helpful during configuration.
Pulling it out of the box and connecting it was simple and intuitive. The most frustrating part was attaching the monitor to the base. (The arrow is on the back of the base.) Wires are obvious and ports are clearly labeled. I had the system fully assembled for testing in about 20 minutes.
The four cameras connect through the extension cables to one power supply. I like this because only one outlet is needed near the DVR, but it does mean that all cameras will be out of service if the power supply fails.
I find the image quality to be impressive. So far I've tested the cameras to 30 feet in a very dim room (though I haven't tested them in total darkness yet,) and the sharpness and level of detail was quite acceptable.
Configuration is relatively easy, using both the mouse and the remote. Some things (like text and number entry) are more easily done with the mouse, but the remote is handy for menu navigation. Use both if you have the option.
The screen can be configured to display four channels or nine channels. For four camera systems like this one, it still defaults to the nine camera view with five blank views. Double-click the channel of your choice for full screen.
The system has audio capability, but the cameras do not. If you decide later that you require audio recording you can keep the system and upgrade the cameras.
Video files are stored in a proprietary format. If you'll need to share them or view them on your computer, you'll need a converter. One is included on the disc that comes with this system.
You can record continuously, or only during scheduled times. You can also set each camera to record only if motion is detected, and you can specify motion detection over the whole field (the default) or only in specific areas. (This might be useful if you have a device that moves in the field of view--a fan, for example.)
That's as far as I've gotten so far. I'll update as the installation process continues. I've still got to connect it to the network, set up remote connectivity and the Android app, and (here's the big part of the process) permanently install the cameras and run the wires through the walls. Placement of the cameras will be important, since they are not wide angle cameras and have a limited (50 degrees) field of view.
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