Top Review
This is Karen's husband writing this review as I am the "tech guy" in our home.
I am VERY pleased with how the camera is performing so far, so the 4.2 out of 5 rating seems well deserved. I admit I had some reservations when I read some of the reviews that were negative, in my opinion some may have been because of an individually defective product and some may have been due to lack of detailed enough directions.
When I was first trying to connect the camera to our WIFI it wouldn't connect, then I realized I forgot to type in our WIFI password, DUH ! After I added the password it connected immediately. The camera is roughly about 85 feet from our WIFI router and goes thru 2 walls and still has kept connected very well.
Also, we have Amazon Alexa and at first could not get Alexa to recognize the camera, so I did an online search for help and found a page on the Reolink support site with the steps needed to connect to Alexa, after reading that page I saw there was a step I didn't know about, once I followed those steps Alexa connected very well ! We can view the live camera feed from our smartphone app, from our "Echo Shows" via voice command, and even on our tv screens with Amazon Firestick (we have other brands of security cameras we view thru the Firestick also) so I can use a voice command and see different cameras on the screens including the Reolink camera, and I did not have to download anything to the Firestick, simply enable Alexa according to the directions on the help page I mentioned.
I already had security cameras looking from our home outward, I wanted a wireless solar PTZ camera I could mount away from the house that I could turn to look at the house as well as turn to view other areas of our property not covered by the cameras we already had.
So I mounted the camera on a thick (schedule 40) PVC pipe and mounted the solar panel on the very top of the pole, I used 3 hose clamps to fasten the PVC pipe to a 4 foot metal fence post I hammered into the ground, so far it seems to working very well. I will upload a picture of it.
I do a lot of research before buying tech stuff, and it would be difficult to find ANY product that is perfect or that you might wish had more or better features, but for the features you get with this camera (including solar powered, PTZ capability, Alexa connectivity) I really can't complain for the price paid.
Note: Remember this is not a commercial grade professional system, but commercial grade features likely cost much higher commercial grade prices, so again, for the price paid I really can't complain, I feel this camera does really pretty good for it's price level ! -
Karen Leight
