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Keep watch over your property with the Lorex Wireless 720p HD IP Camera. This camera films in high definition 1280 x 800 megapixel resolution. Its dual HD lens provides enhanced day and night video, and the 2-way audio functions as both a speaker and microphone. This camera records four locations simultaneously and offers numerous recording options-directly to the camera via microSD, smartphones, tablets and PC or Mac computers.
List Price: $ 199.95
Price:
fake advertising at its best! (or worst!),
this is not an HD camera
this is not an HD camera
allow me to clarify;
among the features, this camera has remote view capability using their custom program on either a smartphone or a pc. in either case you get to choose the image quality in one of four resolutions:
320x240 (QVGA)
640x480 (VGA)
1024x768 (XGA)
1280x800 (WXGA/HD)
of course you would always want to choose the highest resolution, why else would you pay the extra money to buy an HD camera, right? so far so excellent.
the problem is when recording to the SD memory card it will ONLY record the video in 320x240. that's right, in the lowest, grainy, can't recognize any faces resolution. what this means is that if you ever have to review your security video recordings, you won't be able to recognize any faces or any other details that would help identify anything. you may as well be staring through a frosted window smeared with grease.
when i contacted lorex support through their online form, they answered with a generic response and closed my ticket. this forced me to call them on the phone. the first person who answered the call tried to get me to change the resolution in the pc/smartphone app. when i clarified i wanted to be able to RECORD video in HD, she place me on hold for a while and then introduced her supervisor. the supervisor clarified that the recording capability was limited to the lowest resolution in order to 'save space' on the memory card. when i clarified that i've bought a 32gigabyte memory card specifically to be able to store plenty of HD video, she said it was still not possible. i then questioned specifically if it was right that this HD security camera did not have any ability to record video in HD resolution and she agreed.
so it seems that lorex is selling an HD security camera that can't record in HD. this is fake advertising. what excellent is a security camera when it can't record in the advertised HD resolution?
all of the reviewers giving this product high marks did not bother to test wether the recording was HD or super low-res, or don't even realize it.
i'm going to return this useless lorex low-res junk and get the samsung SNH-1011 IP SmartCam, at least it records in 640x480
http://www.samsungsv.com/Model/Detail/26/SNH-1011N
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Disappointed,
- It crashes for no reason. when attempting to connect to it, you will get "camera offline" error. It sometimes recovers itself fine after a long while; other time you would have to get it back by resetting the power.
- Terrible documentation: 100+ pages of manual is just a repeat of the same procedure for an exhaustive permutation of different idevices....
- playback is near impossible. This includes both the mobile app and the PC app. When trying to play back some recording, my iphone would basically hang up for 10 seconds and give up. There is really no way to play back the recordings on NAS devices on either the mobile app or the PC application. I was able to view the recorded clips but, with VLC on my mac.
- tunnel vision. I know this is not a wide angel camera, but the field of view is so narrow that you would need two of them in order to keep your french doors in full coverage. The only place this camera can keep in full view would be a narrow entry way.
- Feature missing/mixup: This camera is not made by Lorex. It is a re-branded startvedia camera, with reduced features. The software for starvedia is called Camview, and lorex renames it to L-view. Lorex seems to have forgotten that one can record to a NAs device instead of having to buy a microsSD card. There is no mention of NAS recording, and yet, the Lorex mobile app still shows this "vestigial" feature (under "scheduling"). Lorex app does not allow you to configure NAS recording anywhere. I was able to configure it via the camera IP but I am still trying to figure out how to play back those recordings using the mobile/pc apps. I would recommend that you go to starvedia site and get their manual for this device.
So what is excellent? Not much:
- Camera looks OK (comparing to the netgear look).
- the microphone feature works really well. Two way communication is choppy, but one can hear it all when connecting to the camera remotely.
- Connecting to network is simple with WPS. The procedure on manual from Lorex is convoluted, but it is really as simple as 1): press wps on device 2) press wps on router. You can add the comera afterward by "local search".
- you can connect to the camera's IP directly and have a much simpler time at configuring the cameras.
I am losing confidence in Lorex (not that I had much to start with). Don't pay 100 greenbacks (@costco) for this piece of crap and suffer endless emotional distress.
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Certainly not as terrible as some of the reviews make out, but does have its challenges.,
I found the best method for setup is to get the basic install done through the Ping application then switch to L-View on the PC/Mac. Note that when it initially questions to change the password in Ping, it is changing the password that is used to view video, not the admin password (this confused me the first time I set up a camera). The administrator account, used to configure the camera, is 'admin' with a blank password. You can change this once you are inside the browser-based Web Configuration tool.
Once in L-View, right-click on the camera ID and select "Web Configure"; the user ID as password here are the admin credentials. Once in the web configuration screen, you can set up IP, NTP, scheduling, and lots of other goodies. The browser is much simpler than the iPad/Android applications, and much more intuitive. Using the browser, you can have multiple camera consoles open in different windows, allowing you to double check your configuration across each camera so you have consistent alerting/recording/etc.
I have used the email alerts and it works fantastic. Each email alert contains a screenshot from the camera. It can get a small annoying because I've experienced it send out hundreds of alerts at a time. Just be careful and tweak the settings accordingly. The two-way communication does work, though it is a small temperamental. You have to account for network latency, giving the person time to listen to you and respond. I believe it is more of a gimmick than anything, but the ability to listen to the camera audio is a excellent feature.
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