It's hard to know how to rate this. For the most part, the hardware is fine. The exception is the mounting brackets on the cameras. If you mount them on a wall and don't point them straight out, at 90 degrees to the wall, there is no way to level the camera. The result is as shown in the first photo, where a level road appears to be on a very steep hill.

The CMS software is acceptable, barely. Some techies might enjoy fooling with all the arcane settings, but for the rest of us it's a nightmare. I believe it's open source, and maybe there's better software somewhere. Any experts reading this can weigh in on that, but I couldn't find anything better.

Just two examples:

1. You cannot resize the window, except to maximize it, in which case it covers your entire screen, including the Windows taskbar.

2. Every time you ask it to connect the cameras, it switches to a 9-camera view (even though I only have 4 cameras) and re-arranges all the windows, so that when you switch back to 4 cameras, not all your video is in the 4 windows. Then you have to go back to the 9-camera view, figure out which windows will be visible in 4-camera view, re-arrange them accordingly, and switch back to 4-camera view.

Tech support is good, both from Sannce and from the seller. You get lucid answers back in about a day, and Sannce even offered to make an appointment with me (in the evening, because of the time difference) to work with me in real time.

If you're patient and willing to put up with some inconvenience, this is a good system. Also, it's entirely possible that the problems I experienced would happen with other brands too.

UPDATE: Increasing to 4 stars and removing the following because I discovered it only happens on the top left monitor of my multiple monitor system, and only if (due to different monitor sizes) the top left monitor is significantly higher than the others in the layout:
"...and all the camera images go grey. See the second photo. If you go back to the original window size and drag it around a bit, you can usually get your video back. In my case, I seem to have to drag the window to a different monitor and back."

UPDATE 2: Decreasing to 3 stars because I have had to contact support several times because something stopped working. So far, all problems have been resolved and support is good, but it is getting old. Most recently a camera has stopped responding. We'll see if that can be resolved.

For the price it's a good system. The camera housing is solid and the DVR is quite and small which I really like. The CAT5 cables come with great weather protection casings for the RJ45 connection to the camera. I did have 1 camera which the black hood insert with detached from the camera when I removed it from the box. But it is simply glued in, so I can fix that. Other wise the camera have a good quality image and night vision.

On the downside: The system is more complex to setup than expected. This is due to the software used for setup. The software has a lot of options allowing a lot of settings to be manually configured which is good but can be over whelming for a non-technical person. The mobile software (iOS) does work but needs improvements. (I have iOS 10 and can confirm it is working for both WiFi and Cellular). To access the recorded video took a few minutes to figure out. It was not obvious how to access the different cameras and actually play the recorded video.

Another issue I've seen other reviewers mention is getting the motion detection to work. I can also say it worked in testing to tigger the audio alarm on the DVR. But I have not been able to get the Email or Push notifications to work yet. Still need to play with those more. I believe the major issue with email notifications is that Gmail is blocking it. I received a notice from Gmail stating they had blocked a sig-in attempt from an app being used because it has known security problems. To get the mobile app to work you must sign up for a 'cloud' account with XMEye.net. I am hesitant to provide my email credentials since they would be storing the information.

My 1 major complaint is that you cannot access the camera from a Mac. The company has acknowledged this but has not provided a planned solution. But you can access them via the XMEye.net app on an iPhone or iPad so I can live with that but the company really needs to provide a solution for Macs also.

Final conclusion.. It's a good deal for the price if you can overlook a few of the challenges. I'd suggest setting everything up inside your house and making sure it fits your needs before installing.

First I'm no guru by any means but sort of tech savvy so to speak. I researched and researched and finally wanted a cost effective system to see how it will work out. Well first off I ran my own cat5 wire and all I had to do was splice the ends on. What's nice is the female end of the camera has a light that indicates if a connection is made and it's communicating with the nvr so you know you have a solid connection. It comes with cables but I already ran my own. Now getting it up and running was a breeze because it really is a plug and play. The only issue I had was for whatever reason my IP address wasn't populating in the nvr so I had to type it in and it was good to go. Maybe it was my att router causing the issue but it was fixed in a second. I have not played with the email alerts yet so I will update when I have some time to get that up. Once your on the network you can install the app on your smart phone by simply scanning the qr code and the rest is simple. It really is a decent beginning system with the ease of connecting/viewing your home while away at work. So far so good. I will attach some photos. The night vision is ok but for the price I'm not complaining.

After having outdoor furniture stolen from my front porch in the dead of night, I decided I needed a surveillance system. After researching many options I settled on this one.

There are many things about this system that I really like. First of all, the cameras are white which makes them barely noticeable against the white exterior of my house as seen in the photos. All that is seen from a short distance is a black dot. I didn't want a black camera that would stand out instead of blending in on my house.

The next thing I especially liked is the cameras are PoE (power over ethernet) which negates the necessity of having a separate power source and video cable to each camera. There is only one cable that provides both the video signal and the power. This makes running cables in the attic much easier. The cameras have a short cable attached to them with a female ethernet connection that is weatherproof which can exit the camera base either through a hole drilled behind it or through the side if the cable is to be routed on the outside of the building.

Another thing I like is the picture quality, it is exceptionally good, including the IR feed at night.The color is very good and the picture definition is very sharp. One camera that overlooks my driveway has a clear picture of the house across the street, roughly 200 feet away. I have the cameras configured to record once they detect movement and at night the moths flying around my porch light 20 feet away is enough to set off the recording function.

There are however a few things I did not like as much. First, and foremost, the documentation that came with the kit is very poorly written by someone whose native language is not English. This makes it very hard to understand what has been written. Then, the written instructions require that you have a fairly advanced knowledge of network systems if you want to access the internet with the system. You will need to know terms such as DNS, DHCP, subnet mask, secondary subnet mask, etc and be able to configure IP addresses. Fortunately I have been around people who work with these systems so I have just enough knowledge to get the system connected to the internet with much trial and error. On the plus side, this is only a problem if you want an internet connection as getting the system up and running and configured for recording is not as difficult as there is a setup wizard that take you through the basics of this. But even it is confusing Trying to figure out playback is also a confusing mess. At least for me and I consider myself a knowledgeable layman.

The DVR comes with a remote control that is next to useless. I have tried a few times to use it but usually give up on it and resort to using the mouse control that plugs directly into the DVR. The mouse makes navigating the menus much easier but again you are quickly dropped into the technical configuration menus which are confusing if you don't understand them.

After using the system for a couple of months, during a storm I encountered two back-to-back voltage drops. The first one reset the DVR and the second one occurred halfway through the reset. This caused one of my cameras to fail and killed my connection to the internet. Fortunately, I was only using three cameras so I was able to replace the bad one with the spare fourth camera I wasn't using but this has led me to believe that the cameras are not very robust. I worry that another camera will go out as we encounter these voltage drops frequently in storms. And I still haven't got my internet connection back, I can't remember how I did it in the first place.

In writing this review I struggled to decide whether to give it three stars or four. I would have preferred three and a half stars. But all things considered, I think four stars is fair. The quality of the camera feeds is exceptionally good, the operation of the record and playback features are confusing but workable, and the internet connectivity is a mess. Since internet connectivity for me is not a necessity, I discounted it's importance. This would normally make me give a three star review but the PoE cameras are a big plus so I settled on four stars.

PROS: Everything you need is included. Solid cameras w/ high quality 1080x960 image and good night performance. PoE simplicity/flexibility. High quality 1TB WD Purple hard drive. Small form factor NVR case. Simple software navigation within the NVR itself. Remote monitoring through cell phone app.
CONS: The included Cat5 network cable is bundled in 180 degree bends, which makes for a nightmare to unravel. Poorly translated instructions.