First, the good. These cameras produce a nice, sharp image with fluid motion at 30 fps. Night vision clarity is excellent, although the onboard IR illumination range is far less than the claimed 100 ft. range. Actual useful range is about 30-40 ft., unless there is another light source nearby. I have multiple cameras on each side of the house, and the *combined* illumination from them provides excellent visibility overall. The fact they can record sound is a BIG PLUS. (Default sound setting is OFF... you will need to enable it per-camera in the encoding settings.)

Now, the bad. The downsides are unreliable motion detection tagging, and PC based viewer software that loves to crash and always loads several cameras into a single frame causing them to rotate images wildly until I drag each camera to its own frame. I haven't found any way to save view settings in the PC app, so I have to drag cameras to their own frames each time. This is ONLY a problem when viewing with the PC software (which unfortunately is my preferred viewing method). Viewing on a directly connected monitor works perfectly, and so does the iPhone app.

In playback mode there are indicators on the timeline to indicate motion, which are supposed to make reviewing footage easier. In reality, motion detection accuracy is hit-or-miss. A bug flying close by will trigger motion detection, yet people or animals walking up the sidewalk less than 30 feet away, and cars coming up the driveway right in front of the cameras, will (randomly) NOT trigger motion tagging, even in broad daylight. If you want to review overnight footage to see what happened in your yard while you slept, do NOT rely on the motion indicators on the timeline, because you will miss a lot of activity that doesn't get tagged. Most of our overnight motion tags are moths, which seem to be attracted to IR.

Deducted 1 star overall, because of the poor PC software and unreliable motion tagging. The cameras themselves are 5 stars, and the NVR is worthy of 4-1/2 stars. My biggest complaint is you are limited to 4TB disks, even though much larger disks are available. This is a big deal considering you only get a few days of storage when using multiple cameras. I had to set all 8 cameras to the minimum encoding resolution (2304x1296 @ 15 fps) to get a full 7 days retention on the factory-installed 3 TB disk. That renders at only 3 MP (instead of 5 MP) but still exceeds what my 1080p 40" monitor can display, so the picture quality remains excellent, unless you use a 4K monitor. When left at the default 2560x1920 @ 30 fps, retention was only about 4 days on the same 3 TB disk.

With cameras this good, if Reolink would improve their SOFTWARE reliability and really work to improve MOTION tagging on the timeline, this would be a 5-star system all around... but not with these flaws present.

Like another reviewer, I also had problems with some of the included 3 ft. patch cables being defective. No idea on quality of the 60 ft ones, because I ran my own bulk cabling through the attic and terminated to a patch panel at the NVR.

Overall impression is this is a great little system, but with a few flaws which Reolink could probably fix with updates to their PC app and firmware (wherever the motion detection algorithm lives).

That's really the only downside to this product, that it doesn't come with at least a small display.

Other than that, it's exactly what you want for a security system. Cameras have all the connections you'll need (if you already have wires setup) so you generally don't need to worry about if it'll connect to your existing system.

I don't write many reviews. Only when a product I buy really jumps out at me (good or bad) do I take the time to write out my thoughts. I bought these back in October of 2019, but I've been deployed overseas until now so I finally was able to install them. After two weeks of running them, here's my thoughts on this ~$700+ purchase.

The Good:

* Great picture quality. Love the cameras! They have amazing night vision and are so clear during the day. I saw another reviewer had a problem with his fogging up in the rain, but I haven't had that with mine.

* The app and set up of the Network Video Recorder was super simple. I'm not a tech nerd, so sometimes that stuff can be overwhelming. But this was pretty much plug and play. Pretty self explanatory for setting up the different options.

Now the bad:

* The ethernet cable is terrible. Out of the 8-60 foot cables I received, 3 of them had bad connectors. Bad enough that at first I thought I had a camera that wasn't working. The wire itself just seems very low quality. If you bend it too much, it starts looking brittle; like the outer shell of the line is going to crumble. (My brother has an ethernet cable tester that tests the connection of each little wire inside the cable. The 3 bad cables had multiple wire breaks inside)

* The hard drive and fan inside the NVR is very loud. I may go ahead and add an external HDD, but I wasn't originally planning on that. So don't put this system anywhere close to where you sleep. It is definitely louder than any modern HDD that I've ever dealt with.

* Back to the ethernet cable. It comes with some waterproof lids to keep the plug out of the rain. Well they won't even fit over the RJ45 connectors! There is a plastic piece that is part of the wire that prevents the waterproof lid from fitting over. So, 3 bad ethernet cables and now I have to replace all of the RJ45 connectors for the remaining wires just to get the lids over them... Added work.

Overall, I'm still pretty happy with it. I gave it 4 stars, but I'd say it's 3 stars on the peripherals and 5 stars on the picture quality/cameras. I know very well that I'm not buying a top of the line system. But ethernet cable isn't THAT expensive nowadays. Would it really eat into their profits too much to put good quality CAT6 in the package? Or would it be that hard to make sure your waterproof lids fit over the existing RJ45 plugs? I just didn't know I'd have to buy some higher quality ethernet cable to make this work like it was supposed to.

In time, I'll come back to this if anything else pops up.

I purchased my system 16 channel REOLINK RLN16-410 NVR with 8 B500 cameras in November 2021. Initially I was very please for the first month. One of the B500 cameras that shipped with the NVR quit. I followed all troubleshooting procedures but the camera never responded. I contacted REOLINK and outlined the troubleshooting I did and they shipped a new camera RLC-410-5MP. On December 25 I ordered two more RLC-410-5MP cameras as two more B500's went bad. I ordered two more RLC-410-5MP on January 3rd and again ordered two more RLC-410-5MP on January 12th. I have replaced 7 of the 8 B500 cameras that came with the system. Since then I have had no issues with the RLC-410-5MP cameras or the one remaining B500.

Having said all of that I am pleased with the NVR, once I got used to the settings interface. I am pleased with the video quality. I added an additional Seagate ST3000VX09 3Tb Hard disk for additional storage. I can't be without security which is why I went ahead and purchased additional cameras for the B500 cameras that failed. I'm hoping since the B500 cameras are under warranty REOLINK will exchange the remaining six that went bad. I'll be happy to change my overall rating when I exchange the bad cameras.

May 11 2022 - UPDATE

REOLINK stood by their product and replaced the faulty B500 cameras. I like the system and has been problem free since I received new cameras. I am happy with my purchase.

I am satisfied with the product, with the exception that it took me a year to install it (in my new house) after I bought/received it. Now after installed, one of the cameras is allowing water to enter inside when it rains and does not allow to see anything (water resistance failure) the support eligibility says that it has expired. I would really appreciate it if you would change this camera to be able to give it 5 stars.