Quick overview

At the moment I've have 38 cams from several brands on 3 Blue Iris servers plus one each of the Wyze cams. I've tried almost that many models. Here is what I've found.

I like the clarity of the Reolink 5MP the best.

But I've found the Reolink 5MP bullet cam can have trouble in Texas heat. When temps got over 100 here the Reolink's auto focus and zoom motors stopped working then the camera just crashed. For awhile it was also losing its configuration I bought the dome version and have not had any trouble with it. Heat has not seemed to be an issue with any others except the old Foscam 8900 PTL series OEMs made for indoor use.

IR reflection bad be really bad in some of these. Dome cams almost all seem to have this to some degree. You should look at the pics here but in general I would recommend the Amcrest, Hikvision or Reolink bullet cams for that.

Wifi range varies a LOT. For example at the turn in my driveway some 80 feet through heavy woods the Amcrests, Foscama and Escams all worked most of the time. Reolink, Hikvision and SV3C were iffy and the Wyze cam could not even connect.

Started a Spec Compare sheet

I'll keep adding stuff as I test cameras and find new info but it already has pretty complete on the cams listing the "IP Cams I've tried" section. I've added the link (Camera spec compare) in the links section in the header.

Review: SV3C 960P Wifi Outdoor Camera

SV3C 960P HD Wifi Wireless Outdoor Home Surveillance IP Security Camera,Bullet Camera,20M Night Vision,Support Remote View by Phone,Pad,Windows PC, Support Max 64G TF Card for Record

With 2 Foscams stolen and a third dying as I tried to put into service I started looking around for another cheap cam for locations outside the fence. What I found was the SV3C 960P Wifi Outdoor Camera, for just $40. Though as I'm writing this I see it is $43 today.

Between the 1280 x 960 resolution and the price you are not going to expect much. I'd say the daytime view is about as good as the 720p Escams and Foscams. Though one oddity was the picture seems distorted almost like they took something a bit taller than 1280x720 and stretched it to be 1280x960. For instance here is my video target.

You can see it seems just a bit taller than it is wide. Enough I noticed it though again probably not enough to matter but it is just odd.

Since I still have a dog food box of parts still sitting on my coffee table here is the compare shot between the HikVision DS-2CD2035-I (left) and the QD900 (right) in evening light

to compare to the SV3C

You might notice the distorted aspect ratio again along with the lack of detail.

Next I stuck it next to a HikVision DS-2CD2035-I with 4mm Lens that comes in at $80 ($81 at the moment).

Here are evening shots of the (collapsed) pool area and deer feeder.
The Hikvision looks like this

and the SV3C like this


Looks zoomed in a bit but not bad till you zoom in. Zoomed in on the feeder the Hikvision looks like

While the SV3C looks like


Things get worse at night. Note both cams are on here so the illumination from both are in use. The Hikvision

vs the SV3C


So the IR distance / sensitivity is not great.

On the plus side it does work with Blue Iris though it is not obvious how to get it working. You want a config similar to this

Some gotchas:

If you do get one of these you might be thrown by the interface coming up in Chinese. Look for this screen to change it.


Unfortunately it does not seem to save this and you need to select English here or the login screen each time.

The password field does not seem to support symbols so if you type a password like Ab3d! it stores it as Ab3d.

Can not turn off UPnP and it says succeeded though UPnP is disabled at my site and I have the cam blocked form accessing the internet.

Lastly it comes with the IP set to a static 192.168.1.136 which might cause problems getting it setup.