Test Results

When the testing phase was completed this is impression we got from the NVR 1012 system.


Installation & Ease of Use

When it comes to ease of installation for a wired based system, it really can’t get much easier that this. The setup is fast and intuitive and there are no worries about dropped signals.

With wireless equipment, performance largely depends on your environment for whether or not it is going to work. In testing, we got very good reception from different rooms with just the included antennas. If the signal has to travel a good distance and / or go through a lot of walls, you may need to upgrade the antenna to a higher gain model. This is not the fault of the IP camera; rather it is just a limitation regarding what A/B/G wireless signals can do. If you have multiple 2.4GHz spectrum devices in use in your house, you may also be exacerbating the situation as a localized 2.4GHz source will have a tendency to drown out all but the most powerful of long distance 2.4GHz signals.

However, not everything is perfect with the installation of these cameras. The biggest complaint when it came to installing them was not finding the nearest WAP or Ethernet connection, rather it was in finding the nearest electrical outlet! The power cords that come with these cameras terminate into a fairly small block style power adapter but the total cable length is only a few feet. This means that you will more than likely need an extension cord to power these cameras. All in all this is a minor annoyance and is fairly typical with entry level / value oriented IP cameras.

In the end, the installation is can be considered extremely user friendly as long as the IP cameras can connect to your wireless router and you have a good extension cord handy. To put it bluntly its a lot like the little girl with curl: when she’s good she’s really good but when she’s bad she is a little monster!


Ease of Use

For both wired and wireless setups, the NVR 101 is extremely easy and intuitive to use. Once you connect to the NVR 101 you have complete access to all your cameras from one convenient location. With advanced features like motion detection recording, alarm recording, 2 way conversation and even the ability to set up and configure cameras is available to you with a few simple clicks of your mouse. The only possible way they could make this system even easier to use is if it installed and configured itself!


Transparency/Performance

The performance of the NVR 101 simply is wonderful; it does what it is supposed to do and we literally forgot at times that we were commanding the NVR 101 and not the actual camera!

In testing the wireless connectivity of the IP cameras made for a much more transparent use, in that one does not have to worry about where the nearest Ethernet cable is. This can be a huge deciding factor for you especially if your home was not wired for network access during construction. Having the ability to literally pick up the camera and place it darn near anywhere was extremely handy.


Unfortunately, the performance of the IP camera is not so wonderful and not so typical of $300 cameras. In daylight they suffer from over saturation and grainy picture image quality and it took a lot of time and effort to get the IQ of these cameras to a level that one can at least consider acceptable. The biggest performance enhancement came from literally flipping the camera upside down so that the improperly placed image sensor would not mess with performance of the camera.


On the positive side the night vision performance was very good, as we could see objects well over 6m away.

In the end we were slightly disappointed with the IP cameras overall performance but the amazing performance of the NVR101 does offset this to a great extent. To sum this all up, the NVR 1012 kit is a combination of greatness (the NVR 101) with mediocrity (IP cameras).