REOLINK2K Indoor Security Camera E1, Plug-in 2.4G Wireless WiFi for Baby/Pet Monitor with Phone app, 360 Degree Dog Camera with Person/Pet Detection, Night Vision, 2-Way Talk, Local Storage

Easy to set up, works great!

It works really good. It's just really sad that the desktop app only supports Windows and Macintosh. Leaving us Linux users out in the cold.... as usual. You know, heaven forbid they acknowledge our existence in the marketplace.

... depends a lot on what you have to start with.I ran Digi-Watcher for twenty years on a WinMe Dell Dimension with a Microsoft LifeCam that, for most of its life, served no other purpose. Loved it, because it did a common thing uncommonly well: motion-sense, e-mail notification with pix, stored video and sound, etc. It was exceedingly flexible and exceedingly reliable. I could easily disconnect it from the network when I didn't care to be live-streamed.My old Dimension finally kicked the bucket, leaving me with a gap in my indoor home/office surveillance coverage. Enter the Reolink E1. I found it much less flexible and only marginally more capable than my old system, but I finally made it work in a way that suits my needs.I was wary of downloading an app to my phone just to set up another device. I would have preferred to use a browser, but the E1, unlike higher-end Reolink cameras, doesn't support that. Reolink provided a lightweight APK file that asked for only limited permissions, which I found encouraging. I also discovered later that I would use the phone app much more often than I would have expected during my comings and goings.Thanks to the commenter here who advised using an ethernet cable connection to perform the initial setup of the E1. I've got several WiFi networks available to me at this location, and l use them to isolate certain devices and applications from one another. Nevertheless, my E1 couldn't find any of them at first. I needed to connect a cable from the E1 to the desired network and to get my phone on that network at the same time. Afterwards, the E1 was able to connect to WiFi without the wire and to be controlled, of course, irrespective of which network the phone was on.The E1 makes a fuss if a network's password contains any non-alpha-numeric characters. I wasn't about to change that password for one device. Somehow after multiple tries, I got the E1 to accept it. Entering that long password also took multiple tries due to mistyping. There was almost no way to confirm what I had typed before hitting Enter, so I could never be sure of the cause of a failed connection: mistyping, weak signal or something else. (The use of the ethernet cable simplified those possibilities.)To send e-mail notifications when it detects motion, the E1 uses a single e-mail address to send a message to itself! This means that it wants to know your e-mail password! I ended up setting up a new single-purpose e-mail address for the E1. It recommends Gmail or Yahoo(!) (My Thunderbird client receives and categorizes incoming e-mails for multiple accounts all-at-once.)I was accustomed to taking my old camera off the network when I didn't need it, but that's not the easiest option with the E1. It can be finicky about finding the WiFi network later. Now I might just use the PTZ function of the phone app to point it toward a wall that receives no direct sunlight when I am home (and make sure its microphone is off.) This arrangement does not provide the same level of isolation as I am used to, but in casual use it beats fiddling with the network router or disabling a WiFi network extender (for now.) Even so, it sometimes produces dozens of spurious notifications/day due to the sun moving in and out of the clouds. I am reluctant to decrease E1's motion sensitivity any further than I already have. Ultimately, the easiest solution seems to be to place something decorative and opaque (like a hat or a sock or an inverted flower pot) over it when monitoring is not needed. The cover is unambiguous, and it obviates the need to use the app's PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom, though the E1 does not zoom) feature to reposition the camera constantly. It does still seem to “phone home” once per night at 2:00AM if nothing else has been going on.So, in the end, I spent many hours setting up my first E1 for the most basic functionality and then configuring it and the network to suit my work habits. If it remains stable, convenient and secure, it will be a good tool. If I decide to add additional Reolink cameras, I'll probably devise a way to connect and disconnect them to and from the network as a group (probably using a network extender with a unique WiFi SSID.)

Great camera

I have three cameras, the two in this review plus an exterior fixed position camera, also by Reolink. Of the two cameras being reviewed here, one is connected wirelessly and the other is a hard wired connection. You'd think the wired connection would be 100% reliable but it doesn't perform any better than the wireless unit.Both are worthless as security cameras. They might be ok for monitoring pets but even then connectivity is hit and miss. If you're using them to monitor babies or the elderly I would look for something more reliable. Keep in mind I'm a software engineer and work with electronics every day.Connectivity performance: HorribleThe Details:1) I have a wifi watering system (Rachio) that works very well and is mounted outside where the wifi coverage is much worse. However, it has better connectivity than both of these cameras.2) I have a Google Home sitting next to one of these cameras and it always has a wifi connection. This should eliminate my home wifi as a source of the bad connectivity.3) Sitting 5 feet away from the Google Home and one of the cameras is my wifi router. This does eliminate my wifi as a source of the connectivity issues.4) One of the cameras is wired directly to my home network along with a Linux computer and a laptop connected to the same network switch. This camera performs no better than the wifi camera!!!!Remote Control: Sporadic at bestThe Details:1) The alarm function works if and when you can connect to the camera.2) The "Push-to-talk" function never works, period.3) Remote positioning of the camera will drive you crazy because when you can connect to the camera it only works about 30% of the time and all movement is delayed by about 5 seconds. This means that you have to make small movement adjustments and then wait for 5-10 seconds to see if the camera actually moves. If you make large adjustments either the camera doesn't move or you're likely to overshoot the position you want. Also, there is no indication when you've reached the limit of movement.4) Saving and naming camera positions works about 70% of the time (again, if and when you can connect to the camera). This is the best feature to use rather than trying to remotely position the camera at will. Create and name the best positions and then use the pre-programmed positions to move the camera. This is useful when the camera is mounted in a room but the camera field of view does not cover the entire room. You can then save multiple named positions and then recall them.Setting Presets: Good luckMost of the settings could not be changed or required repeated attempts. Camera settings - none of them could be changed. Email notification scheduling - yes. Push notifications - nope. Motion detection - nope.Remote Video Monitoring:Image quality - Outstanding (when you can connect). Both day and night image quality is good.In Summary, the cameras just don't work well as security cameras if you wish to hear audio or speak through the camera, remotely control the camera position, or reliably use many of the remote control features.If you just want to remotely monitor video then they work ok for that.

Being a Geriatric person, having the instructions in a print size that even someone with perfect vision could not read, Rquired me to use a looking glass and read a step, do one thing then next and on and on and when I had to restart and do it all again and again for two cameras, I felt really good to be done and rest a while. With that said, once set up and renamed for the location they are placed, "they work great" and I have now downloaded a "readable copy of the manual to understand all the features of the Cameras!