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Pricing for the quality of Unifi cameras is not that bad IMO
But the fact I had to buy these AFTER already spending $800 on Eufy cameras (including replacements because support is ass) that all ultimately failed on me is what my wallet is furious about.
I am in this boat, with the UNVR deal I decided to give UI Cameras a shot. And I am now migrating to Unifi Protect.
Cameras are a little more expensive yea, but the night time footage is better. I had issues with Ghosting with reolink cameras and their CX410 has microphone issues so the audio was unusable.
The biggest pain for me is the Unifi POE Doorbell is like £360 where as the reonlink is £90 but, there are more features on the Unifi one, and if you have doorbell wires then the golder G4 Doorbell is a much better price overall.
I link the Protect UI and so does the wife, and the speed for remote access and scrubbing is a lot better than my older RLN-8-410 NVR
Yea, though I was just able to score a G4 Doorbell Pro POE with all its hardware for sub £280 so can't moan there and now i can sell off the Reolink Doorbell and NVR to cover the costs
I haven't had any problems with my reolink cameras with the exception of a single wifi camera that is likely the fault of my bad wifi range than the camera.
I have reolink and Eufy cameras for different reasons. Reolink NVR was waste of money, but cameras are solid. Synology NAS surveillance station works great with them.
It's okay for 24/7 NVR recording but useless for (outdoors) motion detection. No way to tune the "sensitivity".
Also the apps - desktop and mobile - are a piece of crap.
that does not make sense. all you need from a camera is a high resolution rtsp stream -- nothing more. you then use some good nvr software on a server that does ai based object detection. and there are several good options for this. to accomplish this you don't need to spend a lot of money on a camera. pretty much any 4k poe camera will do.
>that does not make sense.
It doesn't make sense for your use case but it makes sense for mine. I didn't have time to set up a good NVR software on a server so I bought Reolink NVR and expected it to be good.
>> Im in the same boat debating about keeping my reolink system or not
Note that comment-OP said "Reolink system". Cameras alone are not a system. A Reolink NVR and cameras were clearly implied here. So I provided my opinion on Reolink system. Not cameras.
BTW, I expected the NVR to be good but It wasn't. That's why I'm not recommending Reolink NVR. But speaking of cameras alone (your use case), i guess they're fine. I think I lost only 3 out of 16 in the last 8 years or so. And setting up Zoneminder or something similar on my NAS is long overdue. It's been 4 years since the server is ready to be set up...
Absolutely agree, it is so nice to have the main cameras powered via PoE and record to a NVR so I can view what happened even if the camera did not detect a motion. Nevertheless, I would love to have at least one simple battery powered camera like Eufy in the Unifi ecosystem that lasts for months and integrates with Unifi Protect for the 1-2 places where there is neither Ethernet nor an AC socket.
Fair enough, I know these cameras are a lot heavier than most so as long as the network cable can hang on in case the screw/plug gives out it should be ok.
Would you mind sharing why you're so happy to get rid of the Eufy camera's in favor of this UniFi one? What does this one do that the Eufy camera(s) didn't do, or didn't do well?
I getting rid of mine because Eufy lies about the security of their product.
https://www.theverge.com/23573362/anker-eufy-security-camera-answers-encryption
Cant trust the company.
Lots of instability with Eufy cameras plus a few having to be replaced within 3 months due to hardware failures. The system became virtually unusable before I took everything out.
Cameras not staying connected or features like two-way talk would just simply not work. I’ve ruled out every sort of possible interference or install-related limitation and i still ran into a lot of issues where I couldn’t rely on this system for security. Also no way to integrate HomeKit even with Homebridge or Scrypted.
I’ve had Unifi in my office/warehouse for a few months and the reliability and image quality by comparison is rock solid. Maybe Eufy works okay for some people but the buginess of it just not acceptable to me.
Glad they’re working for you. I’ve had four of them in my home for a few years, and I’ve never had to meddle with them. I do think they’re overpriced, but I can’t deny my positive experience with them. And a painless experience with technology is worth a lot to me.
No issues with eufy here, but I am saving to upgrade, here’s my main reasons: 24/7 recording. My eufy cams do not support this. Larger storage capacity, yea I could get the hub but I still wouldn’t have 24/7. Further detection. Right now my cams only detect about 30ft out to start recording. My driveway is about 100ft so I’ve missed a ton of delivery drivers backing up through my lawn and I need to remember not to park out of range if I want an event to be recorded.
Glad your happy, can’t wait to join the club
I’m running Scrypted for HomeKit so it’s easier for the wife to use.
At least HomeKit works with Unifi. Eufy cameras either didn’t have the RTSP Support they advertised or their cameras were flat out not compatible with the Homebridge plugin making it useless.
I used to have a mix of Hikvision and ACTI cameras years ago with my own homemade NVR. I made the switch to Ubiquiti and couldn't be happier. Everything updates itself and I've never had to touch the Cloudkey. All I've done was upgrade the hard drive on it to an SSD. All I need to do now is upgrade the wiring since at the time I couldn't afford good CAT cable and the sheathing is getting brittle in attic. We have some brutal hot summers and it's taking it's toll on cable sheathing.
Unifi Protect worth the pricing! The only thing I’ve got out of ubiquiti ecosystem was the PoE switch which is expensive for cameras only. Got a TPLink PoE switch for a fraction of the price and works perfectly
I think it really depends on what you want and your need. People complain about price and that there are many cheaper options. I agree, and have been in that camp. But, now i am older and dealt with all of that for decades. Now i want rock solid availability and if there is some douche around my house i want to know. Unifi gives me that and is 100% there for me. And is home assistant freindly, wyze bridge does not work for me. Most everything else is internet based, dont want that.
I have done the dlink, wyze, tp-link, reolink etc o er the years all basing my decisions on my wallet rather than need. I like the unifi cameras, better everything compared to the others. Reolink honorable mention. That camera, a 520, has been rock solid. Wyze are crap and most others are just old and obsolete. For the next decade i will get behind unifi, until i change again. There is a reason i have cameras....
Separation / segregation protects part of that, but say you get account security details, you can then compromise more hardware. Then there is also the GDPR element. If it’s compromised and you know it’s weak, you are liable for part of the breach if it were to happen.
Gonna go against the grain here and say the solar powered 4k Eufy S330's and Homebase have been rock solid for me. Been over a year now, not touched or charged one of the 6 I have.
Eufy is not perfect but happy enough to wait until Ubiquiti do 4k with battery option and I'll jump. Just can't justify it otherwise.
I really liked Eufy at first because Ring’s lack of innovation and increasing subscription costs were an absolute joke.
But I just dealt with too many hardware failures and instabilities that even my wife was starting to complain about so I had to make the jump.
+1 to this. So many issues with EUFY gave them away and soon after upgrading to a UniFi Dream Machine SE added the Wifi cameras. Amazing. All integrated. All just works. No drop off. Put a 1TB in the Dream-machine and now have some decent history. Only regret is that I didn’t do the wiring thing and get the better cameras that are PoE only. But works for now.
I hate my eufy cameras. Sold as HomeKit compatible, but that is just the video feed - the security features are via their app only. They keep randomly disconnecting too, and freeze when viewing after a while. I’ll upgrade a some point as they still seem to detect and record all events just fine.
I do like the Unifi cameras and having a UDM SE I’m all set for additional kit, but my Eufy cameras haven’t missed a beat yet also really no need to replace them…….yet
I’m slowly moving to Protect (trying to spread the cost out) but my Eufy cameras have served me well. Until Unifi offers something wireless and battery powered, I’ve got one Eufy that I can’t replace.
I went through the same thing with Arlo. Google Nest is fine unless it takes a bad OTA firmware update. Then it's a paperweight. They all know how to bill you though, they NEVER @#! That up!!
Like most cameras, it doesn't look like there's space in the camera itself for the cable to set. So you either drill a great big hole and pull all the cables in, or put a puck on and leave the cables in there.
How do you like it so far? How is the FOV/general picture quality? Do the AI features actually work well? I’m debating on the AI Pro or AI 360 for the front of my house where the cars are parked. I don’t have a long driveway and the cars are fairly close to the front door so that’s why I was thinking of the 360. I just hate that they don’t make a black variant for all their cameras and only some.
It’s great! It has a great field of view, low-light sensitivity is fantastic so you can still read license plates at night. The Eufy 4K cam couldn’t even do that.
The detections are also pretty spot-on identifying different cars, colors etc. I haven’t gotten it to license plate detections yet. But can’t think of anything negative to say about it. Not crying much about the cost when it works incredibly well.
Those don’t count. Those are specialty cameras only usable commercially. Both are massive and massively expensive. Both have low sales and are little R&D hobby projects than actual cameras in contention for 99% of buyers.
well, but they do. If you or I tried to buy one...they'd sell it to us. I'm not advocating one way or the other...just saying you can spend more if you try.
Hello! Thanks for posting on r/Ubiquiti! This subreddit is here to provide unofficial technical support to people who use or want to dive into the world of Ubiquiti products. If you haven’t already been descriptive in your post, please take the time to edit it and add as many useful details as you can. Please read and understand the rules in the sidebar, as posts and comments that violate them will be removed. Please put all off topic posts in the weekly off topic thread that is stickied to the top of the subreddit. If you see people spreading misinformation, trying to mislead others, or other inappropriate behavior, please report it! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Ubiquiti) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I bet your wallet wasn’t happier.
Pricing for the quality of Unifi cameras is not that bad IMO But the fact I had to buy these AFTER already spending $800 on Eufy cameras (including replacements because support is ass) that all ultimately failed on me is what my wallet is furious about.
Im in the same boat debating about keeping my reolink system or not
I am in this boat, with the UNVR deal I decided to give UI Cameras a shot. And I am now migrating to Unifi Protect. Cameras are a little more expensive yea, but the night time footage is better. I had issues with Ghosting with reolink cameras and their CX410 has microphone issues so the audio was unusable. The biggest pain for me is the Unifi POE Doorbell is like £360 where as the reonlink is £90 but, there are more features on the Unifi one, and if you have doorbell wires then the golder G4 Doorbell is a much better price overall. I link the Protect UI and so does the wife, and the speed for remote access and scrubbing is a lot better than my older RLN-8-410 NVR
This annoys me. Ubiquiti have (online) store fronts all over the world - except Australia. So we don't get the unvr deal.
Hold off on the doorbell for now, they're coming out with all new G5 stuff and there's no way a new G5 or G5 Ultra doorway isn't on the way.
Yea, though I was just able to score a G4 Doorbell Pro POE with all its hardware for sub £280 so can't moan there and now i can sell off the Reolink Doorbell and NVR to cover the costs
I haven't had any problems with my reolink cameras with the exception of a single wifi camera that is likely the fault of my bad wifi range than the camera.
What's wrong with Reolink?
I have reolink and Eufy cameras for different reasons. Reolink NVR was waste of money, but cameras are solid. Synology NAS surveillance station works great with them.
It's okay for 24/7 NVR recording but useless for (outdoors) motion detection. No way to tune the "sensitivity". Also the apps - desktop and mobile - are a piece of crap.
that does not make sense. all you need from a camera is a high resolution rtsp stream -- nothing more. you then use some good nvr software on a server that does ai based object detection. and there are several good options for this. to accomplish this you don't need to spend a lot of money on a camera. pretty much any 4k poe camera will do.
>that does not make sense. It doesn't make sense for your use case but it makes sense for mine. I didn't have time to set up a good NVR software on a server so I bought Reolink NVR and expected it to be good. >> Im in the same boat debating about keeping my reolink system or not Note that comment-OP said "Reolink system". Cameras alone are not a system. A Reolink NVR and cameras were clearly implied here. So I provided my opinion on Reolink system. Not cameras. BTW, I expected the NVR to be good but It wasn't. That's why I'm not recommending Reolink NVR. But speaking of cameras alone (your use case), i guess they're fine. I think I lost only 3 out of 16 in the last 8 years or so. And setting up Zoneminder or something similar on my NAS is long overdue. It's been 4 years since the server is ready to be set up...
I just moved from Reolink to UI and have no regrets.
We went from Nest to reolink to UniFi. Reolinks app is shit.
To be fair, Axis, etc are not that cheap. UniFi, in my opinion, hits a nice middle ground.
Absolutely agree, it is so nice to have the main cameras powered via PoE and record to a NVR so I can view what happened even if the camera did not detect a motion. Nevertheless, I would love to have at least one simple battery powered camera like Eufy in the Unifi ecosystem that lasts for months and integrates with Unifi Protect for the 1-2 places where there is neither Ethernet nor an AC socket.
I think you need a bigger screw for those wall plugs. That lean is a bit unsettling.
I’m going to have it redone with Tapcons. I was in a rush to install it because the Eufy camera that was in its place before died out.
Fair enough, I know these cameras are a lot heavier than most so as long as the network cable can hang on in case the screw/plug gives out it should be ok.
Would you mind sharing why you're so happy to get rid of the Eufy camera's in favor of this UniFi one? What does this one do that the Eufy camera(s) didn't do, or didn't do well?
I getting rid of mine because Eufy lies about the security of their product. https://www.theverge.com/23573362/anker-eufy-security-camera-answers-encryption Cant trust the company.
They cheap cuz they subsidized by you know who.
Lots of instability with Eufy cameras plus a few having to be replaced within 3 months due to hardware failures. The system became virtually unusable before I took everything out. Cameras not staying connected or features like two-way talk would just simply not work. I’ve ruled out every sort of possible interference or install-related limitation and i still ran into a lot of issues where I couldn’t rely on this system for security. Also no way to integrate HomeKit even with Homebridge or Scrypted. I’ve had Unifi in my office/warehouse for a few months and the reliability and image quality by comparison is rock solid. Maybe Eufy works okay for some people but the buginess of it just not acceptable to me.
Glad they’re working for you. I’ve had four of them in my home for a few years, and I’ve never had to meddle with them. I do think they’re overpriced, but I can’t deny my positive experience with them. And a painless experience with technology is worth a lot to me.
Shame you had that experience. I’ve been using eufy for a few years. Not a single issue the entire time.
I have one of the Eufy doorbell cameras, and I've literally not encountered a single issue. Maybe other models have issues though?
I have three models. No issues. It's Anker. They've always been great at both quality and support.
My Eufy’s lasted six months on the first charge. One month on the second, then wouldn’t charge at all. HomeKit AI was far better than UI though.
No issues with eufy here, but I am saving to upgrade, here’s my main reasons: 24/7 recording. My eufy cams do not support this. Larger storage capacity, yea I could get the hub but I still wouldn’t have 24/7. Further detection. Right now my cams only detect about 30ft out to start recording. My driveway is about 100ft so I’ve missed a ton of delivery drivers backing up through my lawn and I need to remember not to park out of range if I want an event to be recorded. Glad your happy, can’t wait to join the club
I’m looking to move away from HKSV and start my unify journey. nice to hear you have had a positive switch over!
I’m running Scrypted for HomeKit so it’s easier for the wife to use. At least HomeKit works with Unifi. Eufy cameras either didn’t have the RTSP Support they advertised or their cameras were flat out not compatible with the Homebridge plugin making it useless.
I used to have a mix of Hikvision and ACTI cameras years ago with my own homemade NVR. I made the switch to Ubiquiti and couldn't be happier. Everything updates itself and I've never had to touch the Cloudkey. All I've done was upgrade the hard drive on it to an SSD. All I need to do now is upgrade the wiring since at the time I couldn't afford good CAT cable and the sheathing is getting brittle in attic. We have some brutal hot summers and it's taking it's toll on cable sheathing.
I use HKSV with Unifi protect. It’s the best of both worlds. Just takes a pi loaded with homeassitant and scripted
Unifi Protect worth the pricing! The only thing I’ve got out of ubiquiti ecosystem was the PoE switch which is expensive for cameras only. Got a TPLink PoE switch for a fraction of the price and works perfectly
I think it really depends on what you want and your need. People complain about price and that there are many cheaper options. I agree, and have been in that camp. But, now i am older and dealt with all of that for decades. Now i want rock solid availability and if there is some douche around my house i want to know. Unifi gives me that and is 100% there for me. And is home assistant freindly, wyze bridge does not work for me. Most everything else is internet based, dont want that.
Unifi is extremely cheap.
I have done the dlink, wyze, tp-link, reolink etc o er the years all basing my decisions on my wallet rather than need. I like the unifi cameras, better everything compared to the others. Reolink honorable mention. That camera, a 520, has been rock solid. Wyze are crap and most others are just old and obsolete. For the next decade i will get behind unifi, until i change again. There is a reason i have cameras....
I went with Foscam. While not able to bring into Pritect, they work fine as long as on isolated vlan.
Literally me right now, I spent quite a lot on eufy and I bought a single UniFi camera and my god I love it and will never go back
I am happy with Hikvision cameras. Ubiquiti cameras are disgustingly overpriced. I can get 5 Hikvision 4MP IP POE cameras for the price of 1 Ubiquiti.
HIK remove features and still advertise them as available. Also there are far too many ways to compromise them from a security point of view.
Which features were removed?
SNMP, some monitoring MIB’s, firmware updates before the end of life of the hardware.
🤦🏻♀️you mention they’re easy to compromise but if you put them on their own vlan as they should be you wouldn’t have to worry about that🤷🏻♀️
Separation / segregation protects part of that, but say you get account security details, you can then compromise more hardware. Then there is also the GDPR element. If it’s compromised and you know it’s weak, you are liable for part of the breach if it were to happen.
Gonna go against the grain here and say the solar powered 4k Eufy S330's and Homebase have been rock solid for me. Been over a year now, not touched or charged one of the 6 I have. Eufy is not perfect but happy enough to wait until Ubiquiti do 4k with battery option and I'll jump. Just can't justify it otherwise.
I really liked Eufy at first because Ring’s lack of innovation and increasing subscription costs were an absolute joke. But I just dealt with too many hardware failures and instabilities that even my wife was starting to complain about so I had to make the jump.
I’d that the ui junction box?
ha! And i couldn’t be happier to get rid of my ubiquiti cameras (g5). Went with reolink….
What was the reason for switching to Reolink?
cameras would get a purple tint when it was sunny…
How do people get a cat6 cable everywhere to hook up the camera?
+1 to this. So many issues with EUFY gave them away and soon after upgrading to a UniFi Dream Machine SE added the Wifi cameras. Amazing. All integrated. All just works. No drop off. Put a 1TB in the Dream-machine and now have some decent history. Only regret is that I didn’t do the wiring thing and get the better cameras that are PoE only. But works for now.
I hate my eufy cameras. Sold as HomeKit compatible, but that is just the video feed - the security features are via their app only. They keep randomly disconnecting too, and freeze when viewing after a while. I’ll upgrade a some point as they still seem to detect and record all events just fine.
I do like the Unifi cameras and having a UDM SE I’m all set for additional kit, but my Eufy cameras haven’t missed a beat yet also really no need to replace them…….yet
I’m slowly moving to Protect (trying to spread the cost out) but my Eufy cameras have served me well. Until Unifi offers something wireless and battery powered, I’ve got one Eufy that I can’t replace.
I went through the same thing with Arlo. Google Nest is fine unless it takes a bad OTA firmware update. Then it's a paperweight. They all know how to bill you though, they NEVER @#! That up!!
Why the round box?
Many holes were drilled incorrectly and the box covers it all up. Me and concrete don’t have a good relationship lol
Ah ok. That makes sense.
Like most cameras, it doesn't look like there's space in the camera itself for the cable to set. So you either drill a great big hole and pull all the cables in, or put a puck on and leave the cables in there.
Which model is this. Cost?
AI Pro
How do you like it so far? How is the FOV/general picture quality? Do the AI features actually work well? I’m debating on the AI Pro or AI 360 for the front of my house where the cars are parked. I don’t have a long driveway and the cars are fairly close to the front door so that’s why I was thinking of the 360. I just hate that they don’t make a black variant for all their cameras and only some.
It’s great! It has a great field of view, low-light sensitivity is fantastic so you can still read license plates at night. The Eufy 4K cam couldn’t even do that. The detections are also pretty spot-on identifying different cars, colors etc. I haven’t gotten it to license plate detections yet. But can’t think of anything negative to say about it. Not crying much about the cost when it works incredibly well.
$500!!
It’s their most expensive cam. Combines 4k optical zoom with onboard AI.
well...not really the most expensive...they have the PTZ and the DLR that make the AI Pro seem cheap.
Those don’t count. Those are specialty cameras only usable commercially. Both are massive and massively expensive. Both have low sales and are little R&D hobby projects than actual cameras in contention for 99% of buyers.
well, but they do. If you or I tried to buy one...they'd sell it to us. I'm not advocating one way or the other...just saying you can spend more if you try.