It’s been three years since my last color night vision security camera video, and some new players including Reolink have entered into the ultra-low light market, so today I’ve got nine PoE cameras from Axis, Annke, Amcrest, Dahua, Reolink, Hikvision and UniFi, and we’re going to figure out if any of them are better than the Annke NC800 and Hikvision ColorVu that were my top picks in 2021.
Security Camera Basics
Before we start, one thing that’s important to understand about security cameras is that there is not and will probably never be a one size fits all camera that gives you an ultra-wide viewing angle, the ability to read license plates from 100 feet away, sharp daytime images, and ultra-low light nighttime performance, and there will always be tradeoffs with field of view versus clarity, and resolution versus low light performance.
The field of view versus clarity problem is easy to understand. If you have two cameras of equal resolution, but one has a narrow field of view and the other is wide, the narrow image will obviously have more pixels per meter of real-life space than the wide image, which gives it increased clarity.
However, resolution versus low-light performance is a bit more complicated because we need to take the camera’s image sensor size into account. As a general rule larger pixels on the image sensor will absorb more light than smaller ones, so if you have two sensors of equal size, and one is divided into 4 million pixels and the other is divided into 8 million, each pixel in the lower resolution 4 megapixel sensor will absorb twice as much light as the 8 megapixel sensor. As a result, we’d expect the 8 megapixel sensor to provide more clarity in high light situations, but the 4 megapixel sensor will do better in low light scenes.
In the past larger sensors have been associated with much higher cost, but the 4 and 8 megapixel CX line from Reolink has broken that trend, so here are the night vision cameras we’ll be looking at in this video sorted by pixel size rather than price.
Sensor and Pixel Sizes
First, the smallest pixels are from this $100 4K Amcrest NightColor turret, which has a 1 / 2.8” sensor and an 8.29 megapixel resolution, and that means that if we do a little math, we can figure out that each individual pixel on the sensor measures 2.912 microns diagonally.
Next are the cameras with 1 / 1.8” sensors and 8.29 megapixel resolutions which are the $950 AXIS P3268 and the $110 Reolink CX810, and those have pixels that are 4.529 microns diagonally.
Then we’ve got the $129 UniFi G5 Ultra which has a smaller and lower resolution 1 / 2.4”, 4.06 megapixel sensor, giving it pixels that are just slightly larger than the axis and Reolink at 4.853 microns diagonally.
After that is my budget pick from the last video, the $144 Hikvision ColorVu which has a 1 /1.8” sensor with a 4.08 megapixel resolution for a pixel size of 6.471 microns diagonally.
And then we’ve got two cameras with massive 1 / 1.2” sensors and 8.29 megapixel resolutions, the $350 Annke NC800 that was the outright performance winner in the last video and the $249 Dahua Color 4K which each have 6.794 micron pixels.
And the largest pixel size, probably just based on rounding errors in my math is the $73 Reolink CX410 which has a smaller 1 / 1.8” sensor, but less than half the resolution of the Annke and Dahua at 3.69 megapixels for a pixel size of 6.795 microns diagonally.
Also, just as a reference, in this video I’ll be including a Dahua 5442 infrared night vision camera with a 4.08 megapixel 1 / 1.8” sensor, which gives it the same diagonal pixel size as the Hikvision ColorVu at 6.471 microns.
Field of View Testing
Starting out with the field of view testing, here are the cameras ordered from widest to narrowest horizontal field of view with the two cameras from Reolink coming in with the narrowest field of view, and the Amcrest was the widest by a significant margin. You can also see that the G5 Ultra was not aimed particularly well, and that’s because I didn’t realize until I took the camera back down that it had separate roll adjustment and I tried to aim it using only pan and tilt which made it diagonal.
Daytime Image Quality
Moving on to daytime clarity, I measured stationary clarity at 10, 25, and 50 feet and motion clarity at 25 feet.
At 10 feet with plenty of light the 8 megapixel cameras dominated for the most part with the Axis P3268 in first, followed by the Reolink CX810 in second, and Annke NC800 in third, and the rest of the cameras were more or less ordered by their resolution with the exception of the Amcrest NightColor which looked blurry despite its 8 megapixel resolution.
At 25 feet the results were very similar with the Annke NC800 in first this time, the Axis P3268 in second, and the Reolink CX810 in third, and at 50 feet it was the exact same with the Annke in first, the Axis in second, and the Reolink CX810 in third.
During the running test at 25 feet things got shaken up a bit with the Annke NC800 holding onto first, the Reolink CX810 in second, and the Infrared Dahua 5442 coming in third despite its lower resolution, and the Axis P3268 fell all the way to eighth place and was surprisingly blurry.
So, for overall daytime performance that puts the Annke NC800 in first, the Reolink CX810 in second, and the Axis P3268 in third.
Nighttime Image Quality
Moving on to the nighttime testing, the first test was with my porch lights and carriage lights on, which gives around 5.4 lux of light at 10 ft from the cameras, 3 lux at 25 ft, and 1.2 lux at 50 ft.
And at 10 ft the best image came from the Hikvision ColorVu, followed by the Annke NC800, and the Axis P3268 was in third.
At 25 feet the Axis was a clear winner with nearly perfect exposure, followed by the Annke NC800 which overexposed the sign a little, but was overall very good, and the Hikvision ColorVu came in third with a lower resolution but overall great image.
At 50 feet all the cameras struggled to find enough light but the Annke NC800 still did a great job, not only producing legible text, but a great representation of my face, the Axis P3268 came in second, and I put the Reolink CX410 in third with a pixelated but bright and accurate image.
Capturing movement in ultra-low light is always tough and you can see that in the 25 feet running test the Dahua 5442 with its supplemental infrared LED lighting produced a much more clear and crisp image than any of the color night vision cameras which needed longer exposure times to capture enough light, but I thought the two cameras from Reolink were slightly better than the rest, which is a huge deal since capturing motion at night has traditionally been Reolink’s biggest weakness.
I repeated those same tests with my porch and carriage lights off, which measured around 0.25 lux at 10, 25, and 50 feet, and was extremely dark, lit only by my neighbor’s porch lights.
In these tests you can see that the UniFi camera was also using infrared because without it the image was completely black, and the Axis P3268 was definitely reaching the low light limits of its sensor, but the Annke NC800, Hikvision ColorVu, and Dahua 4K all did a surprisingly good job, and while the two Reolink cameras collected plenty of light, I wasn’t particularly impressed by their image clarity at 10 feet.
At 25 feet the Annke NC800 and Dahua Color4K cameras dominated with their huge 1 / 1.2” sensors, but the Hikvision and Reolink cameras also produced respectable images, and at 50 feet the rankings were almost exactly the same, with the difference being that none of the cameras produced a great image at that distance.
The cameras also predictably struggled with the 25 feet running test, but the big pixels on the Reolink CX410 captured the most light while the Dahua Color 4K did an okay job with color but had significant blurring.
And that means overall for the moderately lit conditions the Axis P3268 came in first, the Annke NC800 was in second, and the Hikvision ColorVu was in third, but in almost complete darkness the Axis fell to seventh place, and the Annke NC800 took over in first, the Dahua Color4K was in second and the Hikvision ColorVu took third place overall.
Image Quality Rankings
The best camera at 10, 25, and 50 feet across all lighting conditions was the Annke NC800, and are you ready for this? The best motion capture at 25 feet across all lighting conditions was the Reolink CX810, which is a huge deal since as I mentioned nighttime motion smearing has been about the only weakness of Reolink cameras for as long as I’ve been testing them.
Adding up all the scores, the best overall image quality by a significant margin was the Annke NC800, which was also the winner of the 2021 video, and the other 1 / 1.2” image sensor camera, the Dahua Color4K came in second overall, and the Reolink CX810 was just one point behind that with lower stationary scores, especially at 10 feet, but better scores in motion testing.
Blue Iris Compatibility
Moving on to more miscellaneous features, another thing I never thought I’d be saying about Reolink cameras is that of all the cameras in this test, the Reolink CX810 and Axis P3268 seemed to have the best compatibility with my Blue Iris NVR. Despite every camera having identical settings in Blue Iris, not every camera triggered on every motion event and while long motion events were captured by all the cameras, shorter ones seemed to only register on the Axis and Reolink cameras consistently, and the Amcrest registered more often than the Dahua, Annke, and Hikvision cameras, but still didn’t trigger on every event. I’m not sure if the improvement in Reolink compatibility was from a change by Blue Iris or Reolink, but no matter what I’m happy to see it.
Supplemental Lighting
For consistency, individual camera lights were all turned off during my testing, but all the cameras have supplemental white LEDs except the Axis, UniFi, and Dahua 5442 which have Infrared supplemental lights instead, and while none of them, except maybe the Dahua Color4K, are bright enough to substitute for a spotlight, they each provide plenty of light to record at night even if you don’t have outdoor lighting.
Wide Dynamic Range (WDR)
All the cameras have also have a wide dynamic range options to brighten the shadows and dim the highlights to preserve detail, and all of them worked well, though the Reolink cameras have the least amount of other image adjustment options.
Microphone Quality
As for sound, the Reolink, Amcrest and Dahua cameras have built in microphones and here they are ranked from best audio quality to worst.
https://youtu.be/a3G_2zVu3cU?si=YxCiYT-GvU3OLKD5&t=566
Person and Vehicle Detection
All the cameras except for the Hikvision ColorVu have on board person and vehicle detection, though the Reolink is by far the easiest to setup and use as a standalone system with just an SD card in the camera and sorting events by detection type to view in the Reolink app is extremely user friendly.
So, all things considered, which cameras are the best?
Conclusions
As far as overall image quality, none of these cameras were able to unseat the Annke NC800 as the best color night vision camera on the market, and the 1 / 1.2” 8 megapixel sensor gives it crisp clear video both during the day and in ultra-low light situations, and it managed to outcompete the similar sensor sized Dahua Color4K camera despite the Dahua having a narrower field of view. The Annke’s only real downside is its cost, which is around $350.
The Dahua Color4K also performed well, for $100 less per camera, and is definitely worth considering if you already have a Dahua NVR, or if you use Blue Iris and want to save a little money.
But neither of those cameras came close to the value of the Reolink CX810, which only scored 1 point lower than the Dahua Color4K, for a price of just $109. Normally I qualify my Reolink recommendations by saying that they have issues with low light motion smearing, and that they don’t work particularly well with Blue Iris, but neither of those statements seem to apply to the CX810, and in fact it was the highest scoring camera for motion, and seemed to have the best compatibility with Blue Iris, which again, is not something I ever thought I’d say.
The only downside of the CX810 is that as of filming this video it’s out of stock everywhere, but hopefully that resolves itself soon because the CX810 is the best camera Reolink has ever made.
As always there are no sponsored reviews on this channel, but I’ve got links below for all the cameras in this video and as always I appreciate when you use those links since as an Amazon affiliate I do earn a small commission on the sale at no cost to you.
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