Reolink Argus PT Impressed a Customer Beyond Expectations

I was not expecting to love this camera. Having the ability to pan while being solar worried me that power consumption would be an issue. I tested the camera by getting it to a full charge and then removing the solar panel entirely. With active storage to a 128 GB micro sd card, it was able to have perform motion capture with audio to disk for 2.5 days (having the camera facing our back door and taking the dog to and from the back yard throughout the day). The quality of audio and video is awesome, and the infrared LEDs are brighter than cameras I've had in the past. I would expect clarity up to 30 feet in the dark, but not more than that (easily supplemented by an infrared spotlight to span a long driveway in my case). Setup was super easy using your cellphone with a QR code scan by your phone, and then using the camera scanning a similar QR code that pops up on your phone. The whole activation took about 2 minutes. There is a second Type-C USB connector for charging in-house, or supplementing if you have another solar panel ramped down to 5V. I was also pleasantly surprised to see how well the housing held up under heavy rain. In lieu of putting it under an eave, I place it between two of the joists of our pergola. Lastly, and best of all, I went into my existing Reolink NVR PoE setup and clicked rescan after making sure the new solar camera was on the same network, and it showed right up. Just be aware, you will not get rolling video to disk the way you do with the PoE, but it is arguably better. Not only does the motion capture work well, but the snippet are somehow labeled with a paw when animals are detected. A raccoon showed up on our porch, and a little paw icon was stamped on the video snippet and in the video samples that show up in the playback tool, which is also available through the NVR interface. If you have a PoE solution watching the perimeter of your home, parking one of these things high in a tree as a failsafe would be a great idea for additional peace-of-mind. Will be buying a few more in the coming months. See the attached screenshot from the phone interface (black and white because infrared was active). Note the raccoon going toward my pool and the paw icon in the highlighted clip. The next two clips were me going out the backdoor (no animals present). Great job, Reolink.