GW Security5 Megapixel 2592 x 1920 Pixel Super HD 1920P Outdoor PoE 120FT Night Vision Weatherproof Security IP Camera with 2.8-12mm Varifocal Zoom Len

I tried other cameras on amazon, some cheaper, some higher priced but this is really the best camera out there.Very good resolution. Very good night vision. POE simplicity. Varifocal is really nice to have to get any detail you need.Cons:Sometimes the color is a little off but this is a surveillance camera - I'm not filming the next academy award winner.Not the greatest web interface but perfectly usable and how often do you actually need to use it after it is set up?They really need to tell you in the manual how to use the varifocal and it's associated focus ring rather than having to figure it out yourself.I have had one for about a year and another for about 6 weeks. No problems, 24x7 motion sensing recording via NFS to a linux server uses lots of gigs a day but that's what you pay for the resolution.Attached are a couple of pictures - the street is very dark but the camera lights it up quite well.UPDATE:I have a bunch of these cameras, some for several years, all outdoors in the variable weather conditions of NY and they are rock solid. They are plugged into POE routers which rarely get rebooted. Records directly to an NFS mounted RAID drive which is a huge plus. I recently purchased a 2.8mm fixed lens Amcrest at half the price that seems good but it creates a wacky number of directories and subdirectories on my NFS filesystem with strangely named entries with brackets and @ signs like '11.33.45-11.41.00[M][0@0][0].mp4'

For some reason I am having difficulty adjusting the variable lens. The focus adjustment also seems to be a bit fuzzy, too. I can't fault the camera since the shipping box in which it was packed (from Amazon) had no packing what-so-ever and another item was thrown in with the the camera. The items were bouncing around inside the box. The camera box itself was busted, however, the camera appeared to be in good physical shape, but who knows?????

ive been using hikvision for a long time but its been really hard to find OEM cameras nowadays without having to go through a giant company, GW security cameras are starting to become my go to cameras to purchase for my clients. as to this camera it has a very wide 2.8mm lens and with the 5mp resolution, nothing is blurry! it also has one of the best WDR functions i've seen on a camera in this price range. it's made entirely out of metal and is a bit heavy, but that's good for vandal resistance! the only thing exposed are the focus and zoom knobs on the bottom of the camera, and that is its only weakness to attack. but other than that, this is a really great buy!Update May 1st 2019: So far every GW5050-ip camera i have purchased has not failed after 1 year of use. nothing has made me doubt them. The only thing is i wish they had microphones on these cameras and not on the crappy other ones they sell.UPDATE March 16th 2022: I now have over 25 of these and not 1 of them has failed me yet***.. picture quality is still great and IR night vision still runs fabulously. one gripe i have when focusing these still is that one side of the image on a couple of them don't want to stay in focus, but it doesn't really hurt the performance.

I'm not a luddite, so when I have to fight with a device for 2 hours to get it setup, I know something is wrong.Let me recount the number of ways the software sucks:SETTING IP ADDRESS, 3 attempts:(1) First tried to install their iOS app (note, the QR code does NOT work). But it wants you to register an email and password. This is extremely fishy just to see a local network device. Forget that....(2) On a Mac, so I had to go to GWSecurity and download their desktop application "AJ something or other" to set the IP address of the camera, which I just managed. However, the app only launched once...from then on my Mac reported it was corrupted (that's a warning sign!). Deleting and reinstalling did not fix it......so on to #2(3) On a PC, I downloaded the "UC" app....but this didn't seem to do anything. Thankfully #2 seemed to work.SETTING CONFIGURATIONS:Using Safari on a Mac sort of worked. Using Chrome on windows also sort of worked. But it seems the camera needs hard power reboots everyone once in a while as it becomes unresponsive over network. The web pages don't always update when you hit Save and Refresh, so it's very hard to determine if your changes stuck.VIEWING ON WEB PAGE -- FAIL!This is why I'm returning this camera. Tried on Mac::Safari as well as Windows::Chrome. as well as iOS. In all three cases I was prompted to install some web driver to view the camera on the web . In all cases the install appears fine, and a reboot was done after. NOT ONCE WAS I ABLE TO VIEW THE CAMERA FROM ITS OWN WEB PAGE.INTEGRATING WITH AN NVRThe GWSecurity camera is recognized as a generic ONVIR camera. But for whatever reason on my NVR I cannot see full resolution images. I tweaked on camera video codec and resolution and frame rate settings but none of it mattered (hard to tell if the camera saved the settings anyway) This means that after 2 hours of mucking around, I still have not seen a single 5MP image from the device. Fail.So....shipping it back. No more GWSecurity hardware for me.

Had issues with the install as advertised by other reviews, and just like other reviews the customer service of the manufacture was amazing. Managed to get it connected to my Hikvision set up

I hardly ever write Amazon reviews but I won't be able to sleep at night knowing that other people might actually buy cameras from this company and experience the same horrors that I have. However, I must make the time in this case in hopes that my review will save some poor souls from the nasty experiences (and complete waste of money) that I have. I can't believe that there's a single remotely positive review for this camera on Amazon, let alone a few 5 star ones! My guess is that they are employees of GW.I have several other security cameras and each and every single one was a real pleasure to work with and they all work out of the box, as advertised. They were truly worth the money (and then some). For example, for monitoring the front door I use a Skybell HD trim and for around the property I use Wyze. My neighbors use Ring, Nest, and Arlo cameras and not one of us has anything bad to say except for me and this GW camera. I was hoping to find a rugged, outdoor camera that I could use to to zoom into passing cars to capture license plates. This one seemed to fit the bill based on the specifications and the amazing reviews... I couldn't have been more wrong!Pros:-Cons:- The web browser software ONLY works with Internet Explorer. You know, the web browser that even Microsoft wants you to avoid!- The web browser software does not even work well in Internet Explorer and it's frustrating when it does work.- Motion capture doesn't capture anything. I setup a NAS using openmediavault on a Linux server and have tested NFS and FTP on Windows and Linux clients and everything works just fine. This camera doesn't record a single thing to either.- The user manual is garbage. Under the tiny Video Description section it actually says the following:"You can also setup an email address or FTP storage server to receive the motion snapshot. (Trigger recording will work only if memory card or NFS NAS connected. )"So which is it? FTP or NFS? Is this a bad Chinese to English translation?Unfortunately I can't return it and that's my fault. It has been several months since I bought this garbage and due to a recent move I haven't been able to set it up and test it until now. I don't even know if it's worthy of going to an electronic recycling center!So please, PLEASE do not buy this camera unless you want to:- throw $160+ out the window- spend countless hours fighting with junk software with a false hope that something might workAmazon should seriously consider removing this camera from their website (and any other GW products if they are as bad as this one).

Was not able to connect to this camera.Worse thing that GW security cameras require different discovery utility to run, I have 5 installed!!:"GW IPCManagerV4.02", "Search Tool", "AjDevTools", "SADPTool" and "Device Config Tool" - this one for NVR, all either downloaded from GW web site or came on disk with GW camera. This is a nightmare, none of tools are able to discover all my GW cameras. I have 4 different types, all GW brand. All tools (except 'GW IPCManagerV4.02') are low quality utilities, probable made by developers for developers and not supposed to be used by consumers, tools are ugly with outdated UI and barely works. All tools feel and look different, probably made by absolutely different teams, no unified UI whatsoever, no version, screen not re-sizable etc.. Only "GW IPCManagerV4.02" seem to be made more professional, except it recognizes only 2 of my 5 cameras... pretty useless.Overall, I must say I am regretting getting into GW NVR and camera lineup, not reliable when it comes to compatibility their cameras with their own GW NVR, even their technicians could not solve issues with connectivity, have 2 cameras not working even if connected directly to NVR.In addition to that, their browser pluging for NVR works only with old internet explorer which is retiring in a months or so, none of existing browser can work with NVR...