P636 V2

I have sent a review 2 other times but Amazon said I violated their policies somehow. So I'm hoping this one makes it in. I purchased the P636 V2 and tried it out inside my home for a month or so to be sure everything worked okay and then packed it away for about a year waiting for an opportunity to install it in its intended location. That came in October. About a week after installation I lost the IR light and the PT of PTZ. I looked at the warranty period which to my surprise was two years. I wrote Sunba and explained my issues and from that Robin P. determined that it was a failed motherboard. He said I could send it to them for repair or he could send me a new motherboard which I could install with the help of a video he would send me. I chose the latter and had no issues at all replacing the motherboard which fixed the problems. First, let me say that over the years I have used PTZ cameras from many manufacturers, from the least expensive to one of the most expensive zooms and many in between. No camera has given me anyway near the quality of stream that this camera produces, and the zoom ability is simply amazing. Adding digital zoom on top of the 36x optical zoom results in image magnification that everyone wants but few are willing to pay for. The tracking feature of this camera is not of interest to me so I haven’t tried it, but everything else works extremely well. The IR lights are powerful and more than adequate, the PTZ aspects are very smooth and always return to exact positioning, and the FTP works well. Instead of using a micro SD card I chose to have the videos and snaps sent to my NAS. The vids are ts files which I am able to play and the snaps are in jpg format. From my perspective this camera is very impressive and I will certainly consider Sunba products for future camera needs. And you can’t go wrong with their customer service. I had several back and forths with Robin and the responses were always the next day (in China) and very helpful. While customer service isn’t usually a deciding factor when choosing a technology product, maybe it should be.

The good thing about this camera is the picture. It is clear and the night vision reaches a long distance. The not-so-good things, about the camera outweigh the good stuff. One of the first things, you will notice is how loud the camera is as it pans from location to location. You won't want this attached to your home. The sound will get old very quickly. Attached to a remote building would be OK. The ability to track a moving object only worked for a few minutes before failing. It has never recovered. The warranty does not cover labor, only parts, and is only good for 90 days. So, if your requirements are to monitor a remote location, don't need to track moving objects, and are willing to gamble on the cameras longevity, you may be happy with this camera.

Zoom is absolutely incredible on this monster. The picture of an eye was my German Shepard all the way across a 2,000 sqft room. He doesn't move much so a capture was highly detailed for him. The camera is BIG. Like bigly big. Don't expect to be able to hide it. That said it's made from Tonka tough steel and if placed right won't be easy to remove without being noticed, if that's your situation. The ultimate goal for my installation is to be out of reach and to use the amazing range of the telescopic lens to keep an eye on my front 5 acres. Night vision is probably fantastic, I'm still testing mine inside my basement, and attempting to use it for nights backfires because of the IR flashlight effect on the windows. If you're wanting to use it indoors to watch outdoors for any reason the IR is going to make that difficult for the same reason pointing a flashlight out a window at night is dumb unless you're right up on it. Won't be an issue if you use it as intended. Image quality is amazing. 5MP doesn't seem all that impressive, but it's pretty damn amazing when you combine the zoom. I was absolutely sure I wanted 4k but it's just not going to matter. Yeah I said it. You're getting intricate detail from the lens so don't worry about it. Complaints: Well we knew this was coming. The brains of this thing are kind of wonky. If you let it follow motion it likes to point in weird directions once it's done. Sometimes it goes back to where it was pointing, sometimes it goes to a predetermined point that I'm not sure if I can set. If I figure that out, then great. If not? Well I'll probably have to turn off an integral feature I actively bought this for. It's not inconspicuous. At all. As you can see from the pictures it's large human head width and taller. It also costs half a grand and is seured with an Allen wrench that you already own 8 of probably. You're gonna want to put it out of reach. But a weak "con" since to get the most ground coverage you'll be wanting it high anyways. And finally the real con: software. I finally got it loaded up in the VMS they have, took a while because VMS thought it was a switch. Odd. I also bought Sunba's 405 ECO (it's a smaller and paired down version, basically) they use different apps! Damnit! So I bought two cameras off one business and still need two phone apps to watch them. Well that sucks. Additionally as with all ONVIF cameras, if you want to actually use them you gotta load them into an old IE browser and deal with your computer freaking out over that. This one allows you to use Chrome, but similar problems arise. It's ONVIF though so grab blue iris or if you're one of the cool kids like me get ZoneAlarm setup. Just don't expect it to run 18 cameras on the 2014 server with only 40 threads and 128 gigs of ram like I did. Oops.

Daytime viewing is nice. Nightvision is a disappointment. So much noise and fuzzy. There a delay after zooming for the camera to focus. The camera is just ok. The nightvision is the worst I've seen in a camera that size. Now i truly understand the low review rating.