VideoSecu Bullet Security Camera 700TVL Built-in 1/3" Effio CCD Weatherproof Day Night 3.6mm Wide View Angle Lens IR Outdoor for CCTV DVR Home Surveillance with Power Supply CN4

I decided to purchase one of these as I was expanding my network and my previous favorite camera was no longer on sale, plus the numerous good to positive reviews instilled some confidence. Unfortunately I'm not as impressed as I had hoped I would be. Here are my observations:1. It's nearly impossible to get the IR LEDs to turn off. The CDS cell has some sort of lens on it that narrows its range, so the only way to get it to not be in "night vision" mode is to shine a light directly onto it. Strange since none of my other cameras have this lens over the light sensor, and they're so cheap I don't know why they would bother to use a "nonstandard" CDS cell on this model. If it bothers me enough I'll solder a normal one on the board instead.2. When it's truly dark and in night vision mode I get "glitches" of color, as if the signal is going bad. None of my other cameras do this, and another camera using the same connections doesn't have this issue in this location, so it's definitely something the camera is doing.3. The housing (at least the front bezel) is plastic. I was aware it would have a 6mm lens which was too narrow for me, so I also purchased a replacement 3.6mm lens to get a wider angle. In removing the front bezel some of the tabs cracked. All my other cameras have 100% metal housings, so I was kind of surprised to see this.4. In removing the bezel I noticed that the IR ring is kind of haphazardly soldered to the camera board. Not the best solder job, but it does work. Could be a source of my color glitches if the IR is temporarily turning off, but I haven't bothered to investigate it any more yet.5. If your camera sounds like it had a bunch of loose parts in it when you shake it, that's a bag of silica gel in the back of the camera. I happened to find this in mine. I guess it's to keep the internal moisture level low. No real harm in having it in there, just kind of strange in my opinion (as an electrical engineer).6. The one I got does have the built-in microphone. The microphone is at the far end of the cable though (closer to the connector than the camera). This isn't convenient if you want to have the microphone exposed in the room but want to hide most of the cabling. I wish it was either embedded in the camera housing, or at least closer to the camera on the cable.

I waited for over a year to write this review because I wanted to make surecthis system would hold up to the environment I have it installed in.I live on the coast so weather and salt air degrade EVERYTHING twice as fast.These cameras all are still working considering I have most of the cameras in the open environment. Somecof the srews and swivel mounts are definitely showing salt air corrosion but unless it's stainless steel, I expected that to happen. What I am pleased is that the electronics is still working on them.The night vision is pretty good at a reasonable distance but, signal strength is weak. I have had several cameras drop out regularly until I find tooned where to put the receiver, I when looked into getting a better antenna for the receiver so I would have to keep shifting it to not drop out cameras, but those antennas are permanent, so changing it out to a remote antenna was not an option.I have used it many times to review wildlife getting at my trash cans and neighbor s asking me to review who was at there house.I have the cameras set to record 24/7 with writing over old info and have been able to still go back several weeks of recordings.Overall if and when this system ( or camera) failes I will purchase this system again.

Great camera with great quality. I have a Q-See system from 4 years ago that's running strong but I needed new cameras. These worked great, and make mounting much easier since you can remove the base with ease. I still wouldn't say these are a direct replacement, but are surely the best value you'll find.Pros:-Easy to mount, remove base, screw into wall, reattach base-Great quality and night vision-Look very goodCons:-Much closer/tighter field of view compared to my old Q-See (meaning I can see LESS with this camera than the Q-See), this may be a pro if you want a zoomed image-Camera wire is external and exposed, my other camera feeds the camera cable through the mount, protecting it from being cut. If you're paranoid this is something to be aware of-Single twist knob to adjust and lock camera in place, other cameras have mutliple adjustments, each for pan and tilt giving you tighter controlOverall I still think this is a great camera, but I wanted to call out the differences between others. I use this to watch the sides of my house which make it perfect with the tighter field of view, but I wouldn't use this to watch the front of my house.

I purchased a Q-S.. 8 Chanel DVR as a replacement for a same brand DVR that was bricked due to bad firmware upgrade. The first DVR cameras were great. However, the second ones were so grainy at night that I constantly got alarms for the motion detection... made the whole thing useless. After we were robbed and it was not caught on camera I decided to try some new cameras. The manufacture tried to sell me some very expensive ones... no way was I paying over double for the cameras than what I paid for the whole machine and 4 cameras to start with. I decided to give these a try. I bought 4 of them and immediately my DVR came to life. No more false alarms. I am able to see a great distance at night as well as during the day. With that being said, I bought 3 more. These are great... especially for the price... do not let that nor the review that says they are crap because the housing is plastic... so what. Plastic has advantages. The only complaint that I have is the mounting... they do not secure really well with the thumb screw and the cable does not run inside of the mount like my old ones... but no real deal... I am looking for video quality... especially at night which these deliver 110%. I really do not think anyone will be disappointed especially at this price (or even double this price).