Anpviz 6MP PoE Wide Angle Security Camera Outdoor, Panoramic 180° Dual-Lens IP Bullet Camera with Human/Vehicle Detection, Full Metal Housing, Two Way Talk, Built-in MicroSD Card Slot (H Series)

At the start of this review, I want to say that my favorite camera of all time is an Anpviz camera. So needless to say, I am excited to be able to review this camera. The first thing that struck me was the size. I’m not quite sure why but for some reason it was larger than I expected it to be, not a lot larger but somewhat larger. The next thing I noticed was that when I plugged it into my Hikvision NVR there was no indicator light to let me know it was connected properly. It took several attempts using SADP tool to find camera. There were minimal instructions as to whether I should be using a “plug and play” setting or a “manual” setting. I finally located the camera, logged into the camera, and created a password. I changed the ip address to match the scheme of the NVR and at some point it asked me if I wanted to reboot the camera. I selected yes. The camera locked up during the rebooting process. Probably, I should not have tried to reboot but there were no directions about that. I ended up exchanging the camera for another one. Okay. Now I have my second camera. With help, I was able to activate and get this camera online. I ended up using Onvif protocol. As of today, the camera is mounted on a sidewall of my house overlooking a pathway. The wide-angle view with this camera is considerably better than the view with the camera it replaced. Since it’s looking down, it reminds me of the kind of video you get with a fisheye camera. It’s attached to a flat wall but because of the downward angle, it picks up part of the wall. And the wall appears to be V-shaped or bowl shaped maybe. There is a lot of white vinyl siding in the view. I’m thinking maybe I should have installed the camera lower on the side of the house to reduce the amount of visible siding. What would be cool is if the camera came with a zoom feature. As it is, the picture is sharp and well defined and I can see everything I hoped to be able to see. I was curious to see what the night vision would be like. And it was a definite improvement over the camera I had before. I think the view was affected some by the infrared reflection off of the white siding. All in all, though, it was very good. Overall, this is an impressive camera. Like I said in the beginning, I am a fan of Anpviz cameras and this one is no exception. I did have some issues getting it setup but once I did everything was pretty straight forward and it worked great. I am very happy with this camera. I do wish the installation instructions were a bit me detailed and specific to this camera. I wonder how the 4K version would compare to this camera (6MP)?

The first thing I look for in outdoor cameras is field of view so I have been looking at these 180 degree cameras for a while. I bought this one because it has all the options I wanted and the price point was reasonable. Never having one before I was kind of surprised at how big they are compared to your typical bullet camera, but after I went back and looked at dimensions of other cameras this one seems to be in step with the other manufactures. So first thing I looked at was mounting, since these are heavier I opted to mount the camera to the side of the house as compared to the underside of the roof overhang where I usually mount my cameras. This was due to not having a solid backing on the vinyl and this camera would have shaken with any wind, so a solid mounting is necessary. I used a typical vinyl back plate for my siding, you can find these at you local hardware store. The camera housing is metal and the adjustments can be made with one set screw, no need to disassemble the camera to make adjustments. I am really impressed with the field of view, the camera sticks out from the side of the house about nine inches so I figured I would not see the corners of each end of the house but as you can see in one of the pictures you can, so that means the FoV must be greater than 180 degrees. When it comes to the FoV I was hoping that the camera would be able to do this at 1080p but the resolution is locked in at 3632x1632. Second thing that stood out was this cameras low light capability which is really good. In one of the outdoor pictures you can see my deck lights are on and the camera is still in day mode. This picture was taken at least and hour after sunset, as a matter of fact, the night mode picture was taken only a minute or so after I took the day mode picture. The camera comes configured as DHCP, so it got an IP address from my network and I didn't have to play IP assignment tricks first. Since this camera is ONVIF compatible, my Blue Iris server detected it immediately. I have done some up close motion detection testing with it and so far the camera does well with it's own detection means. I want to walk around further back on my property and use the ONVIF signaling to trigger Blue Iris to create alerts, more on that later. Overall I am happy with this camera and may get another one for the front of the house.

This is a standard IP camera except for that it has an extra wide angle lens. When I connected it to my network, it pulled an IP right away and I was able to preview it in the web interface before connecting to my Milestone NVR. I did not test the two-way talking or lights or any of the other consumer features, but it supports ONVIF and gave me the FPS I wanted without using a lot of bandwidth. The wide lens let me put it in my alley and see cars both coming and going with one camera. The night vision was on par with the other Anpviz products I've installed. The only downside is that the unit is large. It was relatively easy to mount, but I don't like it as much as the dome cameras. Maybe just a personal preference.

The web based ui is nice and responsive which isn't always the case when streaming to a few sources. For instance my Reolink 842a which is 4k, has quite alot latency and freeze frames. I have the main stream both for recording in blue iris and at my cctv viewer on a pc which also runs 24/7. The stream has low latency and so far it's been streaming without any artifacts in the video stream, even if I add a third source. I bought it for my garage since I needed a camera and a wide viewing angle was my main requirement. I can see the door to my shed and the front door to my house thanks to the wide angle the dual lenses provide. It comes with all needed accessories and you can add external speaker, microphone and even trigger alarms via the external connectors. Added a picture from my drone to show the how wide it actually captures, its just _over_ 180 degrees. Thats pretty awesome. The chassis is very sturdy and the camera feels like it can withstand a lot of external force. It has built in ai feature that eliminates almost all false alarms, its great and nice to have less false events to discard. Its possible to set an audible alarm which triggers after a confirmed alert. It supports 2 way audio as well, so you can talk to people via the inbuilt speaker. All in all I'm very happy with the camera and I know from experience that Anpviz has great support that replies fast. I have a few Anpviz cameras and I am quite happy with them all, especially the newer range.

UPDATE: This negates all the good that I previously wrote about this camera. I had it set up to record to the SD card I installed. It had been correctly formatted through the app and appeared to be working fine. I only realized when I tried to view the footage that THE CAMERA HAS RECORDED NOTHING. Whatever format it made the SD card, it is unreadable by anything, including its own app. Tried from mobile and PC. The whole point of a camera like this is to be able to view the footage. So disappointed that when I really needed the footage, it was not there. Returning this. This camera is AMAZING. The field of view is something I didn't even think was possible. It covers the entire front of my property left to right and top to bottom. Not to mention that the picture quality is impeccable. I did have some issues with the set up and getting motion detection to work, but the seller was extremely responsive and helped me solve all of those issues. I am as pleased as can be with this camera and actually took my other cameras down because they were no longer needed.