Defender 21051 Sentinel 16-Channel Smart Security DVR with 16 Ultra Hi-Resolution Outdoor Surveillance Cameras (Black)

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Price: $799.99    

Product Feature

• 600TVL with IR cut filter ultra hi-res cameras provide crisp and detailed video
• 36IR LEDs for 100ft Automatic night vision
• View anytime, anywhere with remote viewing via internet, smartphone, and tablet
• Record over 2 years worth of footage on the included 500 GB hard drive

Product Description

Trust DEFENDER to make thieves and vandals think twice about approaching your property. DEFENDER systems function just like a computer, with a mouse for pointing and clicking and an intuitive icon-based menu for easy set up and use. View anytime, anywhere with remote viewing via internet, smartphone, and tablet and receive email alerts, with photo, when motion is detected on your property. Record over 2 years worth of footage on the included 500 GB hard drive. All-weather cameras deliver clear, ultra hi-res video with 600TVL and IR cut filter. 36IR LEDs allow for 100ft of automatic night vision. Anti-vandal mount ensures cameras cannot be tampered with and 65ft of cable allows for greater flexibility in mounting. Connect up to sixteen cameras to this 16CH system and monitor your business or home inside and out. Don't give thieves a chance. Stop them with DEFENDER!

Defender 21051 Sentinel 16-Channel Smart Security DVR with 16 Ultra Hi-Resolution Outdoor Surveillance Cameras (Black) Review

A few years ago I installed a PC-based security system similar to this from Q-See in our old house. It was quite a bit more complicated than this all-in-one setup as it involved setting up PC-based Hardware, buggy software, and 13 different types of indoor and outdoor cameras.

At the moment, I haven't permanently installed the camera's yet, as they are temporarily placed inside and outside of the house in various locations as I evaluate the system and determine the best placement. So let's walk through the system so you hopefully have a better idea of what you're getting into, and how it performs.

UNBOXING:

There are 3 separate boxes, in a bigger box. One has the DVR itself and associated material. And the other 2 larger boxes include all of the camera hardware and wires. The wires for the cameras are 65' and combine both the BNC (for video) and DC power connector into one cable. This should make running wires much easier.

The end of the cable that goes to your DVR will connect the BNC cable to the DVR, and then the DC power cable connects to a 4-way DC->AC adapter. This is much prefered to the older designs where each camera had it's own bulky transformer to plug into.

There is mounting hardware for the cameras, which is rather basic. You'll want to check this out and make sure it's suitable for what and where you are going to mount these cameras into. You definitely don't want them falling down. I'll get more into Installation later.

They've also included an RJ45 network cable, RCA cable, Quick Start Guide, and a small USB mouse. The USB mouse is small and cheap, but you can use any USB mouse you have laying around. If you want more instructions, you can use the included mini-CD which has a full PDF users guide. Or just download them directly from Defender's website. I do recommend the latter as I already noticed a few changes between the two. The on-line materials are more up-to-date.

INSTALLATION:

While I do have an extensive background in computers, drilling holes and running wires is not my strong suite. I neither have the expertise, equipment, or time to correctly install these cameras in the new house. At least not to my satisfaction. We just built a house that's 1 year old and has no attic, just limited crawl space. The last house had a huge attic making installation relatively simple. So I'm going to leave this to professional's once I'm ready for installation.

If you want to do this yourself, it's important that you're comfortable drilling holes and running cables in your house. The Quick Start guide handily includes a drilling template for the mounting brackets. They also instruct you to use a 3/16" drill bit, not included of course. The only tool included is an allen wrench to adjust the position of the camera on the included mounting bracket.

Running the wires and mounting the cameras is generally considered the "hard part." You'll want to make sure the compact DVR is in a location where it has network connectivity (for remote viewing) and of course, power. Sorry, no WiFi here.

If you want to have this professionally installed, this can get rather pricey. From shopping around my area, you're looking at anywhere from $100-$200 per camera depending on how much labor is involved and how many you have. This is assuming you want it done "right," and not just have a wires and holes all over the place. The good news is that the more you have, the less they normally charge per camera.

CAMERAS:

Before talking about the DVR's, we should spend some time on the camera's themselves. I've used equipment ranging from cheap (and useless) $40 cameras to some very nice setups getting past $300+ a piece. As is often the case, you certainly do get what you pay for.

These are surprisingly fairly decent outdoor day/night cameras. I'd expect to pay around $100 a piece with cables for the quality I'm seeing here, so it's a pretty good value with the DVR. There are 36 IR (Infrared) LED's that will glow red at night, which provide the night vision. These are going to be quite visible from the street and should provide a nice deterrent on their own. Not to mention they just look cool. :)

They are advertised at 100ft night vision, but realistically, you're looking at roughly half that. Mostly because any further than this, and you really aren't going to have any idea what you're looking at. However, if there is some ambient light such as a street light, your range will naturally extend quite a bit. But in 0 lux (complete darkness), it is more limited. Of course for home surveillance, that is really more than enough.

I did most of the testing in my backyard as it gets completely dark out there at night. I watched as it went from light to dark, then again in the morning, when it got bright again. And the transition from night vision (B&W) to day mode (Color) was seamless. And then tested to see if we could identify somebody (such as myself) approaching from a distance at night.

For realistic identification, the subject will really need to be within about 20-40 ft in complete darkness, depending on conditions. In the daytime, this is much further of course. This is further limited by recording quality. More on that in the DVR section.

One last important note for the camera is how it switches from Day/Night mode as the camera itself makes a surprisingly loud clicking noise when it makes this change. Not a big deal if they are outside. But inside, we can hear it clicking a few rooms away. Not to mention being inside, where it's darker, it switches between day/night mode much more frequently. Think partly cloudy skies where it becomes light and darker throughout the day.

DVR:

The DVR is what makes this package much easier to manage and setup as it handles everything for you. I have all of the cameras plugged into the box, a keyboard, mouse, a monitor via its VGA port, and a network cable. The USB mouse/keyboard are optional, but are recommended for initial setup. You can switch to the IR remote afterwards.

If you're comfortable playing with the setup menu's for your TV or other similar electronics, you should be able to figure most of this out on your own. The interface is primitive to say the least, but very functional. Otherwise, I do suggest browsing the user's guide before even plugging it in as there are quite a few options you may not be familiar with.

It would take a while to go through every option, so if you don't have one yet, you can check out the owners manual. The important features are adjusting the display, setting up record schedules, motion detection, file sizes, search for recorded video, user accounts, and network (LAN only) setup.

The "live view" of all the cameras is what I'd expect from this setup. You can switch cameras, change grids, pause the video, rewind, etc. The image looks pretty darn good and are certainly right about "DVD Quality." However, what you see on the monitor isn't exactly what you get when you playback video, which is slightly lower quality. But still very useful for seeing what went on when you were out.

The claim is that you can get 2 years worth of footage on a 500GB HD. Even if you're adding up each camera's footage together and lower the quality and FPS (Frames Per Second), that's a bit of stretch (and not all that relevant.) I suspect if you got it to last that long, the quality would be pretty bad. Normally you're looking at 2 weeks, not 2 years. At the default rate of 30fps and 768 Bit Rate, which is the highest, the drive is already half-full. By default it will auto-overwrite old content.

That's certainly not a negative, I just want everybody have realistic expectations as I thought the description was a bit misleading as they were referring to "total footage." Although you can connect an external USB hard drive to extend recording and even copy videos from the internal drive. You can even setup recording schedules or "motion activated" recording to stretch things out quite a bit. That's very handy, of course.

REMOTE VIEWING:

You will need to go through network setup and create at least one user account with a password. This is important to note. Out of the box, if you just setup your network only, you can remotely view the cameras from your browser. For PC users, you are limited to Internet Explorer only. I used IE9 as IE8 never would install the plug-in. FireFox and Chrome are detected as incompatible browsers and won't work. And you will have to make a temporary change to your IE security settings to allow the plugin to install.

I also suggest setting up a "Static IP" with the DVR versus "Dynamic IP," which is the default setting. As the names implies, a static IP will ensure the IP address doesn't change occasionally when you have to reboot the device or router. Just check your router documentation to see what IP would work for you.

To access the web portal, I entered the static IP I configured earlier, into IE9, [...] installed the plug-in, and then login with the default login/pass, (admin/admin). You should change this later. In addition to accessing the cameras in near-real time, you can access most settings here as you would on the DVR directly. If you want to do this outside of your home network, you'll need to make a few changes to your router to open some ports.

However, the DVR does support UPNP (Universal Plug-n-Play). If your router also supports this, and it's enabled, it will open the ports for you. My network setup is a bit more complicated and doesn't support this as it's often considered a security risk. I won't go into too much detail otherwise I'll never get this review finished. So, Google it. :)

Otherwise they do have some fairly decent instructions to walk you through most of this stuff. Since the way you do this does vary between routers, they'll refer you to the documentation that came with your router. Also once you open the ports, you'll definitely want to make sure passwords have been changed and set.

You can even use your SmartPhone to remotely connect to the DVR and check out the cameras. You will need to go into the Users accounts screen and either create a new account or enable the password for one of the existing accounts. This is important as the default credentials wouldn't work for the app, only web. Although once you have user accounts setup with passwords, you can specify who has permissions to access various features, and they will work for both web and phone access.

REAL-WORLD USE:

So how does it really work? For the most part, it works very well. At least once you have everything installed, configured, and setup. :) This is certainly much easier to setup than it was years ago with the older PC-based setup I used quite some time ago. My wife and I really do enjoy being able to glance at a second computer with the cameras running. Is somebody at the door? Noise in the backyard in the middle of the night? Want to check on the house while you're out? Not a problem.

The remote viewing quality isn't as good as it is on the DVR itself, especially on the phone app, but still good enough for it's intended purpose.

All of this combined with a monitored security system and few guns laying around, and you've got a one secure and protected house! Of course nothing is 100% secure, and you should always use some common sense; but having 8 red glowing cameras around the house serves as one heck of a deterrent. :)

I did run into an issue where the DVR decided to ignore any type of input from the mouse or remote control. There aren't any buttons on the device itself, so a power cable pull was needed for it to reboot and start responding again. At least the timer was still going and it was still recording.

So that's not a big deal for now. Otherwise it's been running smooth and quiet, providing what is essentially real-time monitoring and recording of the premises.

Let's wrap this one up.

PRO'S:
+ Great value with DVR & Cameras
+ Good quality day/night cameras
+ 500GB DVR
+ Remote browser and phone viewing
+ Relatively "easy" setup process
+ Generous cable length and basic HW included
+ Fast DVR for near real-time viewing
+ Universal Plug-n-Play Supported
+ USB Storage Capability

CON'S:
- Limited browser compatibility
- Recorded video quality could be a bit better
- Noisy Day/Night "Clicking" from Cameras
- No WiFi
- Cheap mouse?

CONCLUSION:

So this review ended up being a bit longer than expected, but there is a lot going on here with a video surveillance system. And there's a lot of smaller details that would take a User's Guide to cover. So I'll leave that to the one Defender already wrote, which is better than most I've skimmed in the past. :)

Overall, it's not perfect, but if you're looking for a good mid-range outdoor day/night DVR system for your home or small business, I consider this highly recommended and give it a solid 4.5 stars.

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