ANNKE 3K Lite Wired Security Camera System Outdoor with AI Human/Vehicle Detection, 8CH H.265+ DVR and 8 x 1920TVL 2MP IP67 Home CCTV Cameras with Smart Dual Light, Color Night Vision, 1TB Hard Drive

I was quoted $5200 for someone to put a camera system at my business. With the way the economy is I could not afford that route so I chose to get these cameras and put them up myself. So far very pleased with the investment. I had to get extensions for the wires to be able to get where I needed them but the pictures is very nice and it was simple to put up with a ladder and drill. Also has its own Hard drive with movement notifications through the app. Affordable and great quality 💪

I bought this system to replace the Blink system that’s owned by Amazon because i was sick of paying the subscription and the crappy service. Install was simple if you have the know how and the tools. I absolutely love the picture quality even the IR/night vision is INSANE and clear. This system can be local view only and/or the ANNKE Vision app, which is very simple to use once you get your settings tuned in on how you want them. Each camera you can draw a zone to which you can also set a particular sensitivity for each camera. The notifications are very quick and no lag time to view which was the selling point. Now. The reasons for the 3 stars, about a month ago, we had a power outage, which dropped the WiFi, which you need for the app, i have gone through each trouble shooting step to gain back my app viewing, keep in mind my system still works but its local view only at this time. I have followed the steps precisely and even involved support. I’m still waiting to hear back about what else we can do to get my app back online. Just sucks that customer support isn’t as quick as it was. But all in all, a great system and very responsive for identifications. And VERY customizable. EDITED 1/30/26 After weeks of trouble shooting and doing EXACTLY what they say and still no results. They ended up sending me a whole new DVR. I’m back online for local and REMOTE. They were very helpful, the reason the issue took forever was due to time differences and availability on my side. I’m glad i stuck it out.

This product was a great deal! We got an excellent price on it, and it arrived early. It was well packaged and everything was secure with boxes and boxes of cameras, hard-drive and wiring. Install was super easy, since we were replacing our old system. Took my husband approx 1hr and 30 mins to get all the old cameras down (4) and new cameras (5/8) installed. We were able to use the old wires to pull new wiring through. Setup was also super easy, as we have not run this through our wifi. When we go through that process, I will try to update the review with information regarding setup and app installation. Picture quality is great day and night, but the night vision is fairly limited depending on light. The scope of details for the cameras are bright to dim where there is little to no light, covering an estimated 10'W by 30'D area. In well lit areas the distance is much greater with clear picture for up to 150' or more. That is the one negative and would be the one area needing improvement, or there may be another system that offers further coverage at night. The 2T hard-drive is big but not bulky. The system we replaced was only 1T and was about 4 in more narrow from front to back. We chose this system because of the ability to hook 8 cameras up. It also has the capabilities to mix and match so we can use wireless cameras if wanted as well. Since we were going from wired to wired, with the exception of one, we chose to keep the wired cameras instead of buying all new wireless. When we get the 3 wireless I will update the review with that info if able. Setting up the system was as easy as following the prompts. Password protected or not, it is up to you. We chose to go with a wireless mouse of our own rather than use the corded mouse that is included, and it works fine like that. Easy to configure cameras and set them up. The one area that we don't like is viewing options. You can set them up with all 8 on the screen but not just 5, so we have 3 black screens where those are not connected. 1 is displayed larger than the other 7, that are all smaller around 2 sides of the 1 larger. You can also display them 1 at a time that flips from 1 to the next, and if motion occurs it will jump back to the screen and hold there for designated time. There are other options as well if you decide to do the wifi and internet option- you can set alerts to shoot an email and even contact the monitoring app for remote viewing of every alert if necessary. The motion sensitivity can be set to certain areas in a grid or for entire screen and you can have it sensitive enough to alert when a leaf falls 20 yards away during the day or less sensitivity so that it doesn't trigger further than 5ft away. The whole program is really easy to maneuver and the possibilities are endless with this system. Hopefully this review helps. I definitely recommend this product if you want good quality, excellent picture and an easy install, all for a very competitive price.

This is an overall great camera system! It works great and has really good camera quality. The installation process was pretty straight forward. Although it wouldn't hurt to order longer cables if you do order this camera system. We ordered 4 100 ft cables extra so we could put the cameras farther out. It comes with 8 60 ft cables. They pick up well even far away. I would strap the wires down pretty good too to where the wind doesn't blow them a whole lot so they don't break as easily. Or you could bury them indergeound. We did also have to buy a longer Ethernet cable that worked good with the system because the one it came with was super short! We got a 25 foot Cat 6 Ethernet cord. We thought Cat 5 wouldnt be as good for quality and Cat 7 is more for businesses. Cat 6 is perfect for home uses. However, my biggest issue with this system was after installation, I went to set up the software and it was very difficult!!! I about got so frustrated that I almost sent them back. It took almost 2 days for us to get the cameras to detect motion. And we had everything set to the right settings. We had camera 2 and 3 set up but not 1 yet. So we decided to set up camera 1 and then everything started to work right. So just for your information make sure camera 1 is set up first!! We have the sensitivity turned up all the way right now and it is picking up great now. It even triggers when it rains! It can be kind of annoying actually. But you can adjust it to whatever setting is right for you. After we finally got the cameras working good... they have been great!!. It has AI that detects human and vehicles but I do wish that the camera could have advanced AI settings so it would know my face and not record me all the time..lol Night detection is pretty clear as well. I love that it sends me a notification every time it senses movement. It does detect animals as well but it categorizes them as humans. The notifications work through internet from the Ethernet cord. If you lose Internet you won't get notifications sent to your phone but the hard drive will still manually record on the DVR. And one thing that I love is that if the memory is full, it will start to overwrite itself so you don't have to delete anything or worry about the memory! Overall these cameras are a great home security option.

For the price, you get more than what you pay for. You can use this camera system with or without WiFi. If you use it without WiFi, you don’t have the option of viewing the videos and play back on your phone but if you decide to connect it to the WiFi and download the app, it work even better then those monthly camera subscription out there that you have to pay just to view playbacks. This camera does a great job recording video when someone or a car goes by it and mark those event in the timeline if you wanted to go back and review it. The only downside to a wired camera is that you have to find a way to loop all the wires through your house but once you done that, it’s one of the best camera system you could ask for. At night, the camera system light turn on whenever there is a movement near it which it record in great quality. And you can go a significant amount of days to view the playback.

Absolutely would fully recommend. This is not a paid review or anything like that. Just a straight honest opinion after having them for a month. We had our back fence cut and our sons raptor 80 stolen, we did get it back, but we upped our security. We were in a little bit of a rush to get some cameras put up and I didn’t look through all their products, because I should have gotten their 16 channel one so I could add on additional cameras. I may still upgrade to that so I can have two additional cameras facing directly at the back door and front door. These cameras do have really good range from side to side and up and down to view a large area with just one. The night vision is wonderful and as long as there is nothing blocking the night vision light you will be able to see a good distance out. Also with night vision it doesn’t matter if you have outdoor porch lights on because it doesn’t alter it and you still see the same. Once it gets dark I’ll post a night vision picture up. One thing with the night vision is make sure nothing is hindering the cameras and if you have white walls outside the night vision light will reflect a lot off that, which you will be able to see in my pictures, look at the top row far left and the middle row center cameras, those two cameras are on the sides of our house facing the side wall ways. You can see well that area but as you can see the light does bounce off the white of the house. When you look at the other cameras you will see that it doesn’t do that. It doesn’t make a difference to us since our other cameras will pick people up if they walk through those areas. You can also set hat time the cameras go into and out of night vision mood. As far as the motion detection they go off all the time because of the trees moving or animals, this isn’t a big deal for us because we are just using these to be able to check on the house while we are gone and if something does happen we can go back and see it. If you download the app on the phone I highly recommend you turning off the notifications for motion detection because you will hear it 24/7. For the wifi connection. You do not need Internet to operate these cameras. However if you want to view them on the app from your phone you will need a internet cable from your internet router box snd plug it into the back of the security camera box. Without doing that you can’t use the all you view cameras. The wifi does not connect to the box that’s why you have to have a cord. The wifi only works from the box to the app on the phone. The cameras will continuously back up to the box 24/7. I do go in and manually clear out data to make room so I’m not sure what it does if you don’t do that. I’m sure there are others on here who have more detail on that. I did try to save a clip of data from the box but I didn’t have anything externally hooked up to it for it to back up on, so that’s something you will need if you need to save clips. HOWEVER, I got around this because I used the app and on the iPhones you can screen record I just did it that way and it’s much easier and saves directly to your phone and then you can save to iCloud if you want. The cables that come with it for the most part were long enough and I’m sure if we put multiple holes in our attic the cords would have been fine. However I did order a four pack of 100 for cables for the cameras on the far side of our house since we ran everything through the same hole in the attic and we needed that extra length because of that. The cables that do come with them are 60ft so they are pretty sufficient. The cameras were easy to install we just used a screw driver and tucked the cords up into the trim. I do recommend using electrical tape and wrapping up all the connection areas that are outside to help protect from weather and especially moisture. I’ll take some pictures of the cameras outside snd lost them on here as well once I get a chance. We have had these cameras for about a month now and we haven’t had any troubles at all. Our neighbor behind us has a really expensive big name security camera system and honestly this Annke system hands down beats what he has. These have better night vision, better range, storms don’t set them off left and right like our nieghbors do and their slightly clearer and have better picture quality. This is not a paid review or anything like that. I literally sat for hours comparing brands and prices and too a leap of faith with the Annke brand based off others reviews and the rating of this product and I’m so happy I did. Hopefully this helps others out when looking for cameras.

UPDATE: at least half the cameras from both systems have failed now. They've all failed after getting rain water inside them. They are not watertight. Once damaged the image appears purple. You think you can live with that until a crime has been committed and you go to look at the video and the motion record was never activated after the cameras got wet. UPDATE: I guess I should have returned the unit immediately to Amazon. The display output is degrading and there's nothing I can do about it. I wish tech support was non-existent because it's just incompetent. they are incapable of troubleshooting something that's not user error. I bought an additional unit. The new unit is upgraded from the old one. I just wanted to comment on how dificult the technical support it is. It's only email based and they don't speak English and they appear to use Google Translate. there's a problem with the HDMI output on my unit if I do not push sideways on the HDMI cable connected to the back of the DVR I will get a green and red static over everything on the display. But I can't explain that to somebody speaking a foreign language over email. So I guess I'm just going to have to live with the problem. Also this unit does not come with instructions whatsoever! UPDATE: I've grown fond of the system, even though it is ridiculously hard to watch the playback. If you have motion activated recording to view the recording you have to click on this 1 pixel wide sliver that represents that 10-second recording. I can't do it. I've tried dozens of times. I usually have to back up and watch an hour or two a video to get to the spot I wanted to look at. but I'm writing this update today because we had a brown out last week during the night and it fried the hard drive in the security system. my Swann security system, still going strong. also there are no instructions to this! I contacted technical support through email and ask them if there was a link to any online help and all they can ever give me is a link to a very specific question. Is completely unhelpful! when you're using the software on the security system there's a menu item that's titled manual. It seems like it would have some information, but it has absolutely none! when you click that menu item it's simply shows you one of those square barcodes. I almost wish I was a computer, but alas I have no ability to read that. I assume there's not much information encoded in it anyway. well that's my update. initially when I purchased this system it would not work whatsoever with the Emerson 720 P television that I bought just for this. which is caused by the DVR being set to a higher resolution. so you're going to need to get a computer monitor and hope that has a high enough resolution to get this thing working. that's no guarantee that it will work however. When I first got the system it wouldn't work with the monitor I had to unplug it several times and plug it back in and that didn't work the first day but the second day I did that, it started to work. the picture was very purple and it worked like that flawlessly for 5 days and then one day it went back to having an incompatible resolution. mind you however I had never changed the resolution. That's what I found with the system is it might stop working and you'll have to be patient and scream at it and unplug it a bunch and maybe it'll start working again. but it's been working for me for a couple weeks now. and I like several things about this DVR but it's certainly not for everybody. if you need to review the footage that you record you probably do not want this DVR. It is ridiculously difficult to watch the recorded footage. Number one with the motion sensor set to the least sensitive setting it's still continuously activated even when there's no shadows moving or nothing at all that I can see changing in the frame. but what I find absurd about the playback is that you can only watch a maximum of two of the 8 channels at a time and you have to select which two channels up front and you cannot change them during playback. Also playback is a maximum of 4 X. That means if you wanted to watch 24 hours worth of footage from two cameras it would take you, at full fast forward, 6 hours to do that. but there are 8 cameras. At 6 hours per pair you're going to spend 24 hours to review 24 hours worth of footage from all cameras. Not only that but the cameras do not play back in sync. if you don't have a security system then maybe that doesn't make sense to you. But on my Swan when I watch the video all of my cameras are showing me what happened at the exact same moment. with this system when I'm playing it back one camera is showing me leaving in the morning while the other camera is showing me backing into the driveway in the afternoon. it is very confusing to watch. if you don't ever need to playback recorded footage though this might be a really good system for you. The LEDs seem rather bright. the picture is good but not great. according to the product specifications this thing is recording At a way higher resolution then my first system which is a swann. also the cameras on this are supposed to be 800 line where is my Swan is probably under 600 but I cannot tell a difference at all in the quality. In night mode the extra bright LEDs on these cameras light up all sorts of dust just floating around in the air at all times. that you can't see and it triggers the motion recording continuously at night. in fact it always looks like it's snowing at night. With all the white dust floating around and in black and white and with the intensity of the LEDs my grass looks white. they claim to have the world's best technical support. They do not have a phone number available you're going to have to email them. most of the time they respond. It takes them anywhere from an hour to a couple days to respond. they obviously do not speak English and a lot of the messages on the DVR are not properly translated into English. I wanted to change a setting and it gave me something that I think was intended to be a warning that I might not be able to use the DVR if I change that setting. but technically it wasn't a warning it was just poor English. so I didn't feel confident changing anything. when I purchased this system I could not find another 8 camera system anywhere near this price. If you can I would recommend trying another system.I do like this system for monitoring what's going on. also I would discount the high resolution of the system says it works at when you are comparing it to other systems. I feel that either the resolution is a lie or just a waste of resources as it absolutely never looks better than my lower resolution Swan system.

Picture quality is alright. Software sucks it worked on my phone for one day and now I can't connect to the cameras. Good cameras but they need to update the software.