After 4 months of testing Amcrest Camera this is my honest review

[iSpeakTheTruth]

Hello People,

I am currently an owner of Amcrest IP2M-841B which on the package motto says "Simple. Reliable. Secure." They are anything but.

The first Amcrest IP2M-841B had issues after 1.5 months of use. The camera would "short circuit" (described by the technician I spoke too). About 3 times a day (If I'm lucky) the camera would turn off/restart for about 30-120 seconds. Then the date would all change back to 01-01-2000 and all the settings to default.

Around the same time, my SD would corrupt, and I would have lost a days footage, that's fine. I bought a new one.

Some of you don't know this, but you would only be able to have your camera replaced w/ free shipping within 30 days. Since it was a month and a half, I would have to pay an additional $30, on top of the $100+ I spent on the camera. The replacement also took about 3 weeks to fill. Not ship, Fill.

I spoke too about 5-6 different customer support agents with the same exact issue and kept giving me the same solution on their script. "Latest firmware, sync date&time, unplugging the camera, factory reset, disable DST, PC sync, disable Sync with NTP Server, etc." this was about 2 and a half weeks in. Until one of the support agents scheduled a meeting with a technician. The technician, Kwing L., actually knew what he was talking about, he also knew what the issue was 5 seconds after I explained the issue to him, no bs "Sync with PC" or any scripted stuff. He got me RMA request and a form to fill out; everything was done less than a day.

Paid for shipping cost $30, Clicked "Eject" to save my new SD card. Went to my nearest FedEx and shipped it off. It took them about 1 week to process the RMA then about 3 days for the replacement to be shipped back. I plugged my camera back, did the setup got it running, inserted the SD card, and it wouldn't format. Found out it corrupted my SD card again. No big deal bought another one. (3rd SD card if anyone is counting).

I go to their cloud storage service link up my camera; there is a preview page. Everything is a mess, I don't know who designed their cloud storage site, but it was real bad for something someone is going to pay money, MONTHLY, for.

On the topic of bad choices for designs. Their PC, web browser, and android UI are so poorly made. Let's start off with the PC applications found here (https://support.amcrest.com/hc/en-us/ar ... llance-Pro). Straight off the bat looks basic but feels overdone and is a bit difficult to navigate. Looks like a 2002 software someone just whipped up in a few days. There has been no update for the PC application since 2016. You can tell just by the performance alone; it's chunky, uses lots of resources, it's slow, everything is out of date for 2019 standards. It slowed down all my computer considerably. It was like a malware sucking all the energy and performance out of my computer.

After using my new camera for another month now, the SD crapped out again. (4th SD card) It was getting expensive SD cards run about $30 x 4 = $120 worth of SD lost.

Now on to the web browser. The main issue with the web browser is that you can't see the live preview or playback without their "plugin" for Firefox or "extension app" for chrome. Why in the world would you have a localhost webpage if you are unable to provide the exact function it was meant to be used for? That's crazy to me, in 2019 you are unable to provide a function that is standard for all companies with localhost. Now for the settings, I'm not going to lie, I thought it was going to be a mess like the PC app, but the settings are actually pretty good, a little chunky and theme is out of date, the settings are a bit confusing without an explanation on the side. Other than that, it's fine.

Then there is a Android App. Again when you launch the app the motto is "Simple. Reliable. Secure." The app is slow has a delay while clicking buttons, it crashed a few times for me while changing settings or when I was trying to see who was at my front door. Again the settings are confusing as they are just pictures of icons without words/explanation of which button does what. Still nothing for the 2019 standards.

Last week I lost another SD card, the 5th SD card. Down the drain $150 worth of SD cards + $30 for the shipping + 100$ for the camera itself, $280. I could have I bought better cameras with $280; I could have even made a better webpage for $280.

But it doesn't matter what I could have bought with $280, its what I won't buy any more of, Amcrast products. Their motto of "Simple. Reliable. Secure." is a joke. Their PC app, web browser, and android app are not simple; they are most definitely not reliable. And as for security, they have flaws, bugs, exploits, vulnerability from the moon and back.

2016 - https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions ... ity-issue/
June 7, 2019 - https://threatpost.com/amcrest-critical ... es/145507/
June 11, 2019 - https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/0 ... y-cameras/

Amcrest has known about these flaws for at least 18 months or more. ...but delayed telling owners about the security aspect of its purpose in order to “give users time to update.”

In case of censorship, which they have done to a few reviews now, I will be following up with Consumer Protection Officials in both the US and Canada, Regarding the dishonest products you have been pushing out to the public.

[RLM]

I’m a retired EE Design Engineer so I have a strong familiarity with electronics but less so with IT issues. Sounds like you’re upset with both the product and the Customer Service. Guess I’m lucky that I’ve never encountered that.

I’ve been using five of the same model camera as you mentioned for more than two years now. I did have one failure similar to that which you described but the camera had nearly 17,000 hours on it by then so I didn’t consider it premature failure. The others are all still running fine. As for the Amcrest View Pro that I use on my iOS devices - I love it. It works great on my iPhone and iPad. The web page UI is a little complex but it allows good access to all the cameras features...

I’m not an IT expert by any means but I just (this week) upgraded my system to an 8 channel Amcrest NVR. Since I was already familiar with the iOS app and the web configuration utility (UI) on windows 7, the startup of the NVR was almost plug and play. I was able to discover and include my WiFi cameras quickly and set the NVR to record them too. The only complaint I have is the Time on the WiFi cameras has been a little tricky and so far I’ve been unable to get a keyboard to work with the NVR. But the UI in the NVR has a virtual keyboard - it’s just not my first preference.

[Techie007]

I would like to second what RLM just said above... I find the Amcrest camera products to be very easy to use and provide very good performance for the price. A new firmware update was finally released a couple days ago that makes the cameras compatible with all modern web browsers without using a plugin. I have installed many of these cameras and all are still working years later except for one that got water inside (it was an indoor camera used outside).

Are there improvements that could be made? Of course. The motion detector is terrible. Audio quality could be better. Security is always an issue with products like these. Their higher resolution cameras can't be run at lower resolutions without zooming/cropping the image. They support too many product options instead of staying with few terrific options (for example, IP2M-841B, IP2M-841W, IP2M-841EB, IP2M-841EW; they should eliminate all the non-PoE options since the PoE cameras all have power supplies included...then the quantity discount would let them lower the price).
If you want a "system", I would strongly recommend adding a PC running Blue Iris to interface all the cameras and remote access.

[mupimohan]

Not all POE cameras come with the power supply. The 4k POE camera does not come with the power adapter and that 12V 2A power adapter has been out of stock at the Amcrest web site for several months. I dont like using generic power adapters from ebay.

I dont think all non-poe cameras should be eliminated. Some people like to use the cameras with wifi instead of running a 100ft Ethernet cable. If it is a 4K camera, then using Ethernet would be better to handle large files. But a 1080p camera can be handled using wifi alone

The new firmware with Java update works best with Chrome and that is the recommended browser. It may not work well with everything and IE is not at all recommended. Also once you load it, you cant go back to the non-Javascript firmware. This has been cautioned in that thread.

Edit: changed Java to Javascript to avoid confusion as they are not the same

[James.S]

I am sorry to hear about the experience you have had with our support and our product, We definitely take the time to listen to customers and do our best to improve the Amcrest platform to better suit the customers.

I personly make it a priority to work with the R&D/Engineering team in making sure they are constantly updated on customer concerns. I also work directly alongside my Manager in teaching our agents of new troubleshooting methods or products coming out.

Knowing this I will take your feedback and make sure we are keeping all of the agents informed on the updated methods of troubleshooting and resolution to issues. as well as send your feedback to R&D/Engineering/Marketing teams.


I would be more than happy to speak with you one on one to collect more information about what we could do or could have done to improve your experience with Amcrest.


Kind Regards

James