Amcrest 4K (8MP) Outdoor PTZ POE + IP Camera Pan Tilt Zoom (Optical 25x Motorized) Human and Vehicle Detection AI, Perimeter Protection, 328ft Night Vision POE+ (802.3at) IP8M-2899EW-AI-V2

This is the best camera of the many Amcrest cameras I own. The picture is clear and has great color accuracy. You can switch between night vision and night color but it can't be done in the IPad or IPhone app. The zoom is great, we have many birds and other animals that we like to zoom in on and get great video and pics. The birds don't seem to get scared away by the camera movement so you can get a great super close-up pic or video of them. The installation was easy to do because it was replacing an existing PTZ camera. This camera is hard wired Ethernet, I prefer it that way since I can also power it through the Ethernet using POE. In this particular case, the camera is also pretty close to an outlet so I ran the power to it to take the load off the POE switch. I just don't like the idea of using wifi to connect to a camera. If I had to do that, I would use another wifi router and isolate the camera network. I use NVR's to store my camera footage and like to run thing 24 X 7 so I can go back to any point in time and see what happened. Not every event is triggered by motion. There have been many times someone just walked by on the sidewalk and a motion event was not triggered. I could increase the sensitivity but then I would have a lot of events to weed through. It would be nice if Amcrest added the ability to switch the camera to night vision or color on the fly in their mobile app. I have both of their mobile Pro versions, neither will actually work to set this feature. The night vision button indicates it is switching night vision off, but the camera is still using black and white? How about "Night Vision On", "Night Vision Off", "Color Night Vision On" as three choices in the app when you press the Night Vision button. Also the LED's need to be turned on and off separately as well. The app just says "This feature is not supported". Really, an Amcrest camera connected to an Amcrest NVR talking to an Amcrest IOS app can't turn LED's on and off? Overall though, it's a good camera and I hope it will last longer than the others. I will update this review as I go along.

This camera is a scam. The AI is a joke and what Amcrest calls Auto-tracking is not even real. It WILL not follow a detection out of frame using PTZ. Fradulant packaging and advertisement. Very disappointing. Setup was complicated. Compatibility with NVR systems is extremely basic, everything has to be on the camera UI. Zoom is strong and resolution is good, but how hard is it to make a 8MP PTZ camera with a strong optical zoom nowadays. True auto-tracking firmware is not available for the camera as the on-board chip is not capable of it. There are cameras for half the price that have an actual excellent AI auto-track chip. I really hoped the camera would light the way of a person walking at night. The is no mic input, but it does have speak out put. Not worth the feature set at this price, at all.

I have no idea why these reviews are so low. Maybe people do not know how to use or configure it. This camera is fantastic. The image quality when you select main stream in 4K is amazing. The zoom is fantastic, and it has a ton of features: AI, Auto Pan, Instant Move to location selection, it even defrosts the lens in snow/ice for you.

Has operated well , APP for IPAD is no good but works with IPhone app.

Update (10 months later), After returning the camera described below for a replacement. I installed the replacement and LOVED it so much I purchased another (6 months ago). I now have run one for just under a year, and a second for around 6 months. I COULD NOT BE HAPPIER. These cameras are functionally amazing and return a picture that is wildly impressive. Barring the initial issue (below) that was resolved via free replacement, I would recommend these cameras to everyone. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Original Review (below)... Installed this, and initially LOVED it. It completely crushes the performace of most other PTZ cameras. I had it wired with POE. Unfortunately, two days ago (One WEEK after hanging it), the image went from perfect to fuzz with a flicker of brighness. It can be seen in the images attached. The first was taken at 6:15pm and the second at 8:34pm (on the same day). There was no rhyme or reason for the failure. I tried rebooting. Powering off and on. I even performed a factory reset (first from the built in browser, then from pressing the reset button). After the reset I re-connected (even skipped the POE and powered directly) and the video is the result. Flickers about ea 5 seconds then fuzz. VERY disappointed! For the record I have 20 other cameras (1 WIFI PTZ, a couple WiFi fixed, and a bunch of IP8M fixed) from Amcrest and they all ROCK.

Camera arrived dead in the sense that it was unreachable by the User Interphase, Amcrest surveillance pro software or the IP set software. The NVR found it , it had an image, but would not allow any modifications to its IP address which was completely out of network (10.1.1.128). Contacted Amcrest and received message that they would get back to me in 2 days or contact Amazon. I returned it and leaked my wounds. A waste of time and effort. Do not get this product, which is not ready for prime time, no pun intended.

Plug & Play with my Amcrest box makes life easy. Good zoom and picture quality. Easily looking at something 1.5 miles away

For this price - it really should have audio (at least to hear) without having to get a separate microphone. Good grief