This camera has become so popular that some places have sold out quickly. An outdoor 1080P dome for under $200 is a good price, one that works this well is a true bargain. The previous Dahua camera I reviewed was bullet style, day/night camera with built-in IR illuminators and a varifocal lens. This camera forgoes the bells and whistles in trade for a lower price but retains it’s good image quality.

Main Features

1. 1/3” 2Megapixel progressive scan Exmor CMOS

2. H.264 & MJPEG dual-stream encoding

3. 30fps 1080P (1920 x 1080)

4. 2.8mm fixed lens (3.6mm , 6mm, 8mm optional)

5. Micro SD memory

6. IP66 Rated Outdoor Dome

7. Powered by PoE

8. Smartphone apps available

Overall, this is an impressive camera with very good image quality, good low light performance, well-organized menus and very small. It’s small size does mean the range of motion is not as good as larger domes but still pretty nimble and does feature 3-axis adjustments. I was able to put it on my eave which is at and angle and still maintain a level shot.

This is what the web interface looks like when you first log in. There’s options to take a snapshot, manually record, chose a stream and more.

Across the top are tabs for Live (live viewing), Set (configure the camera), Alarm (setup alarms) and Logout. When you click on the Set tab, it takes you this configuration screen

Motion detection areas are cleverly set by clicking boxes to cover or expose the image. The exposed areas are where you don’t want motion detection and can be any shape that you can create using the box grid.

The camera does a good job of FTP’ing motion events to an FTP server. I personally use a Western Digital My Book Live 1TB that can be found a local stores that sell PC accessories. You give it the IP address of the server, user name and password and the directory. Worked really well even with a few cameras writing to it. This camera does have local storage in the way of a MicroSD card. Regardless of how you record, you’ll need the Dahua software that’s included to view the video and convert it to a common format you can share. I know converting video is a pain, but camera companies do this so you can’t alter the video in its original state so that it can be used in court. If they provided a common format, you would be able to tamper with the video.

Now onto the images, how well does this camera perform. I mounted the camera at the front of my garage, under the eave. This camera had the 2.8mm lens and was very wide and covered the entire front of my home. While at that wide of an angle, you can not ID someone across the street, it was very effective as people approached my front gate or driveway. As with my other reviews, click on the images below to see the full size image, straight from the camera.

Since this camera does not have built-in illuminators and it does not have a removable IR cut filter, you do need white light to get a usable image. This first shot I captured with my front porch lights on and available light from the street light across the street.

You get a pretty clear image and keeping a pair of flourescent 15W bulbs on at night may be less expensive than buying a camera with illuminators and also provides a safer environment at night. When the porch lights went off, so did a lot of the image. Still a lot is visible, but not sure you would be able to identify anyone in this darkness because the street light would actually cause a shadow on the person’s face.

The pluses for this camera are;

1. Price – don’t know where else you can get a camera this good for this price

2. 1080P at 30fps

3. Sony Exmor sensor has excellent daytime quality and performs well in low light

4. Smartphone apps – everyone wants to access their cameras from smartphones these days

The shortcoming of the camera are;

1. You must rely on your reseller for support

2. No Day/Night IR Cut Filter

3. No built-in illuminators