This is a review of the Revo Wireless HD 4 channel smart gateway kit model number
RWG41BNDL, which is used in conjunction with the Revo Wireless app.
First I'll talk about what's included, then setup, audio/video quality,
features, placement/installation, the Revo Wireless app, warranty, and I'll
share my likes and dislikes along the way. See the information section below
if you want to jump to any section of the video, for example, if you only want
to see the quality of the footage. Let's get started.
The kit comes with 2 HD
1080p Wi-Fi indoor/outdoor, audio capable, PIR, that's passive infrared, bullet
cameras, and their power supplies, mounting screws, a four channel Wi-Fi
gateway with power supply and network cable, as well as a 32 gigabyte microSD
card. The gateway can accept up to a hundred and twenty eight gigabyte
microSD card in case you were wondering.
Unlike some products on the market this
gateway cannot be connected directly to an external monitor. For iOS users the
kit must be used with the free Revo wireless app available for iPhone, iPad,
or iPod Touch running iOS 10.7 or later. Does anyone still have an iPod Touch?
There is no app for Mac computers
however. For PC and Android users you can use the Android app or the app for PC.
Even though the manual is only six sparse pages, set up was a breeze given
the gateway and two cameras arrived already paired. To set up, you simply
download the free app from either Google Play or the Apple App Store, register in
the app, connect the Gateway to your router, power on the cameras and gateway,
and then add the cameras in the app either by manually entering the device
ID or scanning the QR code on the gateway. I'll show you the rest of the
app features later on in this video, but here's a helpful pointer. After setup is
complete in the app, immediately be sure to click the three dots in the upper
right corner of the My Device tab, select Device Setup, and either select Time Sync
to sync the time with your cell phone, or select Choose Time Zone here to select
your current time. I didn't do that after setup so when I went to review the
footage the stamp was incorrect. Also note the clock
is in 24-hour format.
To demonstrate the audio and video quality, I'm going to do this next
section with footage from the camera. This is three feet away. This is camera
two and this happens to be about seven feet away. In the true fashion of
people visiting your home I'll do the rest of this in a zipped up hoody.
The packaging says that the cameras shoot in 1080p, P being progressive. 1080
is typically 1920 vertical by 1080 horizontal and strangely on the Revo America
website it says 1920 by 1124. That's a solid 2.1 megapixels.
The description says, "You'll experience the power and beauty of HD video," but keep in
mind it's still a 2.1 megapixel sensor. For comparison, that's more than an
iPhone 6's 1.2 megapixel front-facing or selfie camera, but less than an iPhone 6S's
5 megapixel front-facing camera.
Cheese!
Given Apple's now on iPhone X, well, this technology's a little behind Apple,
but then again who isn't! Right?!? Also nowhere does anything mention the frame
rate of the video, which is important to video editors like me.
Now let's go to camera 1 and we'll do it in night vision.
Hey I'm your neighborhood burglar. I'm gonna break into your house. I'm gonna work
on your to-do list. I'm gonna fold the laundry, feed your pets, and wash the
dishes, and maybe help myself to some of your stuff. Anyway I'm about 15 feet away
from the camera and so you can see it a little closer... Now I'm about three feet away
from the camera. Hey! What's up? I'm BalanR. Check out my reviews! Subscribe to my
channel. Now I'll turn the lights back on so you can see what it looks like that
way and you can also see my messy workshop. So lights,
camera,
action.
So as you can see my camera one seems to be having an audio issue as evidenced by the static.
So enough of that!
As you can see video quality is reasonable, but the
audio is a little thin. Also audio and video weren't perfectly in sync in the
case of camera two and were terribly out of sync in the case of camera one.
These are security cameras after all so I don't think anyone's expecting to
shoot music videos with these things... well unless perhaps you're the new
manager of Nsync and relaunching the band as.... I don't know...Out of Sync.
Thanks little assistant.
A few helpful things to note before I talk about the app.
The cameras' field of view is 80 degrees. This is a 90 degree angle and this yellow is
80 degrees. And according to the manufacturer the range is 250 feet in
daylight and depending on whether you look at the packaging or visit the
manufacturer's website, the range in total darkness may be either a hundred
feet or 75 feet... and that's thanks to the infrared rays.
The ranges seem impressive
but keep in mind that zooming footage captured at 2.1 megapixels will look a
little fluffy. It's good enough for security purposes though as long as
you're not hyper zooming. The cameras have passive infrared or PIR, which is
supposed to limit false detection. It's pretty good but I find that it's a
little sensitive even on the lowest setting. One feature that would improve
this product, which some security cameras have, would be to allow the user to
define the detection range. It's sometimes referred to as a blocking
feature and it prevents false detection caused by things like trees blowing in
the wind or perhaps that collection of bobbing head dolls you have perched in
the living room.
I should mention that false detection will also blow your
phone up with alerts like it's New Year's Eve.
Happy New Year!
The gateway stores video locally on a micro SD card and
there's no cloud storage offered. Keep that in mind
since should someone break into your home and steal your possessions
including the gateway or should your house burn down, heaven forbid, you won't
be able to figure out "who done it!"
Maximum recording time is 100 hours
according to the literature, but nowhere does it say whether that's with the
included 32 gigabyte microSD card, an optional 128 gigabyte SD card, or both.
Also note the cameras only record motion events so it is not a continuous video
recording. This system uses bandwidth when viewing video or using features
like two-way talk; hence, when using those features, that's more traffic on your
home network. If all your family members are at home and on their wireless devices
things may slow down for everyone. Yeah I just did that. The literature
doesn't mention anything about Wi-Fi standards, for example 2.4 gigahertz
versus 5 gigahertz networks so I can't speak to that in this video. I can only
say that a 5 gigahertz Network can carry more data than a 2.4 gigahertz network.
Perhaps Revo is trying to make this product as simple as possible so they
don't get into that information. Also, while it's a four-camera gateway that
comes with two cameras, no where have I seen additional cameras for sale should
you want to expand the system.
I should also mention I previously had a DIY
security system that stored to DVR and the DVR noise drove me crazy! <>
Make it stop!
I like that the Revo gateway is silent.
What I like about
wireless cameras is you don't have to drill too many holes or snake video
cables through walls. Unfortunately with all the fancy photos of the product that
don't show any cables, I forgot there are always two requirements for any camera.
There's the video and audio transmission, which is done wirelessly with these
cameras, and then there's the camera's power supply.
Why do I always forget that part?
Just an aside, I love how manufacturers, and
Revo's no exception, show pictures of their products but never show the
"wire spaghetti" required to make them operational.
The power cable is roughly
10 feet long and has a side-mounted wall wart. While the cameras are weatherproof the
power cable and side mounted wall wart probably aren't. The manufacturer doesn't
mention anything about this but I recommend using protective conduit if
running cables outside. Also plugging in outside where someone could
potentially unplug a camera would defeat the whole purpose of security, right?
Thanks little assistance.
If you plan to mount the cameras outdoors
the easiest place to mount them in my opinion is near or on a windowsill so
you can run the thin power cables between the sill and window. Also keep in
mind that infrared at night does not work through windows, and nearby objects
from outside lighting for example, can mess with the image.
According to the
packaging indoor wireless range is 400 feet and outdoor wireless range is 600 feet.
Not sure why the difference. But wait! I'm gonna further confuse you...
According to the manufacturer's website it states indoor wireless range is 200
feet. Huh? Not 400 feet? Anyway I'm going with the manufacturer's website on this.
I think 200 feet is actually generous given my experience with these cameras.
I say that because I've had connectivity issues from 60 feet away from the
gateway. I've experienced this... and this... and more of this on occasion. And fYI I'm
using a 2.4 gigahertz router. The only way I can see wireless range being 400
indoor and 600 feet outdoor would be in an open
field or maybe a house with no walls, doors, or windows.
Finally! Let's talk
about the app. It's free! And downloading footage to your phone is free, but the app
is a little clunky and quirky at times. On the My Devices tab you can press the
gear on each camera to name it. Turn on or off push notifications. Adjust motion
sensitivity. Turn on and off recording or delete the device. You can also do this
by selecting the camera on the My Devices tab and then selecting the three
lines in the upper right hand corner. Once you've selected a device as I've
done here you can live stream video in either standard definition or high
definition although this is where you'll need proper bandwidth to stream in HD or
you get this. You can also turn on or off streaming audio, enter full screen mode
by turning your phone horizontally, do two way talk, which impressively only had 1
to 2 seconds of latency <> You can also take a screenshot,
turn on real-time recording, or review recorded motion events highlighted in
green here on the timeline. To review footage from a different date you can
select the date of an event you're looking for here, press play and then
view all the motion triggered events for that day. Unfortunately you cannot select
a specific time so you have to scroll across the timeline to find specific
events. To help fine tune navigation on the timeline you can pinch or stretch the
timeline with two fingers to get to the start time of motion triggered events
faster. To capture an event for later download to an MOV file, play the video
and press the recording button to capture the clip in real time, and press
the recording button again to stop recording. Here's a tip though: The
recording button seems to work like a screen recorder. It captures the video
based on the screen's orientation so when I press record and the phone is oriented
vertically the file or video dimensions are
compressed to 640 by 640 like this. Then when I rotate the screen horizontally to full
screen mode it records the footage at 1136 by 640. Wait! It appears to fit in
the typical widescreen aspect ratio as you can see here. I don't know! Leave a comment
if you can explain why it doesn't appear to be true in 1080. To view, delete, or
share your saved video clips and screen captures, go back to My Devices and
select My Center, and then select screenshot recording here. You can press
Edit, select clips, and either delete or save them to your device's video library.
You can also select individual videos or screenshots here to view, delete, save or
share them. If we go back to the My Center page, you can also select Alarm
Message to view alerts and their associated video... and sometimes it works
and sometimes it doesn't. One thing that would be helpful in this app would be if
there was the option to snooze alarm notifications for a preset period should
they become annoying... like when I'm walking in and out of the workshop.
Perfect example! And may I pause just for a moment and revisit a few screenshots
that I showed earlier. Someone at Revo should really do a grammar check. "Succeed
to save recording." "Screenshot succeeds." He shoots. He scores! If you're gonna
offer a product in a particular country, please have someone go through the app
to make sure the prompts are correct. Not a big deal though. Also, another thing I
found ironic given these are security cameras, emphasis on security, was that
upon downloading the Revo app and registering, the password for the app can
only be six to twenty characters or numbers and it's case
sensitive. Wait! No special characters? All passwords should contain special
characters these days. My password is.... Oh wait! No it's not. That contains special
characters. The cameras and gateway come with a 12-month limited warranty
according to the paper that was included in the package, but two years according
to manufacturer's website. I don't know! Lots of inconsistencies
happening here. Unfortunately keep in mind that in order to obtain service
under the limited warranty you'll be responsible for packaging and shipping
the defective product back to Revo at your expense.
I contacted Revo about the camera one issue thinking I could get a replacement
camera, but instead they've asked that I return the whole kit to them on my
dime unfortunately. In the meantime however, they were kind enough to send me
an entirely new kit which I haven't installed or tested yet. So thumbs up to
customer service... kind of. Regarding price the equipment, app, and features of this
kit make it a good value in my opinion. To wrap up, minor challenges, issues, and
inconsistencies aside, I really do think these are decent DIY security cameras
especially given the nominal price, free app, and ability to download .MOV and
screenshots for free. You'll have to weigh the pros and cons for
your needs though and there are lots of things to consider when investing
in a security system. So do your homework. I hope this video has been helpful. If it
has please do me a favor and like it and most importantly please subscribe cuz
that always helps me out. Tthank you so much for watching.