Best Reolink security cameras

The Reolink Argus 3 Pro is our favourite Reolink camera because it's essentially a budget version of the Arlo Pro 5, one of our top picks for wireless cameras. It shares many of the same traits as Arlo: 2K video quality, portability, and a bright spotlight. But it costs almost half as much and beats Arlo in terms of local storage and solar power, even if it doesn't sport as wide of a field of view.

Even though the Reolink E1 Zoom sits between the Lumus and Argus 3 Pro on price, it has the best video quality of any Reolink camera we tested. Part of this is down to the camera's impressive 1920p video resolution, but the rest comes down to the E1 Zoom's superior frame rate and optical zoom. It has some of the best video quality we've ever seen on a security camera, let alone one that costs around $100.

The Reolink Lumus is almost like a "lite" version of the Argus. It doesn't have a battery and has a narrower field of view but provides crisp video indoors and outdoors for about half the price. Compared to other budget outdoor security cameras, we think Wyze and ZOSI are the only brands that perform just as well or better for a lower price.

The Reolink Go Plus is a special breed of security camera that foregoes Wi-Fi in favour of 4G mobile data. This means it works far outside the range of a normal wireless camera, making it perfect for off-grid houses and cabins that don't have internet access but still have mobile reception.

You need the Reolink app to set up and control every camera the company sells. While some features are camera-specific, most of the features we tested are available on all of the cameras we reviewed:

• Live streaming video: You can watch a live feed on your phone; the app even has an option that shows multiple cameras at once so you don't need to switch views manually. The livestream interface also allows you to snap photos, record videos, view recordings, and control the pan-tilt-zoom settings of a camera.
• Two-way audio: You can use the camera as a walkie-talkie to speak to people near the camera.
• Motion detection sensitivity: You can adjust each camera's PIR motion sensor's sensitivity to prevent a push notification flood every time a car passes your house or video clips of the neighbourhood birds (unless you're into that). It's also useful for saving battery power on cameras like the Reolink Argus 3 Pro and Reolink Go.

• Siren and custom voice alerts: You can set each camera to sound a siren whenever detecting motion. But the best part is that you can choose between an alarm sound or recording a custom voice alert up to five seconds long. Now your camera can say "Who's there?" or "You should leave" to startle a trespasser into retreat.

Most of the wireless Reolink cameras we tested support local video storage on a microSD card up to 64 GB—the Reolink Argus 3 Pro and Reolink Go Plus support up to 128 GB. Local storage has three significant benefits over cloud storage:

• It's cheap (or free) for storing lots of videos without a subscription. It's cheap because even a 64 GB microSD card costs less than $15, with many models coming in lower than $10. But it's free if you already have a spare microSD card lying around (we recommend 16 GB, 32 GB, or 64 GB for most peopple).
• It doesn't require the internet to save videos, which is helpful for rural locations with slow internet access or unstable connections. This means the IP camera does its job as long it has a power source.
• It's private because the video clips don't go online unless you view them remotely using the mobile app. If you don't want to use the app, you can always insert the memory card into an adapter on your computer to offload videos.

You control the local storage settings from the mobile app, which allows you to format cards to prepare them for the cameras or erase recordings all at once. There's also the option to schedule when cameras record continuously or use motion detection.

There are plenty of settings to help increase storage longevity as well:

• Enable the overwrite function of your camera to automatically delete the oldest clips and footage to make room for new videos.
• Choose a lower video quality setting such as frame rate, bitrate, resolution, or any combination of the three. This might affect the overall quality of the videos, so we recommend starting with a lower frame rate (preserves picture quality at the expense of less smooth motion). If that doesn't work, decrease the bitrate and/or resolution (this affects image clarity).

Reolink has a great chart on its support site showing microSD card video capacities based on bitrate. (This is only useful because Reolink allows you to set the bitrate on its cameras.)

Reolink's wireless cameras also have access to Reolink Cloud subscription plans to keep the video on a secure internet server instead of a physical card in the camera. We really like that Reolink offers a free cloud storage option, even if it is for a single camera—most rivals don't offer free plans.

Even among its paid plans, Reolink has competitive cloud pricing—it typically costs less than multi-camera plans from other brands like Arlo, Ring, and Google Nest. But those brands offer better features and cover more cameras once you go beyond US$10 a month.

As you can expect, cloud storage has its advantages:

• Access to recordings anywhere you can connect to the internet. This is nice because you don't need to buy any extra equipment like a microSD card.
• Cloud recordings are harder to steal. A tech-savvy burglar might take your camera or the microSD card to eliminate evidence, but hacking into the cloud for this purpose isn't part of an ordinary crook's arsenal.
• To back up local recordings. Having recordings in multiple locations decreases your chances of losing a clip of your child's first steps to the digital ether.

Beyond watching live video feeds on compatible smart displays using Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, there isn't any other way to control your Reolink cameras in a smart home. The Reolink Go doesn't work with any smart home platforms.

Setting up Reolink cameras to work with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant is different than you might expect from smart security cameras. Instead of previewing the video stream in the Alexa or Google Home apps, you need to view it on a smart display like Nest Hub or a Chromecast. You do this by asking Alexa or Google to show a camera on the compatible display.

Reolink offers various video resolutions, fields of view, and frame rates on its cameras, which results in equally varied performance on a camera-by-camera basis. This doesn't mean that the cameras don't produce great video quality—it just means that models like the E1 Zoom and Argus 3 Pro have an edge.

The video star of the Reolink cameras we tested is the E1 Zoom. It has a maximum resolution of 1920p (commonly called 5MP), which offers more detail than 2K security cameras like the Reolink Argus 3 Pro and Arlo Pro 4. It's nowhere near the quality of 2160p (4K), but few Wi-Fi security cameras can match it.

Another video standout is the Reolink Argus 3 Pro, which produces 1440p (2K) video that looks nearly as good as the E1 Zoom. Other than resolution, the biggest difference between the cameras is that Argus 3 Pro uses a digital zoom as opposed to the E1 Zoom's optical zoom.

The Go Plus also uses a 1440p resolution, but we've only tested the 1080p model.

The Reolink Lumus tops out at 1080p, which is standard among security cameras, so you can expect a clear picture with enough detail for recording and viewing live feeds.

All of the Reolink cameras in this review have infrared night vision, but the Reolink Argus 3 Pro and Lumus both have bright spotlights that allow them to record colour video at night. The Argus 3 Pro's spotlight is a little brighter, but the colour night vision on both cameras does well at near to medium ranges from each camera.

Both the Reolink E1 Zoom and Reolink Lumus support motion zones and privacy masks. These tools are mostly useful for boosting your privacy but can save space on your video storage. Reolink doesn't offer these features on the Argus 3 Pro, but the Go Plus has the privacy mask option.

• Motion zones allow the cameras to ignore activity in certain parts of the frame, which cuts down on unnecessary recordings.
• Privacy masks black out parts of the video feed to hide areas you don't want in recordings. These are best in spots where you deal with sensitive data like computer screens but can work for keeping hallway cameras from seeing inside bedrooms.

The Reolink cameras on this list connect to the internet in a variety of ways:

• Wired cameras like the Reolink Lumus and Reolink E1 Zoom maintain a constant Wi-Fi connection since they don't have batteries. This makes it easy to preview them in the mobile app with minimal delays.
• The Reolink Argus 3 Pro connects to Wi-Fi when necessary to upload cloud videos and interact with the mobile app. At other times, it switches these features off to save power.
• The Reolink Go Plus uses a 4G mobile network to connect to the internet—it doesn't work with Wi-Fi. You need to pay for a mobile data plan in addition to any other Reolink subscription, but you gain outstanding portability as long as the camera has network access.

Reolink cameras work in a range of locations based on their power sources and weatherproofing. Battery-powered cameras like Argus 3 Pro and Go Plus have the edge in portability but don't support continuous recording or other power-draining settings.

During our tests, we tried the cameras in various lighting environments and took the Reolink Go to a nearby park to see how it held up to the elements. Our indoor testing took place in a home office running in an apartment.