Recently, I received an email from Reolink asking if I would be interested in reviewing one of their digital cameras. They have an 8-megapixel smart camera with 4K video that records with far higher picture quality than Ring offers, so I went with the RLC-810A.
My Ring Floodlight Cam Plus, which records in HD, is compared in this video (1920x1080p).
The video time stamps are:
00:01 Initiation
Lenses for the camera
2:34 kilobytes per second
Aspect Ratio of 3:56
Infrared Night Vision is activated at 5:26 p.m
6:22 The End
Transcript for the video
Welcome from Smart Home Point’s Tristan. The Ring Floodlight Cam Plus records in full HD, and I’ll be comparing it against a Reolink 4K camera in this video. Of course, it’s not only the resolution, but also the bit rate, the lens employed, and the frame rate that are important. So, in this video, I’ll go through everything.
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The folks at Reolink sent me their RLC-810A camera so I could try it out, but this video is all my own work, and I’m not getting compensated in any way for the positive things I say about it. Reolink 810A is a 4K camera with 8MP resolution. We all know that 4K is better than HD, and the Reolink camera certainly has greater picture quality than the Ring Floodlight. Why did I also include the bit rate, lens, and frame rate?
First and foremost, let’s talk about the lens. Many smartphones, like my Samsung S10, now offer numerous back camera lenses, even three. They call one of them a “regular” 1x zoom lens, while the other is a 0.5x “wide angle” zoom lens. Wide-angle lenses are great for security cameras, but they may also provide a fishbowl-like look when used incorrectly. A 16mm wide-angle lens is being used in this video since the space is quite tiny, and a standard lens would obscure too much of my face.
Smart cameras work in the same way. Using wide-angle lenses, Ring’s doorbells and cameras catch a lot of the scene. There’s a noticeable variation in the amount of detail obtained by each. There is, however, a caveat to this. Ring has a wide-angle lens, so it can catch a lot of a scene, but the quality is just 1080p, so the recorded information is virtually diluted. There are times when a low-resolution wide-angle lens with a high field of view is not a good idea.
Reolink, on the other hand, uses a “regular” lens (i.e., one that is neither wide-angle nor telephoto). The scene is then recorded in 4K quality, resulting in a high level of detail in the captured objects. First and foremost, Reolink’s picture quality is greater than Ring’s not just because of its 4K resolution, but also owing to its smaller field of view, which means less information is lost. However, for a security camera, a wide-angle lens may be quite useful, therefore Reolink’s selection of lens can be both advantageous and disadvantageous.
Bit-rate, a measure of how “compressed” a video is, was also stated in my opening. The quality of the picture is determined by this. This is what a 4K video with a low bit rate looks like. In fact, if the bit-rate of the full HD video is higher than the bit-rate of the 4K movie, the full HD video may actually appear better. To summarize what I’ve already said, the bit rate of a Ring camera is typically between 1 and 2 megabits per second, but the bit rate of this Reolink camera records at 8 megabits per second, as seen in the video above. Than put it another way, this is why the Reolink camera’s picture quality is superior to the Ring camera’s — its bit rate is 4-8 times greater than the latter (although this is to be anticipated, given that 4K video’s increased detail demands a larger bit rate).
Here, you can see me holding a Dremel multi-tool box in various positions. As I go closer, the Reolink camera is able to catch this rather well, but the Ring camera is unable to display any significant detail. When using Ring cameras for crime detection, you may not always be able to see excellent detail until the individual is extremely close to the camera. This may be a concern.
In my introduction, I also highlighted the frame rate. This is also known as FPS (frames per second), which refers to the number of distinct pictures that make up a movie per second. Fast-moving details (such as a vehicle going by rapidly) may not be caught effectively if the FPS is too low. As a rule of thumb, 24-30 FPS is the norm in most circumstances, but sport and action video is often shot at 60 FPS. It’s worth noting that the two cameras, Ring and Reolink, record at 20-24 FPS and 25 FPS respectively. Both of these frame rates are OK as long as you’re not recording sports.
You can see my automobile driving away to illustrate my point. As you can see, the Reolink film is more choppy than the Ring footage since I reduced the frame rate to to 15 FPS on this particular shot. As you’d think, it looks a lot better when I boost the FPS to 25 FPS.
A camera that records at 8 megapixels and 25 frames per second (fps) consumes a lot of storage space and internet bandwidth, whereas one that records at 1.5 megapixels and 20 frames per second (fps) does not. Compared to the Ring cameras, which use far less data, my Reolink cameras use significantly more data per minute on average, as seen on the screen. If you want to employ a quality 4K security camera, this must be taken into consideration.
Finally, I’d like to point to nighttime footage. Due to the absence of light in the night, cameras have to convert to night-vision mode powered by infrared light (hence the reflections you see on the car windows). Once again, Reolink comes out on top when it comes to picture quality compared to Ring’s.
When I turn on the Ring lighting, both cameras rapidly exit infrared recording mode, but the Reolink camera’s picture quality is (predictably) superior this time around.. You may get a glimpse of a professional thief who looks to be duckfacing while wearing slippers and PJ pants. In contrast to Ring, Reolink’s camera is able to show this duck-facing pajama thief in good enough clarity, whilst Ring’s camera again unable to display any significant detail.
Today’s video has come to an end. I’m not making this movie to criticize Ring; rather, I’m showing how a 4K security camera can surpass a “full HD” camera in almost every way (assuming the bit-rate and FPS are also good enough). Even though the lens inherently catches less of the scene than Ring’s wide-angle lens, I am satisfied with the picture quality of Reolink’s 4K camera. I wouldn’t use Ring as a security camera, but I’d gladly use Reolink for this reason instead.
Ring’s convenience is what I appreciate most about them. The app works nicely, and so does the interaction with the Echo Show and the Fire TV, which is good. It’s a shame that Reolink doesn’t support Amazon Echo right now. As a result of Ring’s wide-angle lens, it captures a lot of what’s going on around your home, but the zoomed-in quality isn’t all that great.
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