So, these NVRs have come a long way since the analog DVRs of yesteryear. I already have a few Amcrest cameras and thought I would try this out to see if it was any good.Surprisingly, the NVR itself is actually very good. Mine shipped with older firmware as well but I updated it to the latest firmware they had for it (May 2020) and it made a huge difference in using the NVR both at the NVR itself and the web interface.This NVR (and system?) is different from Nest, Arlo, Wyze, and others as it’s very much a DIY product vs. out of the box solution with Cloud storage. The setup I thought was pretty painless. I just popped a hard drive into the chassis and went through the on-screen setup wizard with the included mouse and I was off and running. The cool part about is that it will search for and allow you to add the cameras during the setup wizard – no manually adding the IP addresses of your cameras as it will find them for you – pretty slick!Speaking of hard drives. The NVR seems pretty tolerant of the drives you put in it. To start, I first tried a Western Digital “Blue” desktop drive. No issues. Then, I tried (and am currently using) a 5TB Seagate Desktop drive that I shucked out of an external hard drive case. Not sure how long it will last, but at any rate, I would recommend using any drive rated for security camera usageiOS app and notificationsThe Amcrest app (Amcrest ViewPro - iOS) is okay and notifications work quite well. I found that the notifications were on par with both my Nest Outdoor cam and Wyze cam when there was activity – surprisingly very few false notifications. I didn’t even have the notification area configured and it worked quite well out of the box – I would feel pretty confident that if I were to configure a set area it would send me notifications when there was motion. Inside of the NVR, it shows you a picture that the camera sees with a bunch of “cells” that you can highlight and have it only look for motion in those areas.Additionally, what I forgot to mention earlier is during the wizard helps you set up your NVR for access outside of your home by having you scan a QR code with the Amcrest ViewPro app. It will create what is called a Peer-To-Peer connection to the NVR so no opening up ports in your home router – that part was super easy and works pretty well as far as I can tell.When you receive and tap on a notification (and there are several options to decide what a motion notification does when you tap on it).It will take you to the motion even but it adds 10-15 seconds of recording prior to the event itself. I found this a bit cumbersome – but otherwise functional. Finding previous motion events and recording in the app itself was pretty cumbersome in general – so I would recommend only using the NVR itself or the web interface to look at recordings.This NVR and most Amcrest cameras are actually a re-brand from a company called Dahua – and because of that, you can use Dahua’s programs and apps to interact with Amcrest devices. So, when I’m at home I like to use the Dahua iOS app called “DMSS” which allows you to scroll through your motion events in a list (with a small preview) and tap on them to see the event.I hope the Amcrest ViewPro app follows suit as this is a better way to find motion events when using your mobile device. The DMSS app will not work with a Peer-To-Peer connection outside of your home so when I’m away I use the Amcrest ViewPro app to connect to my NVR.Motion Events and Downloading RecordingsFinding motion events is pretty easy. The NVR will highlight the motion events with blocks of yellow. These blocks are present on the NVR itself and the web interface.However, downloading motion events and recordings is different.This is an area where I actually ran into some trouble but it gave me the opportunity to engage Amcrest Support via email. (Quick note on support – someone did reply to my inquiry and it seemed it was roughly 24 hours between replies back and forth over e-mail which I thought was fine.)Prior to updating the firmware on my NVR, I was able to download videos via the web interface, but after updating the option where you specify a start time and end time disappeared.I worked with their support and ultimately it was suggested that I use the desktop client. In this scenario, I ended up using the Dahua version of the desktop client called “SmartPSS” and using that to download my videos. There is an Amcrest version but I couldn’t get it to work. You can download the videos directly from the NVR itself but they will download in a “.dav” format which requires a proprietary player to see. If you use the desktop client you can download your videos in a “.MP4” format which is a more standard format and will play on almost any device. I really hope in the future Amcrest will fix/add the option to download the videos from the web interface.Downloading the videos from the desktop client is pretty painless. For more information on how to do this, I would recommend watching this video on YouTube. It’s from an account called “Auckland Security Cameras” and the video is called “How To Playback and Export CCTV Video Using SmartPSS”. The video does a good job of showing you how to use the software to find and download videos from your Amcrest NVR.In the video description, it has an “extra note” which says the following: “EXTRA NOTE: Pause this video at 2:14 and you'll see a 1 hour default time span which will show up when you click the scissors the 2nd time. Grab the red right edge and drag it to the left so you only get the minute or 2 that you're after.”As a tip – you may need to “zoom-out” on the timeline to see the ending mark for your video you’re trying to download.PerformanceI currently have (2) 4K cameras recording at full resolution at 15 FPS and (1) 5MP camera recording full resolution at 20FPS and the NVR doesn’t seem to mind. The NVR has a bandwidth monitor of sorts that allows you to see the available bandwidth and how much the cameras are using. In this case – it says I have 88Mbps of bandwidth available and with the 3 cameras, it's sitting at around 66Mbps left so I would feel confident adding a couple of others without issue. I did notice though – when playing back on all channels one of the cameras didn’t and in the frame, it said “Outside of decode ability”. This is fine – because I don’t think I’ll be searching more than one camera at a time anyways.A quick note on web browsersWhen using Chrome the NVR asks you to install a Chrome Application called “Amcrest Web View”. The application works fine but I also found it works just as well without the plugin/application inside of Firefox, Opera, or Edge.SummaryOverall – solid NVR for money if you’re aware of the limitations.Notifications work great and I’m pretty darn satisfied with the cost/usability balance. Sure, there are systems that are easier to use and setup – but will cost you at least double what you’d spend on the cameras and NVR, and probably have cloud access fees. This one – no cloud fees, and the cameras are super affordable and would easily allow you to keep an eye on your home or business.

I vary rarely write reviews but wanted to post something that I will hope helps people make a good decision. Based on the somewhat mixed reviews of these units I was worried about a few items; Build quality, software, HDD compatibility (I bought the driveless one), camera compatibility and network performance (I bought the single NIC version). However, I decided to take a chance.Build quality - I will say the unit is very light but all metal, it does feel flimsy but I don’t see any issues with strength or quality. I was able to remove the cover with ease to install a HDD. Also has a quite fan inside, I can’t hear it operating at all.Software – the software is a bit clunky, it came with a doc suggesting to update firmware as soon as you get it which I did after my setup. The firmware upgrade was easy and did make the interface a little less clunky and vastly improved the search performance.HDD – For the price I was interested in the empty drive unit as I have hard drives laying around. I put in a 2TB 7200 rpm Seagate drive that was part of a RAID 6 array and it apparently found it, formatted it, etc. as it just worked and was there with no configuration on my part. This part I was surprised by as normally when I move stuff from advanced setups I have to mess with partitions and what not but no issues here. I’ve only tested the one drive but I would say any decent SATA drive should be fine. I’m running 5 cameras so far and it seems to perform just fine.Cameras – I have 3 old Hikvision cameras and 2 of those old flat Comcast i1000 cameras and was able to get all of them to work. The Hikvision went fine just by picking onvif, adding the IPs and logins. The i1000s I had to pick General (which the firmware updated to customized) and enter the RSTP path for the cams, after that they came right up and started recording. I would say you should be able to get most cameras to work just might take some research.Network – With the single NIC running to my core switch, recording seems fine. 2 of my cams are only 640 x 480 but the 3 hiks are 2k x 1.5k not super hi res but they don’t seem to cause any bottlenecks on my network. The unit does have readouts you can check on bandwidth usage per camera and on the NIC as a total and its using a reasonable amount. I can’t speak to Wi-Fi as video streams just seem to be too intense for Wi-Fi unless you have a robust enterprise grade Wi-Fi setup but your mileage may vary. Personally I wouldn’t use Wi-Fi for video recording.Someone had mentioned the small size of the board inside and it is small but performance seems fine. I don’t have 4k cameras but even if I did 4k seems excessive for security camera recording. Even at 720 the images are smooth and crystal clear. Even my 2 480s look fine.Overall for the price I would recommend this unit.

I have a total of five Amcrest cameras connected to this nvr. One is wireless, the rest are using cat6 POE connections.The NVR hardware seems to work well enough. I added a hard drive and had this device up and running pretty quickly. Set up is easy.The user interface of the nvr is tricky. However, I think all nvr interfaces are tricky. You just need to spend a little time and you will eventually figure out how it works. In my case, I won't use some of the features but good to have them in case you want them.I have the device sitting by my desk I work at. I don't really notice the fan noise (or hard drive noise). Nice that it is quiet.A remote control would have been nice. The mouse that is included with it works, but not the best quality. (Although I doubt I will be using the mouse very much).I could not get a real keyboard to work with the nvr. I tried a few - no luck. The onscreen keyboard does not support certain characters - when I went to set up my email account for alerts, I could not type my password as the keyboard did not support one of the characters. Interesting (and annoying). I guess I will have to change my password if I want to use it.I haven't tried any other cameras with the device yet. The Amcrest cameras were easy to setup. Pro tip - use the same password on ALL cameras. I don't know why, but I used a few different ones. It is annoying.For my use, I would buy this again. It works for my needs. (Now, can someone invent something to automatically clean spider webs from the cameras? I swear spiders love these)