I am not one of these paid reviewers so this is on the up and up. The short answer is: this is a great system for a great price. If you're trying to decide between a wireless camera system and a wired camera system consider that the wireless cameras still require you to run power wires to each camera. This system delivers power to the cameras using the video cable that you run, so there's a trade-off there. I'm using the four camera system. It is quite a bit of work to mount four cameras and run cable to them but by going with the cable cameras instead of the wireless cameras you get a much better system for a much lower price. I would rate the equipment I received as excellent. Having studied the reviews thoroughly before buying I've now found most of the reviewer complaints were by people who hadn't figured out all this system's options yet. You will want a small LCD monitor for this system, but you can usually get one at any thrift store for 5 or 10 dollars. You need the monitor to talk to the video recorder so you can choose the options you want. This recorder comes with a mouse and remote control. You cannot go wrong plugging the cameras into the recorder. It's simple. So with your monitor attached and your cameras plugged in, you will immediately see your 4 cameras on the screen. A right click of the mouse button gives you your options to choose from. There's a lot of them. This video recorder offers many things. The more exotic options, like email notification, require some technical knowledge but the basic setups can be done by anyone. Most people want to be able to see their cameras on their cell phone. Getting that set up requires a little patience and trial and error. First, your cell phone needs to have "QR Scanner Software," on it in order to load the right security camera program into the phone. QR Scanning software is free and easy to load into your phone. On your phone, go into Google and search for "QR Scanner Software for Android or IPhone" depending on which type of phone you have. From the list of results choose the Google QR Scanner Software for your phone and download it. Once the program has downloaded and installed, your phone will now be able to read barcodes. When you first turn on your new video recorder, the "Guide," or "Configuration Window," will appear. When you run that, it will eventually show you pictures of barcodes and ask you to scan one using your cell phone. You might as well not do that yet. Those barcodes will load a video camera program onto your phone, but the programs are constantly being upgraded so you need to have the latest program. The one on your new digital recorder is not the newest and might not work. Instead go to [...] on your home pc and near the top right corner of the XMEye home page you'll see an APP Download link which will show you two barcodes that contain the latest version of the software you need. Find the new scanner icon on your cell phone, press it and when the cell phone camera turns on, scan that XMEye barecode on the XMEye home page. Your cell phone will ask you if you want to install the new program. You do. Now put your cell phone aside and set up your new account with XMEye. When you fill out the info form it will ask you for your address. That is not your home address. It is the IP address for your new digital recorder. You can find the IP address by right clicking on the new digital recorder, choosing "System," and "Network." You will also need your digital recorders serial number. Find that by right clicking and going to "Main Menu" to "Info," to "Version." When entering the serial number you will also be asked for a name. You get to choose that yourself. With the above info, you should be able to get through the process of setting up your cell phone so you can see your home cameras. If you need more help, Google search for XMEye set up. There's quite a bit on line. Best wishes. Good luck.

This was a replacement for a webcam I had running through a PC with software. The PC died, and I was looking for a more stable system with more cameras, and of course inexpensive.I have had this system running for almost 2 months. Here are some observations with my experience.- 1TB drive is plenty of space for my needs. I currently have 5 cameras on it (4 included plus my old webcam). I am running only motion detection, not constant recording, and I still have half of the drive space left after 2 months.- The motion sensitivity is still very sensitive even at the lowest setting. At times I think it is just constantly recording anyway.- At the time of purchase, the cameras were 900TVL, and now they are 720p. The cameras I have are not high enough quality to catch a license plate number beyond 30 feet. The new 720p cameras they offer, may be better. Still better than what I had and great for entry-level.- The IR range is fairly decent, but when the IR lights are on, they attract bugs in warmer weather. So you will get a lot of recordings of bugs if you are doing motion detection.- Set up is a learning curve. This is a foreign company and the translations aren't always precise. If you play with it enough, hopefully a bell will go off in your head, and you'll know exactly what each setting does and how to set it up to your liking.A few tips and tricks:- If you are setting up a pinhole in your firewall for outside access, make sure you do both the web port and media streaming port.- The web interface only works in IE. I have found that in order to install the software from their site, and to set up the motion area when setting up motion detection, you have to run IE "as administrator". Usually can do that by right click or shift+right click on the IE icon.- If your camera is pointed at a street light, it may never go to black and white IR mode at night.Annoyances:-My cameras are 900TVL so they are 4:3 ratio. The web interface defaults to 16:9, so I often have to change it back to 4:3.-While reviewing a recording in 4:3 ratio, you can take a snapshot and save it as a bitmap. The snapshot is 16:9. I'm thinking now all of the recordings are going to be 16:9 format, and it converts it to 4:3 while viewing. Should not be an issue now that they are offering 720p cameras.-Daylight saving time setting has to be done every year. You have to put in the dates and times each year.-No option to synchronize to an external time server. It has been 2 months and the time has drifted by 1 to 2 minutes now.-The configuration GUI is very dated, but it works.-The smartphone app is a battery hog on one of my android devices.This is a decent starter package that has everything you need, however if you are not technically inclined, you will need some assistance to get it set up and get all of the features out of it.I would purchase this system again, especially with the newer cameras.