Ranking The Lowest Cost Outdoor Cameras 2015

A quick search on Amazon offers multiple options that are much lower in price. for example, a 1080P VF IR Bullet for $125.

Quality and warranty aside, it seems like security cameras have become a "throw away every two years" just like our smart phones, making the life of the security professional a lot less rewarding :)

Guess Dahua is also on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Dahua

Hikvision 1080P Bullet with IR for $85.90:http://www.amazon.com/Hikvision-DS-2CD2032

Free shipping..woohoo

Regarding the Hikvision Camera:
Estimated ship time: June 10 - June 26. Good luck planning an install job on this one. You or your clients will be robbed clean by the time this camera arrives.
Warranty: probably none, who knows, if there is a warranty, you gotta send it back to China.
Who to call for tech support: who knows, there is no # to call. Should we just google JOOAN CCTV Camera System. Do we ask for Jooan? I hope she speaks english.

Both Hikvision and Dahua have a nightmarish distribution channel. Its quite the joke actually.

Hikvision USA refuses to do business with online retailers and demands on sticking with the archaic model of selling only to the large low tech distributor types. Meanwhile, their mother company, Hikvision China, has pretty much no grasp on their distribution channels in China, they will sell to any Chinese Reseller, these resellers are happy to make a dollar or 2 profit off of a camera. Why wouldnt they be happy, they are basically flipping products with little to no risk of the product being returned, and they dont have to offer tech support to boot. Meanwhile consumers in the USA are getting shafted when they receive these product when they see a nice pretty Chinese time/date stamp on the screen, noone to call for tech support. And good luck if your product goes dead, your better off just taking a loss, its gonna cost you more to send the product back to China than what the product is worth.

Dahua also has always been a joke when it comes to distribution channels, basically no US presence. They will also sell to any Chinese reseller out there willing to make a dollar per camera profit. Worst distribution model out there in the CCTV industry.

Dahua/Hikvision, time to wise up. Clean up your distribution mess. Your products sell hot on the internet. Its 2015, not 1980, get an internet distributorship channel in plan to qualified resellers so these poor consumers that are trying to save a buck will not get ripped off anymore from these companies who just flipping your products. I promise you, you can make better margins with this model.

Hi Derek, thank you for a very helpful and enlightening report.

When I took the IP Camera Course - Winter 2014, it was stated that varifocal lenses were generally preferred because there was little or no price difference compared with fixed lenses. In retrospect, I'm not sure if this was a reference to the choice of lenses for box cameras or whether this also applied to dome and bullet cameras which include a lens.

Your May 2015 report states, "... varifocal [IP] cameras are on average two to three times the cost of fixed lens models." Given that, I wonder if varifocal lenses are still strongly preferred or whether fixed lens camera models have made a comeback?

I purchased a DS-2CD2332-I from Amazon.

Shipping was prompt. The Amazon picture had shown a standard consumer red and white box with image of a camera and some printing on the outside, but mine came in a plain brown box. Beyond the packaging, it was not just a matter of warranty or reliability. Many features were simply inoperative.

It took some Google time to figure out how to read English and not ideograms.

It was set to a 50 Hz frequency standard, not 60 Hz. This had a drop down menu to change, but no way to save the selection.

In daylight, it was a great picture. The nighttime IR was great too. However, for unusual conditions, image settings could not be changed from the default. So, for example, faster shutter speed (and many other settings) had a drop down menu but no save button, which pretty much ruled out faster motion capture, such as license plate capture.

The built in analytics were simply non-functional. These were advertised as motion detection and face detection. Neither functioned.

At first, I thought this was typical of some third rate products which don't seem to have been subjected to beta testing. However, after noting that IPVM appeared to have had much better experience with Hikvision, I touched base with Hik USA who confirmed my camera was likely for the domestic Chinese market, likely with hacked firmware to "support" the English market.

Next I tried to communicate with the vendor who was fulfilled through Amazon, but never heard a peep after three emails from them. I used the email address on the card in the box (you may know the type: consumer please don't return this; instead contact us here).

These issues are a blot on Hikvision's reputation. After my experience, I tend to agree with Mr Nelson. Hikvision mass distribution seems to be a wild west. It took a fair amount of experimentation and reading to appreciate that this wasn't business as usual, but rather an inferior and probably hacked version. Fortunately, I hadn't purchased the quantity that I needed for the project (Arecont had taught me the importance of testing one before ordering the lot!), and Amazon supported a return with full refund. The time: well, that's gone.

Since a lot of what is paid for is tech support and actual (rather than advertised) warranty service, it would be interesting to read about the quality of those 2 factors for each manufacturer listed.

More difficult to get data on would be average lifespan of certain cameras. On the lower cost cameras, it's often easier to replace it right away than it is to go through the warranty process.