Alternatives to Dahua and Hikvision 2018

I would have put my money on Hanwa, so I am not suprised by the result.

I am very surprised at UNV coming in third. In the end, it's another Chinese brand. I know they are not government owned but neither is Dahua. I would have expected 3 non Chinese brands.

Geovision have very good reasonably priced  cameras, with H.265 and Smart streaming

with their free software, you cannot go wrong excellent software

Its surprising that low cost OEMs like Honeywell, Speco, Advidia, Northern, W-box weren't mentioned. No ACTi, Arecont, IDIS? Geovision, NUUO, Everfocus. Clinton, Gantz..

Surprise Axis and Uniview are on the list and geovision is not.....

We have started moving towards Hanwha/Wisenet, but their mobile apps are significantly lagging vs. Hik imho.

Hanwha has a great product and the sales force to eat up a lot of the void caused by the ban. I'm not surprised to see them #1 here.

How come no talk of Digital Watchdog? I know they use the same platform for their VMS as Hanwha. What about the cameras?

Surprised that no Taiwanese makers made it to the list.

I agree that idis is a good option too. 

Are most of the responses from the USA? I believe idis is better known in Europe.

For Chinese makers, I have been seeing tiandy come up more in the last year, but not sure about price and performance.

I agree with Axis and Hanwha. I thought Digital Watchdog, Avigilon, or Vivotek may have made the 3rd place.

”Dahua and Hikvision were low on technology innovation”. Area you kidding me?  Their technology advances pushed the industry out of An arena that lacked innovation and allowed “tribrid” installs to lower the costs to the end user.   Their ptz range is far superior to anyone’s. hasn’t axis only just released an ir ptz?

Yeah and I hear the majority of Fortune 500 companies are adopting 4k over coax........

It's not like Axis couldn't make an IR PTZ years ago, there just didn't seem to be a demand.

I have had good experience with Samsung/Hanwha/Wisenet.  2MP PTZ that works on Bosch/Pelco DVRs, 4MP fixed camera and relatively cheap HD DVRs.  South Korea meets favored trade status.  Non technical people at locations were these products installed can see the difference.

Thanks for another great article

Even with this ban, we are still selling lots of Hikvision and Dahua

I find it funny how there are so many dealers that are not even aware of the ban

Samsung/Hanwha is a good product line, nice to see them getting good reviews. I was one of their first supporters when then dropped the GVI relationship and went direct with Hanwha.

Digital Watchdog is also a good product, Wade Thomas is one of the hardest working guys I know and one of the most accessible 

Vivotek also a good product, Piero Gioia who covers my region not only has the best name in the industry (in my opinion) he is also really supportive

Geovision is kind of a sleeper, but their products are good

Openeye is not a company you hear a lot about. They have a good product line. I know they are not making their own cameras. However we have had some good success with them

We are seeing more Uniview business

Speco is making a bit of a comeback

Bosch, Exacq

I saw your previous mention of Arecont, however we are doing some good business with them

There is no shortage of products in the marketplace

Its funny, I never thought at 38 years old I would use the term

"I remember when"

Here it goes

I remember when Speco was the dominant player with their line of intensifier cameras

I remember when Everfocus was a real player

I remember when Nuvico was not the name on a bunch of dead stock in my warehouse

I remember when Sony was the company pushing IP and everyone telling them they were crazy

I remember when Digimerge was one of the only players with a really cool mobile app

I remember when as a wholesaler the average price of an analog camera was $250 and there was enough margin for everyone to be happy

As always, times are a changin' 

We adapt and move

Today and tomorrow will bring new competitors and challenges

Its how we react to them which will determine our survival

(pretty sure i saw that on a bumper sticker...... wait a minute do they still call them bumper stickers ?)

Thank God we are up 

Our Hikvision sales break records month over month

We are not selling that much Dahua, but even our Dahua business is up

I serve a lot of mid sized integrator's

Most of them wont ever do anything government related

I had a customer do a large project for the Social Security administration

However, turned out that he was working for the landlord 

So he never had any interaction with the government 

We do have larger integrator's that do business with us

Those companies usually know exactly what they want and simply dictate part numbers

Another option I offer as an alternative to abandoning the brand/s or pulling out product is swapping out the edge PoE switches fior Razberi EndpointDefenders. These devices will help monitor / block and report on cyber related alerts via Razberi Monitor / Milestone XProtect or SolarWinds.

So... where did I read if you continue to sell Dahua or Hikvision, you will be removed from doing government business.  Is this true?  Sorry, I haven't been keeping up.

I’m surprised DW isn’t on this list. I was never a big fan of their camera so until recently. Aside from their terribly high bit rates they offer pretty good affordable cameras. I realize most of what the sell is not actually made by them...

Soon Dahua only support Distributors with a yearly turnover from more than 500"000 Dollar. So we will change to Uniview. Wee need the markup from buing in Asia and sell in Europe.

[IPVM Note: not a Vivotek employee]

I'm actually shocked that Vivotek didn't get a top result here...I can only believe that it is because more haven't given them a shot.  If you haven't, give them a try...great stuff!

Working for a competitor I must accept that Dahua are a reasonable product, cannot give the same points to cumbersome Hik.

Unfortunately now everyone has to work out how to sell jobs again instead of just undercutting the next guy.

What about the Huawei/Hisilicon ban? That would knock out some of the alternatives.  Also, I hear people keep saying Uniview is American owned by Bain Capital.  Do they not know they sold it to a Chinese company or are they being deceitful on purpose? 

We are not in USA so not familiar with availability /sales channels there but we have had excellent results with ACTI. I think they have an office in california.. We import direct from Taiwan and the sales and factory level support has been excellent. Their current marketing focuses on solution selling as john mentioned but we have not really been using those except for one implementation of their ALPR which was about 80 % efective. To be honest some of those solutions are a bit immature because they have spread their focus very wide. We are focused on their cameras and NVR and we have had very low returns for rma and video quality so far good. their advantage is their range of models is very wide so as we purchase based on project we can always get the right spec somewhere in their range..for anyone reviewing their product selector and to not get overwhelmed I would focus on A, B and I series. E series use to be our goto for bids but that is rapidly being displaced by A series ...a couple new A series models are out this month. When quoting large opportunities we have had pricing similar to hikvision easy ip 3.0 with their A series line.

The quality of the english in their documentation is much better than hik and the product selector and project tools far easier to use than most other brands. I have begun to review hanwha as well and wave ..looking at this for larger projects where we are mixing dell and various camera brands.

As a end user, Hanwha/Samsung has been disappointing. I have been replacing them with Axis. Now looking at Vivotek as their products match or exceed Axis and lower pricing. But Vivotek uses Hickvision chips in some or all cams I think but not sure.

I have been managing a VMS since April this year with over 1440 cameras of which 275 are Hanwha and have had only 1 fail The focus motor failed in high heat. We have several other of exact same model in same environment that are fine.

Would be great to get an update on this. For instance, Uniview has a line of NDAA compliant cameras and recorders at or near the price point of Hikua. I am sure there are others that now have compliant equipment.