Choosing
Resolution describes daylight. After dark the image is made by the illuminator: infrared, which gives a monochrome picture and stays invisible, or a white spotlight, which keeps colour and announces the camera. There is no version of this trade where you get both.
Every camera in this catalogue looks the same in daylight. The differences are all after dark.
Infrared LEDs, which the eye cannot see, producing a monochrome picture. Or white light, which produces colour and makes the camera obvious.
Cameras that claim colour at night are cameras that light the scene.
A sensitive sensor with a wide aperture gathers more of whatever light already exists — street lighting, a porch lamp, moonlight. Where there is some ambient light, that produces colour without the camera announcing itself. Where there is none, it does not.
A few cameras state how far their colour night vision reaches — 15 m, 30 m — after which the image reverts to infrared. Those figures are worth more than an unqualified claim.
Insects on the lens, lit by the camera’s own infrared. Mount under an eave.
2K 4MP · F1.6 Starlight · 360° pan · IP66 · Wi-Fi or Ethernet
The model TP-Link points its own budget buyers towards. A 2560 × 1440 sensor behind an F1.6 lens gives colour at night without a spotlight, and unlike most cameras in this price band it can be wired to Ethernet instead of trusting Wi-Fi.
Best for: An outdoor position where Wi-Fi is unreliable and a network cable can be run, or where colour at night matters more than an unlit image.
≈ £46 / 43 €
5MP · dual-band 2.4/5 GHz · 30 m IR · microSD to 512 GB, NVR or FTP · IP66
A fixed 5 MP bullet camera rather than a pan-and-tilt, and the only camera in this hub that will record to an FTP server or a Reolink NVR as well as to a card. Reolink states dual-band Wi-Fi, person, vehicle and animal detection, and 30 m night vision.
Best for: Someone who wants a fixed camera pointed at one thing permanently, recorded somewhere other than the camera itself.
≈ 70 €
A marketing name for a sensor and lens combination tuned for low light — typically a wider aperture, such as F1.6 instead of F2.2. It produces colour in poorer light. It is sensitivity, not night vision: in genuine darkness the camera still uses infrared or its own spotlight.
Colour, if you want to describe somebody to a third party — a coat colour is worth more than a shape. Infrared, if you would rather the camera was not noticed. A camera producing colour at night is a camera that is lighting the scene, and lit cameras are seen.
Cameras, alarm kits and safes swing by thirty euros or more across the year, and the biggest "discounts" often land at prices the same model sold for six weeks earlier. UniverTrack tracks the real price history across retailers, spots fake reductions, and alerts you when it is genuinely the moment to buy.
