Lorex - Smart Home Security Center with two 1080p Wi-Fi Cameras

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• Rated 3 out of 5 stars

  Unique idea but unfinished

  • Tech Insider Network Member
  • Top 25 Contributor

  Pros No subscription fees Outlet power means no charging batteries Active deterrence light is very bright High frame rate catches even faster motion Two-way talk allows you to interact with people Wireless connection makes pulling cable unnecessary Recordings include 5 seconds of video before trigger Direct power means faster response and alerts Direct wireless and connection through existing Wi-Fi options Motion alerts show thumbnail even on Apple Watch AI for people and vehicles greatly reduce false positives Option to add SSD internally Video comes up fast for remote viewing App automatically adjusts resolution based on internet speed Cons Lorex has a weak track record of support after the sale Storage of videos is directly in base station and easy to steal Lorex name on front makes it easy for thieves to know to take it Voice assistant is slow and rigid in commands Voice assistant wake word often heard randomly Facial recognition is slow and only works in good lighting Touchscreen is low quality and inconsistently responds to touch Instructions are very vague, and setup is not well thought out App and configuration options feel unfinished No information if continuous recording is an option with an SSD Base station periodically freezes or lags Recordings are periodically corrupted No privacy zones to block off recording those areas Power adapter is very deep making it hard to keep in weather enclosure Mounting system is extremely finicky and feels prone to breaking Screen saver option rarely shown as base usually shows pin code pad No zooming option on base station No instructions for adding cameras to Wi-Fi directly Deterrence light triggers color night vision right as the light shuts off Speech is extremely hard to hear on microphones Wind causes an electronic popping sound on recordings Design The Lorex Home Center is a departure from the normal security system where the recorder is hidden away with no screen. It looks more like a home assistant giving you the impression it is part of a smart home setup. On the side is a microSD card slot where you can install the included WD Purple 64GB Surveillance MicroSD card. Listed in the specs but not in the instructions is a slot to accommodate up to a 1TB M.2 SSD. The slot is located on behind plastic panel on the back of the unit. Recordings are stored directly on the base station with a very conspicuous Lorex logo. Any thief can easily recognize what it does and make sure to take your recordings as they take your belongings. Setup The wizard on the screen makes setup fairly basic as long as you just do exactly what it tells you. Advanced configuration isn’t quite as clear cut since the instructions don’t tell you how to do it. For example, if your cameras aren’t close enough to the base station to directly connect wirelessly, there is an option to connect the cameras directly to Wi-Fi and then from there to the base station. While the instructions say it is possible, they don’t tell you how to do this. On the hardware side, the plastic bases on the camera are made of what feels to be a flimsy plastic that creaks as you install it. Adjustment is very finicky and once you have it adjusted at what you think is the right angle you take it back off and tighten a plastic screw inside hoping the camera didn’t move while you took it off. There is also a thin plastic locknut that if you twist the camera even slightly the locknut comes loose. The power adapter also causes issues. It is so long that it prevents the weather cover from closing on your outdoor plug. Performance and Usage The first noticeable difference is in the speed of AI and alerts. With the cameras using plug in power and local processing it can determine if an object is a person or a car very quickly compared to a battery powered, Cloud AI, camera. So far, false positives have been very low when using person and vehicle detection. It’s nice to have a security camera system that you can depend on alerts. If you get a person or vehicle alert, it isn’t just for a branch moving or a bird flying by. Furthermore, when you are alerted on your mobile device it sends a thumbnail and the video is ready to watch almost instantly. A nice touch is it also shows the thumbnail on the Apple Watch. While there is an app for Android, iOS, and AppleTV none of them feels finished. Navigation feels like a work in process and on Apple TV you are often met with a screen with no cameras. Using in on an iPad means you get a blown up phone interface and worse yet it will log you off your phone if you log into an iPad. Similarly, you cannot be logged into more than one Apple TV. Unfortunately, if you want to look at the feed on a PC, Roku, or Fire Stick you are out of luck. If Lorex could just work on the functionality and polish of the existing apps this might be foregiven. Overall, the best description for the apps is passable and nothing more. With H.265 compression and the automatic resolution on the mobile app streaming video is very quick, when it works. Sometimes there can be a 20 second delay in the video feed even on a good connection. On a poor connection it will drop down to SD quality, but the issue is that at random times the base station seems to lag or timeout. There doesn’t seem to a discernible pattern to it as sometimes it can go a day or two and work near flawlessly but other days it gets so bad it warrants restarting the base station. It’s possible it could be related to the SD card as occasionally a video is partially corrupted. It might also be possible it is a result of an early firmware. Over time, the issues haven’t gone completely gone away but they have lessened. If you want to expand to more than the included 2 cameras, you are most likely going to want to upgrade to an actual SSD as reliability with a MicroSD is questionable at best. It would be nice if adding an SSD would allow a continuous recording option but there is not mention of such a feature. If there was one word to describe the base station, it would be unfinished. The base station screen seems mainly intended to monitor and view recordings. It almost seems the perfect place would be your bedside so you can conveniently check on alerts in the middle of the night. The promotional videos show you conveniently walking up to it and having your face recognized and just using the wake word to display any video or live video you wish. In reality, the pin code to login is faster. It also only works with one person. The screen also seems to be of low resolution and often seems to miss touches. It has a light sensor to adjust screen brightness, but the way it is set it is often to dark or bright. It also has an option to have a screensaver of your images, but you rarely see it because if the screen is on then it is usually on the login screen. It would be nice if there was a way to have it display the screensaver, clock, and calendar and then either just display the alert counter or a brief thumbnail or video for the active event without requiring you to login every time. Although having the option to be completely offline is nice, you can feel it in the slowness and rigidity of the assistant. You have to be very precise in your wording but also the assistant seems to think nearly everything is the work “Lorex” as it would constantly hear people talking or the TV and say it can’t help with that. Ironically it often didn’t hear the actual wake word and would take repeated attempts to wake. This could still be corrected via future updates, but unless Lorex deviates from the normal history or abandonment after the sale it is unlikely to improve. Unfortunately, odd interface choices and sacrifices seem to be common in the security camera market. It almost seems as if companies are still trying to evolve from what business customers want to what consumers want. If you can deal with the odd interface choices, the biggest question is how good is the video it records? Well to start, you are going to see the light areas well or the shaded areas well, but not both. It just can’t handle the difference very well. On the positive side, the 30fps is a welcomed departure from the norm and translates to be better capturing of fast motion. It still isn’t going to catch the license plate number of a car driving by. Realistically that feature currently isn’t available in any camera at this level. Night vision is decent with a hot spot in the middle of the IR lights which send light out about 35 feet giving you the ability to recognize things out to maximum of 40-50 feet and identification of people working to about 20 feet. Night vision has an issue with the deterrence light. When enabled, the light turns on first and then triggers color night vision. The moment color night vision turns on, the light turns off. What you end up with is a few seconds dark color video where even the slightest vision causes a person to completely disappear. The microphone is poor in most cases with speech barely recognizable beyond 10 feet and wind noises cause buffeting sounds and an odd electronic popping sound. Speaking off the camera is extremely good with decent volume. Final Thoughts Overall, the Lorex Home Center has some interesting concepts but really needs refinement in functionality. Many can be addressed with software updates and others are, unfortunately, just normal for this class of security camera system. If your primary concern is maximum security or the most polish app, this isn’t the system for you. If your main desire is for a camera system with that doesn’t require pulling wires through the attic, paying subscription fees, changing batteries, or getting tons of false alerts and you can deal with the hardware and software quirks this could potentially work for you.

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  Posted 5 years ago by CraigB

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Security to last you through the night

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  • Top 50 Contributor

  The Lorex home security system is a great home security system for those do it yourselfers looking to avoid the monthly fees of a traditional set up. Let's see if this set up will work for you. Out of the box your going to get everything you need for set up minus the necessary tools. You'll get screws, anchors, and even a template that will help line up the holes for you. This is a wired set up so drilling and wire routing will need to be done. Now don't be too worried about setting this up, as the most difficult thing is going to be getting a long enough drill bit to drill through the wall. Although this set up can be used indoor it was designed to be mounted outside near a entry way, i.e. front or back door. In all reality im not that much of a handy man and i had this thing mounted and wires ran in about a hour. Now the cameras will wirelessly feed the data to the main hub which comes in the form of a tablet style display. The main hub needs to be connected to the internet which can then be done either through a ethernet cable or wireless. I chose wireless as it was easier and the stream quality was excellent with no drop outs or distortion. The main hub comes with a pre-installed micro usb card which will act as the storage for your footage allowing you to not have to pay monthly fees for cloud storage and it will also help reduce your internet usage as it does not need to transfer these files over to a cloud storage. The micro usb can be updated any time to whatever memory is to your liking. I don't want to waste any more time so i want to jump right in to how well both units function. Let's talk about the cameras for a minute. The cameras come with a two way mic, smart detection lens, single led spotlight and a built in siren. The picture quality is phenomenal epically at night. I have a gone through so many security cameras over the last few years and these cameras are hands down some of the best i have seen at night. I have uploaded a picture for you guys to see just well they look in the darkness. In the photo you will notice i don't even have my porch light on and it is still able to pick up enough light from the street to illuminate some good footage. Now the two way mic is crystal clear and i was able to hear the person outside my door and they were able to hear me very clearly. The camera has a built in spotlight which by default will come on everytime motion is detected and then it will shut off after about 10 secs and then go on a cooldown for a few minutes so that you don't continue to blind the person at the door. Now don't worry if this gets annoying this setting can be turned off through the main hub. The smart detection lens will pick up on motion and then try to determine what it is picking up on. For example it will notify you if it detected a person or a vehicle. I will say it is very good at picking up on the vehicles and decent at picking up people. Several times my outside flag would be waving in the wind and it would think it was a person. One thing i dislike about this set up is how overly sensitive the motion detection is and the fact that there is no adjustment to sensitivity level at this time. I was constantly getting notified via the main hub or through the free app via push notifications. It got so annoying that i ended up turning off the push notifications just so my phone wasn't so cluttered with messages. This is kind of disappointing seeing as how i want to be notified when someone really is at my door and not every single time a leaf blows down the street no where near my house. Let's dive in to the main hub. The main hub is set up just like a tablet with two antennas at the top to help pick up on the cameras and transmit wireless to the internet. Set up of this hub is super easy and only takes a couple minutes. The hub comes with some security features incase you don't want people going through your footage or looking at your cameras. There are two forms of security in this matter. One is through a passcode that you can set up while the second method is in the form of facial recognition. The main hub has a built in forward facing camera that once it detects said persons face it will unlock the screen automatically. Now if your worried about the government spying on you Lorex thought ahead. There is a slide at the top of the lens that when moved over will block the camera lens. Once the tablet is set up you can then move forward to set up multiple cameras, doorbells, or window/door sensors. Speaking of which this set up is designed to allow you to build a full on home security system. What i mean by this is that you can set up a ring style doorbell, couple more cameras and door/window sensors which will then allow you to set 'Away' and 'Home' alarms. Through the main hub you can set up different display and settings. You can set up your screen saver and widgets. So far it only looks like you can have one widget display at a time right now. For me i chose the time and weather so that when i wake up in the morning i can see what the weather is gonna be. The main hub is also voice activated as well. Simply say "hey lorex" and the unit will wake up allowing you to speak a few commands such as "Turn on the back door camera." One thing i do want to note is the fact that there have been many times where the voice activation has gone off and no one was even talking. Through the hub there are many settings allowing you to set up your home security based on your liking. For example you can set up rather or not the hub chimes whenever the camera detects motion and what sound chime you would like. There are many more settings but this was just one basic example. Here's my final take away. With more and more kids being home schooled as a result of Covid, we can't always stay home with our kids. We have to got to work without being worried about their safety. This set up is a must have for me because it allows my kids to view who is at the front door by simply looking at the hub. This means they don't need a cellphone or app to view these cameras. While at the hub they can view who is at the door, talk to them to see what they want, and if they feel threatened they can then set off the alarm (which is built in to each camera). While this set up may have some minor flaws it is a great unit which will give you and your loved ones some peace of mind with really easy to use settings. With the option to expand in to a full blown home security system that allows you avoid monthly fees this is almost a must have. Do yourself a favor and check it out for yourself. I really think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

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  Posted 5 years ago by Crasher

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Easy setup, many features, clear video/audio

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  • Top 1000 Contributor

  The Lorex Home Center isn’t my first security camera system, but it is the first one that I’ve owned that has an integrated monitor base station and smart home type features. My previous system was a wired DVR, and it was a lot of work to running the cables from each camera to the DVR. Since the Lorex cameras for the Home Center are wireless, all I needed to do was ensure that the cameras were placed within 20 feet of a power outlet and that the Home Center base was located centrally relative to the cameras and my WiFi router. Initially, I was having intermittent difficulty getting the Home Center to reliably bring up one of the camera’s video feeds, but after I moved the Home Center closer to that camera this issue went away. Each camera has a 10 ft integrated USB power cable and comes with a weatherproof 10 ft extension cable as well as a USB wall adapter. You also receive two mounting template stickers, one for each camera, to map out where to drill the holes for wall/ceiling mounting. This makes securing the camera to a wall or other surface super easy since you just place the stickers on the wall, pilot the marked positions, and peel them off when you’re done. I also made a photocopy of the stickers just in case I wanted to move the cameras later. I appreciated that each camera unit includes cable management clips, screws, and wall anchors to make your installation look tidy afterwards. Setting up the system only took about 10 minutes. Just plug in the base station and setup a passcode to unlock the device and disarm the cameras and sensors. Then plug in the cameras and add them directly on the Home Center or alternately through the mobile app. You can also choose to setup ‘face unlock’ on the base station as it has a small camera above the touchscreen LCD that is only used for facial recognition purposes. Only one face unlock user can be stored at a time. A separate device password also needs to be set for the base station and each camera if you want to add them to your Lorex account on the Lorex Home mobile app. Once set up, you can use the base station monitor to view the cameras live any time, activate the mic for two-way communication, since each speaker has both a built-in mic and speaker, trigger the audible alarm or deterrence light (a bright spot light), and change various settings in addition to manually initiating a recording or photo snapshot. You can shut off the live camera feed by enabling “privacy” mode. These same features are also present in the mobile app. Just be aware that this system is not “always-on” and continuously recording/saving footage the way a traditional DVR system would. While you can view the cameras' live feeds any time, it only saves footage when there’s a motion-triggered event or if you manually start a recording. You can also choose to be notified for motion detection events and set a schedule for the times during the day when you want those triggered. You can receive notifications on the Home Center with an audible signal and/or a push notification on your phone. Each camera can be customized to detect motion, people, and/or vehicles with the ability to block out “zones” in the field of view of each type and set the overall sensitivity of the sensor. I thought this was pretty neat because this helps to reduce the amount of nuisance notifications, for example, if your camera is pointed towards a busy street and you’re really only interested in capturing a person on camera, or if you want to ignore motion in the sky portion of the camera's field of view. You can also set a notification cooldown period where you wouldn’t receive additional alerts, up to 30 seconds, though that still seemed a bit too frequent to me. To access your cameras and video footage anytime from anywhere you have an internet connection, you must connect the Home Center case to your home WiFi network wirelessly (5 GHz only) or wired using the included Ethernet cable. However, the system does not require internet to operate, and it works perfectly fine completely offline; you would, however, lose the ability to access your system though the mobile app and cannot receive automatic notifications while using the system offline. Recorded video/audio footage are saved locally to the SD cards (up to 256GB) installed in the Home Center base station and/or in the cameras. The base station comes with a 64 GB SD card pre-inserted, so you can get started right away, but in case the Home Center loses power, you may want to install SD cards in the cameras themselves as a backup recording method. You can also choose to install a 1TB M.2 SSD (SATA interface only) in the Home Center to have 4 times more max storage space. Since all the footage is saved locally, there is no monthly cloud storage subscription fee to access or store your footage. If you link your Home Center and cameras to your Lorex Home account, you can also share your devices with other users you want to have access to the live views and recordings. I found the footage and snapshots captured by the 1080p cameras to be clear and detailed, both indoors and outdoors, and even in pitch black conditions thanks to the auto-activated infrared lights. The interface for both the Home Center base station and the mobile app are easy to navigate/use, and the two-way audio for communicating with someone near the cameras was actually better than expected, with the best audio quality when the person was within 6-8 feet of the camera. For me, the deterrence siren could actually be a little louder, and I would have liked to have seen customization options for the duration of both the deterrence light and siren (only active for 10 seconds from the time of being triggered). However, the system is expandable with a range of wireless Lorex products including a video doorbell, door and window sensors, and floodlight camera. It supports 8 Wi-Fi cameras and 32 sensors total. I liked having the option to issue voice commands to the Home Center using the wake word ‘Lorex’ to bring up the live views of camera, recorded footage, or trigger the security features. It just takes a little while to get familiarized with what commands are available to use. If you prefer privacy, both the mic and camera on the Home Center can be disabled. While I was able to connect my Lorex account to my Amazon account, you do need an Echo device with a screen, like the Echo Show, in order to utilize Alexa commands; though, there’s only really one command for the skill to show the live views of the cameras. I also thought it was cool that it grabs weather information from the internet based on your location, and can display it on the screensaver and even tell you the hourly/weekly forecast. Overall, I’m pretty happy with this security system. It was easy to install and setup, is intuitive to use, and has more advanced AI and smart home features than my older DVR system.

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  Posted 5 years ago by ReviewedByPhil