Customer Ratings & Reviews

Pros Good resolution once adjusted Local Recording works without internet Remote viewing responds quickly with good internet speeds No batteries to change Complete package includes everything needed. Expandable to 8 cameras Also works with IP Cameras Doesn’t require manual port forwarding License plates easily readable during the day Cons Quality reduced with H.264+ compression instead of H.265+ Considered 2K by industry standards since that is the highest 15FPS setting A software bug is preventing any resolutions to go above 7FPS Siamese wires are very small Smart Search only works when directly connected to DVR No IFTTT, Smart Home, or Geofencing support Recording doesn’t come set to properly utilize cameras Camera housings are plastic Color night vision doesn’t stay on even in bright light Administration layout and wording is poor IR light creates hot spot at night No desktop app or program No cloud AI features available (Cloud Backup, Daily Recap, etc.) Motion alerts do not allow polygon zones Motion alerts weigh close bug the same as distant person or car Camera lens can sometimes cause reflection in video IR light causes license plate lights to be unreadable at night Configuring alert zones on phone is hard as you cannot zoom in Remote connection via Lorex servers has already been proven unsecure Limited 6-digit pin/password is unsecure 4K sensor limited by Lack of WDR or HDR No support for modern browsers, must use Internet Explorer (A fix is in the works) Phone app is dated and not user friendly To start, if you aren’t the hands-on technical type, you are best suited going to a simpler system. The 4K Active Deterrence system uses a local recorder with its own hard drive to store videos. Cameras are hardwired so this isn’t your typical afternoon project. It does yield results in clarity. The system is designed to run with little upkeep, so some extra work upfront yields some benefits. The cameras are connected via the older style Siamese cable, although they are thin wires instead of coax, so some careful handling is required. Since the signal is analog, routing is key to a good signal. The system uses a Lorex proprietary technology called MPX so if you want to reuse your cameras with another DVR it must be another Lorex. However; the DVR is compatible with multiple protocols, including even IP cameras. Even though the DVR has good flexibility in usage, some specs leave a bit to be desired. The industry standard is for rating a system based on what resolution it can provide at 15 frames per second. The cameras are rated at 8MP 4K with 15FPS but unfortunately the DVR caps out at 7FPS. The highest resolution the supported at 15FPS is 2K, so by standards the package is essentially 2K. Oddly, even though the system touts 4K, the DVR was not configured from the factory to record video from the 4K. Neither the quick start guide nor manual, not included, warn you of this. To maximize video quality, you must set the system up to record in Super H.264H, Resolution at 2840x2160, 7fps, with the image quality on 6, and bit rate of 12288Kbps to fully utilize the cameras. To view in max quality mobile, you need to change your apps to use the Main Stream instead of the Sub Stream. Even if you do decide to set the recorder up to record in 4K the use of H.264+ compression reduces the quality. The issue is H.264 compression was designed to support high definition and not ultra-high definition. The combination of slower frame rates on the DVR and lower quality compression hurts the overall recorded video quality. When set correctly, it is still definitely high quality, but unfortunately the compression causes artifacts and a slight blur that take away some from the actual resolution of the cameras. Compression is good and is needed. Without compression the same system would require a lot more storage and processing power. The issue is that there is a newer standard that would better suite the cameras that is not being utilized. The H.264 compression is also evident in recordings where surfaces tend to periodically “pulsate” as the compression refreshes still objects and slight light changes certain objects to look like a cloud keeps passing over them at regularly cycles. This isn’t unique to Lorex but rather a side effect of the compression technique. Although the cameras do have good resolution, that doesn’t mean they are without faults. First, the housing is made of plastic. This means after just a few years the housing will be broken down by the elements and weakened. Installing under a roof and out of sun will help longevity but these are certainly not built to last. They certainly aren’t vandal proof either. The cameras do include a sun shade, but it is not adjustable and appears to be mostly cosmetic. During the day, faces and license plates are distinguishable at about 55 feet if they aren’t moving fast. The make, model, and color of a car is recognizable at approximately 300 feet. Even though the camera only has on IR LED it is a bright one. In fact, it is so bright it causes license plates to appear as a glowing rectangle at night. This means they are completely unreadable at night. Although better than most, the IR produces a marked center hot spot. Without HDR or WDR this means objects in the hot spot appear washed out and outside the hotspot have far less detail. Because this IR is so bright without the sensor having the complimentary dynamic range this means you also must be careful of even the slightly reflecting surface near the camera. If mounted under a soffit, the surface of the soffit can cause a reflection even out of frame which causes a haze on the image. Depending on conditions, the lens of the camera also might cause reflections leading to random artifacts in the picture. The deterrent LED is a nice touch. It is very noticeable from a distance to let others no they are being monitored, but it feels Lorex missed an opportunity. The cameras are supposed to have color night vision. If the LED had been made bright enough it could have been used to facilitate color identification of subjects even as ambient light becomes too low. As it stands, the color night vision seems to not work as intended on these units. There is no spec listing how dark vision works but most marketed as color night vision or ultra low lux operate in color to 0.01 or 0.03 lux. Without a proper meter it is hard to judge the exact cutoff for color night vision but in testing, the color night vision didn’t work until the scene was literally no longer night. In testing, 120 watts of light in a 20x10 foot area was not enough to trigger color night vision. In fact, color did not turn on until the equivalent of 600 watts of light was applied. It seems the cameras are too quick to jump to IR night vision as the sensor can show color in very dark conditions. In changing from the 600 watts of lighting and dropping down to the equivalent of 20 watts of light, the cameras were able to show color with good detail an acceptable noise before the IR based night vision kicked in. It would be nice if Lorex would issue a firmware update or allow an adjustment to the threshold, so the cameras weren’t so aggressive switching to black and white IR mode and the CNV could be properly utilized. Each camera has a manual alarm that sounds for about 30 seconds based when activated. The volume ramps up slowly and is quite loud. Motion is detected based on frame comparison and not passive infrared so thorough testing and adjusting of motion sensitivity to prevent frequent false alerts. Even with thorough testing, frequent insects flying can cause excessive false triggers. There is no artificial intelligence to discern a close flying bug from a distant person. Reducing sensitivity to prevent false triggers from close flying bugs causes it to miss distant people. Of course, increasing the sensitivity will catch the distant person but will excessive false alerts. The only way to prevent this is making sure placement is away from an area where flying bugs frequent. There are interface oddities such as calling post recording as delayed recording. You are offered to give the channel names descriptors, such as front door, but the interface simply uses the channel number anyway. The manual defines settings such as Chroma as “This is how you adjust Chroma” and has a camera feature called EQ with no description of what it does. The apps for iOS and Android are just as unpolished with confusing scheduling options with no descriptions to technical terms. Tapping a notification brings you to the live video instead of the video of the event. Remote access is handled through Lorex cloud, but the system is tied to your serial number and a max six-character password which has already proven easy to hack. In short, it has a learning curve to its operation In the end, the system still performs the primary job of recording 4K video reliably but devoid of polish regular consumers expect. Specs wise, it checks a lot of boxes that tech savvy consumers will like. Lorex could improve this with future firmware updates which could really improve the appeal to a larger market. It would be nice if Lorex could update it to support H.265+ and Lorex’s cloud AI features like rapid recap. If you, or someone you know, are comfortable getting hands on and technical, can accept some quirks, want to get a system with high quality video, and don’t want to spend a few thousand on a high-end professional NVR then Lorex 4K Active Deterrence DVR system could work good for you.

I cannot recommend buying this system for several reasons. The main reason is the tech support is very bad. As a side note I am a tech, and am quite familiar with many brands of surveillance systems. I have setup systems such as QSEE, Nightowl, Hikvision, Arecont, Lorex, etc. That includes systems that are analog or digital, DVR, NVR. First of all the system came with a bad camera. That is fairly normal. I have purchased many systems that had bad cameras right out of the box. Night Owl is well known for having bad cameras. Lorex is no different. However this is where the problem lies, it is very difficult to get a bad camera replaced with Lorex. One has to jump through hoops to get a bad camera replaced. First you have to go through many troubleshooting steps to prove camera is defective. Then I had to send at least 10 emails to get camera replaced. Lorex wanted camera serial number, model of system, serial number of system, Device ID, place purchased, Date purchased, and copy of receipt. When I sent them all this info they would reply that they needed more info. As an example, I would send them the receipt in an email, then they would respond back that they needed the receipt. It was like they were not actually reading the emails I sent them. It took three weeks to get camera replaced. I tried calling them many times. I would wait on hold for more than an hour every time I called. The techs are polite, however it is unacceptable to have to wait for more than an hour to talk to someone. Some of the techs are quite knowledgeable, most are not. Many of the techs only knew basic things about the system. That is not the techs fault they need to be trained for all their products and not just go by a script. This system is a newer model and they did not know much about it. I had a problem with the frame rate of the cameras and it took weeks to solve. The technicians tried to help they just didn’t have the knowledge. They would ask their supervisor for help and they would email me the next day. This was the problem, the cameras are rated at 4K @15fps live & @7fps recording, 4MP@30fps live & @15fps recording. When viewing video it is 15 FPS but when played back video it is very choppy 7 FPS. I could not set the cameras above 7 FPS no matter what I tried. 7FPS is very choppy 15FPS is much smoother. The specs of system says it can record 15 FPS at 4MP. The Lorex techs emailed me for weeks trying to help. They sent me many different firmware’s to try, none of them worked to fix the problem. They even messed up at one point by sending me firmware for the wrong DVR. When I would email them that the latest thing they asked me to try didn’t work, they would email me the next day. This took weeks. Also I kept calling them every day, however I would hang-up after waiting on hold for more than an hour. After weeks of this I finally was able to get through on the phone to a knowledgeable tech. I explained the situation to him. I told him he needed to try to replicate the problem on the exact same system I had. He said he would try that. A few days later he called back with a way to increase the frame rate. The fix is you go into a special hidden menu and change a hidden setting within the camera. The setting actually modifies the camera not the DVR. It worked, however it crops about 15 percent of viewable area on all four sides of camera. That is a bummer because now your camera view is much smaller. The frame rate is now smooth but has less viewable area. Getting camera to 15 FPS took three weeks for tech support to solve. I think the settings are hidden because when you set camera to 15 FPS it crops the video. These settings are so hidden it took one of their better techs to figure out why it wouldn’t go to 15 FPS. One may ask why I didn’t return system instead of going through this hassle. When I first got system and discovered that frame maxed out at 7FPS I went and bought another system. I figured I would return the other one. The first system I bought at Best Buy, the second system I bought at Costco. The second system had the same DVR but slightly different cameras. But all the specs were identical except the cameras had slightly different infrared emitters and were a different color. The second system from Costco had the exact same problem. The cameras would not go above 7 FPS, even though the specs said it will go to 15 FPS at 4MP. I now figured at this point that the problem was either the specs were wrong or that Lorex was shipping out bad systems. I would have returned both systems but I had already ran the Siamese power cables through my attic. Of course I was not going to pull out the cables nor was I going to purchase new cables to put back in the box for the return. As a side note, my house already had been wired with Siamese cables from a previous Night Owl system. However this Lorex system did not work well with the older cables, I got lines on the video. So I had to replace my older cables with the Lorex cables. I would have bought a surveillance system that had a NVR and not a DVR except I have an older style D1 camera by my front door that is connected with coax. To replace that coax with Cat 6 would almost be impossible because of a firewall. The camera was prewired when the house was built. A Surveillance system that has a NVR is usually better than a system with a DVR. Normally NVR systems cost more money but have higher frame rates. They connect with cat 5 or 6 and not coax. I wish I could have went with a NVR system but I didn’t have a choice. As for this Lorex system, the picture quality is decent in the day. At night the picture quality is ok except for one problem. When looking at something that has motion such as a car or a person walking, you get ghosting in video. As an example when someone walks by you see blurring and an after image trailing the walking person. If you have a lot of light the problem is not as bad. What I do like about the system is the hidden menu, you can change many, many settings such as the type of backlighting BLC, WDC, HLC, etc. You can change the trigger points of when the cameras go into nighttime mode on a camera by camera basis. These hidden settings are great if you are very familiar with security systems. Every home or business has different needs and lighting conditions. So the expert menu settings can adapt to your user environment. Most entry level systems do not have such settings. I understand why these settings are hidden, if you don’t know what you’re doing you can mess things up. I have to rate this system at one star. I would like to rate the system at a 3 or 4 stars, but I cannot. Returning a bad camera to Lorex is a pain. Also waiting for more than an hour for tech support every time you call is a pain. The company Lorex needs to hire more techs. It is unacceptable to have to wait that long. I question if all the reviews on the Best Buy web site are real. Many say almost the exact same thing, even with the same type of grammar. Also many of the positive reviews were posted on the same day. One review says: “Picture quality is good, reaction time to movement is even better. Cables that come with system are extremely long.” That is silly these cables are very short 60ft. Many homes need at least 100 ft. Another review I believe to be fake says: “I don’t have the words to describe how excellent this home security system has been so far... great great great.” Nobody writes a real review like that. A few of the reviews are real. One person complains about the quality of software for DVR being clunky. That is normal almost every brand of surveillance systems has software that looks like it came from the 90’s. I recommend not buying this system for most people. I only recommend this system to somebody who would never need tech support. Or someone who doesn't mind waiting for hours on the phone. I would have never needed support if it wasn't for the bad camera, and wanting to increase the frame rate.

Frame rate not adjustable even when at lower resolution. Picture is great, but 7 fps is unacceptable. Plus, DO NOT select the wrong output resolution for viewing on your tv/ monitor. Unlike setting your pc or tv resolution, it does not ask after 15 seconds if you want to keep it at that resolution. It just does it. If its wrong.... your hosed. Worked well with existing bnc HD cameras.