Customer Ratings & Reviews

Multiple anomalies with this product. Night Owl advertises their American and data security bona fides, but the recorder, the heart of the system, is made in China. I also found that I could not play back videos directly from the recorder if the recorder was not connected to the internet. I did not investigate further to see if there was a work around, but it required me to log into my account to play videos and would not let me log in without an internet connection. However, the main issue I had was a discrepancy between the time on the recordings, and the time on the recording timeline with the external Night Owl Protect Apple iOS app or the Night Owl Protect CMS app operating on a Windows PC. It was like the recorder was (correctly) on the local Central time, but the timeline on the apps was set to Eastern. If an event was recorded at 6 o'clock, the video would be (correctly) time stamped for 6 o'clock, but it would appear in the app timeline as having occurred at 7 o'clock. And to add further frustration, the video would not be accessible in the Apple iOS app until 7 o'clock local time (an hour after the event occurred). The Night Owl Protect CMS app, operating on a Windows 11 PC, was also very unresponsive and had trouble maintaining a connection with the recorder, even though both were on the same local network. I spent several days trying to troubleshoot the problem myself and then spent a week trying to connect to Night Owl's technical support, but they would put me in a queue for call back and then either fail to call back at the pre-determined time or would call back when I was at work and did not have immediate access to the system. When I finally connected with their technical support, they had not familiarized themselves with screenshots and data I had provided by email, and so we spent the better part of an hour doing all the troubleshooting tasks I had already tried on my own. By this time, they had run out the clock on Best Buy's return window. I contacted Best Buy to indicate my intention to return the system, and they did let me return the recorder and camera package a day late but wouldn't accept the doorbell camera I had purchased with the system; the manager in the local store would not even give me the courtesy of coming to talk to me. So, now I have an orphan doorbell. One star for Night Owl and Best Buy.

Cameras work great. I have used Arlo and Lorex in the past and this one is a great option when shopping at Best Buy. I wanted an NVR to power over the Ethernet line so I wouldn’t have to charge them.

We exchanged for a better one with more cameras it covers more ground