I did some more playing around with the settings, day and night, and the light sensitivity is there during the day, but low light isn't impressive.
For example, I run my Hik cams at 1/120 - 1/150 during the day, but the Dahua in manual wants 1/1000 - 1/10000. At night though, I run all at 1/12 and they produce about the same image, with the exception of the lens shift on the Dahua. Oddly enough, the lens shift is mostly in the center. The edges appear to be fine. The solution for this would be to run in color, but noise gets terrible and I really don' want to add visible light to my yard if possible.
The one thing I absolutely hate...the spot beam IR...no use whatsoever! Also, the wire comes out of the back of the camera right next to a mount hole for the base, and on the edge of the camera...very poor design IMO. So, when you drill the hole to pass the wire through, you have to be very conscious of placement because you might not have enough material left to mount the camera.
On to what I do like...
The double gasket around the lens...GENIUS!
The way they did the lens mount for 3 axis adjustment is better than Hik.
Shutter speed adjustments (way more than hik)
Shutter priority and gain priority
3D DNR is better than Hik IMO
All in all, I will buy more of these cameras, but just know that compared to the 2mp starlight, well....there isn't one! I would much rather sacrifice a little daytime resolution for the benefit of spectacular night vision. For what it is worth, if you could run this camera in color mode at night, if there is sufficient light, then it is a great camera, and better than Hik in that retrospect. Hik still takes the cake on side by side daytime shots, though price is up about 10-15% on the Hik 5mp dome.
