My unit finally arrived. It looks better in low light, but it's tricky to compare these cameras when the exact noise-reduction settings make such a huge difference. I thought I had a great image with everything static, Manual, 1/30 sec, Gain 0-50 and 3D NR ON. Then someone walked by, and it was scary to see just a floating torso: his legs (darker and moving faster than the upper body) had been erased by the 3D Noise Reduction (set to Grade 5 out of 100). Any lower setting looks exactly the same as "off" and I get a lot of speckly noise, more blocky details (noise hitting my 2M bitrate limit, better at 4 Mbps) and very noticeable pulsing every 2 seconds at the I-frame interval. I'm using H.264 as that's all my NVR can use.
I wish there was more fine-grained control over 3D NR between settings 4 and 5. At 4/100 it is significantly noisy and at 5/100 it becomes suddenly and totally noise-free (for a still scene), but with sometimes significant motion artifacts in darker areas.
In Setup/Conditions/Exposure with "3D NR" set ON, you can move the "Grade" control slider from 0 all the way up to 100, but for me, from 5 to 100 looks exactly the same. As far as I can tell there is no analog control here; it's simply 3D NR ON at 5 and above, and OFF below 5. Has anyone observed differently?