So in short what advantage do I gain from moving over to
Blue Iris?
Blue Iris is camera manufacturer agnostic, so if you ever start mix and matching camera brands and don't want to juggle multiple manufacturer clients, Blue Iris becomes your one client.
Blue Iris also has its own built-in motion detection, something most NVRs don't have. BI's motion detection is usually a lot more configurable than the basic motion detection built into most cameras, which gives the possibility for reducing false positives. And if you have a pro-market camera (Dahua/Hikvision), it probably came with advanced motion detection (Dahua's is called IVS, Hik is called Smart Events) in addition to the basic motion detection. Blue Iris can work with both IVS and Smart Events. NVRs require the NVR brand and camera brand to match to use IVS or Smart Events, which stinks for folks who have both Hik/Dahua cameras in their system.
I think this is iOS specific, but I really like how BI motion alerts can include a 10-frame GIF in the push notification. It's like getting a mini-movie on my iPhone's lock screen (and my watch) when movement happens. In most cases, that's all I need to see ... no need to open the app to see more.
I started my system using Synology Surveillance Station as the NVR app. From reading threads here and seeing what other people were doing with their setups, I eventually swapped over to a Dahua NVR and then finally Blue Iris. That was over a two year period. If the Reolink client software is meeting your needs now, stick with it. If you ever start running into issues, then explore BI again.
so far these cameras have a record to FTP as well as record to Windows option.
Are these only setup to record motion?