Yeah do not chase MP, especially for night performance. They need WAY MORE light at night than other MP. An 8MP(4k) needs 4 times the light light of a 2MP. In most instances a 2MP at night will kick the butt all night long of an 8MP. The current king of MP to sensor ratio are cameras with 4MP on a 1/1.8" sensor, unless you want to spend A LOT more...
It is simple - do not buy a 4MP camera that is anything other than a 1/1.8" sensor. Do not buy a 2MP camera that is anything other than a 1/2.8" sensor. Do not buy into the 4K hype. Soon we will hopefully see some larger sensors that can truly carry an 8MP on it, but we are not quite there yet.
Just ask my neighbors with their 4k cameras that didn't provide the money shot to get their stolen belongings back, yet my older 2MP varifocal camera zoomed in to the area I wanted to cover did capture the money shot that ID'd the thief for the police to find and make an arrest and fortunately still had all the stolen stuff...If you have a lot of light, and I mean a lot of light, then maybe, but most of us do not have enough light for more MP. My one neighbor started to replace his 4k cameras with 2MP cameras because mine kicked his camera's butt all night long.
It has come to our attention of a 2MP on the 1/1.8" sensor and many of us believe that this combination would be excellent at night as it would need half the light of a 4MP, but alas we cannot find anyone that has that camera to provide sample video. Too many people chase MP and do not want to buy a 2MP. Maybe you will be the first to purchase this and then give us a sample video?
Also, do not be sold by some trademarked night color vision (Full Color, ColorVu, Starlight, etc.) that is a marketing ploy in a lot of ways lol. It is simply what a manufacturer wants to claim for low-light performance, but there are so many games that can be played even with the how they report the spec numbers. They will claim a low lux of 0.001 for example, but then that is with a wide open iris and a shutter at 1/3 second and an f1.0 - as soon as you have motion in it, it will be crap. You need a shutter of at minimum 1/60 second to reduce a lot of blur from someone walking.
Check out this video at midnight. You see this and it looks like daytime and be like WOW I want that camera. But any motion in the frame and it is crap and will be a ghost blur. You notice they do not show anything with motion. I can make all my cameras look like this at midnight with no other light, but we want good motion video, not still images video. This is a very nice cameras with enough light at night but do we have enough light? All cameras, regardless of what they are called, need light - either white light or infrared. Simple physics. If you know what to look for, you can see clues likely indicating motion will be a complete motion-blur ghost.
While this camera is not what we would call a consumer grade camera and this is a really good camera, it is these games that the consumer grade cameras of the world do to their camera to make it look good at night - but then a person walking by is a blur and people simply say well the camera isn't good at night. If you have the ability to change the settings, you can make it work. Just remember that every increase in shutter speed needs more light. So I can set mine to 1/250 second and eliminate blur at night, but then all that is visible is a 5 foot diameter around the camera IF I have enough light.
