Isn't everyone an expert on YouTube LOL...just remember many of those videos are by people being paid promotional dollars by a vendor and/or receiving revenue by YouTube based on number of hits they get and/or some affiliate discount. In the past few months we have seen many people come here after being burned by hookup...
Plus, when someone has 200,000+ subscribers, inevitably they will start to push consumer grade stuff that is "plug-n-play" because they do not want to take thousands of posts asking what does this setting do and what does that setting do...
I would suggest finding the reviews for the cameras here. You will find much better examples here than out on YouTube or Amazon. The members here put them through their paces. Most of the YouTube videos just use auto settings and many do not show motion, so the images look great. It is motion at night that we are interested in, and every review of cameras here have folks providing video clips of their camera in action at multiple settings and shutter speeds, etc. Auto settings results in blur and ghosts during motion at night and is useless. Most Amazon reviews if they include images are static images of no motion.
Regardless of the item, I have found most Amazon reviews to be useless LOL. Even more so when I know something about a product and see either great or poor reviews on it when I have first-hand experience of the product.
Plus the YouTube videos tend to be full productions for the likes and thus YouTube revenue, where the folks here post videos for the sole sake of letting others know how well or not the cameras perform. Now some here do an excellent job of post-production of the reviews of cameras with text narrative and overlays of the settings, etc., but most of us just put out raw video for you to see for yourself.
A great camera can be placed at the wrong spot, which then leads to bad reviews on an otherwise great camera. Likewise, a novice surveillance camera user goes by static images and boasts about how great a camera is when it really isn't very good with motion. So if someone calls it a security camera, then maybe do not put much stock in what they say
This forum allows others to actually see videos of these cameras at locations and can then make a determination on if that is similar to their situation (lighting, distance, etc.) and would that camera be the right or wrong selection for what they are trying to achieve.
As you start searching here, you will see many here talk about Andy's or Nelly's cameras (two of many vendors on this site. We have a rep from Amcrest and others here as well), but lets face it, those cameras are OEMs of Dahua or Hikvision, so talking about them also covers Amcrest, Lorex, Annke, etc.
And occasionally someone does post here some video showing some great quality from a cheaper no name camera, but it is rare. Even rarer to see good nighttime performance from the consumer grade cameras one finds at the big box stores.
But we have posts dedicated to Reolinks and others and we openly invite folks that come here and say how great those cams are to post examples of their excellent video quality. Have we seen that excellent video quality at night with motion....nope.
Just scroll through that thread where people that say their reo's provide great video and they provide an example and it is ghost/blur city at night.
Until someone can post a great night image or video of motion from the Rings, Reolinks, Nest, etc. of the world, you won't find many here to recommend them.
Here was an example
@samplenhold had of an actual incident in his neighborhood with a comparison of his Andy cam (Dahua OEM) versus his neighbor's Ring camera - which one is better...
Afternoon folks - I have been extensively researching this forum and wanted to TRULY thank you all for your Gravitation, Predisposition and well frankly Addiction to Cam Security... ))) Just looking for some insight on beginning my own journey. SHEWHOMUSTBEOBEYED thinks she wants battery...
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