Amcrest NV4108E-A2 4K 8CH POE NVR (1080p/3MP/4MP/5MP/8MP) POE Network Video Recorder - Supports up to 8 x 8MP/4K IP Cameras, 8-Channel Power Over Ethernet Supports up to 10TB HDD (Not Included)

I have had two POE Amcrest cameras now for just over a year. My biggest regret now is not having a reliable source of data-storage. Prior to having this NVR I tried several solutions to avoid "spending" more money. 1) Internal storage using the microsd. (These failed within a week...) 2) FTP storage - (SUPER unreliable, and EXTREMELY challenging to setup... Most FTP services only support one channel at a time! So imagine trying to deal with that...) Not to mention accessing these files means MANUAL WORK!!! 3) NAS - NAS solution was not bad, but still the same situation with manually accessing files... No decent UI to support these files being saved here... NVR is a game changer... DO NOT BUY CAMERAS without this being part of your shopping list. Buy less cameras and START with if you have to! 1) Setup pretty simple. I would suggest buying a different HD (I personally like Seagates...) Simply unscrew and place harddrive and screw into place... Plugin using the cables provided. 2) Hook up... POE ports make for less POE switches. 8 is plenty for my house... I would even say for "most" houses... Their is a cheaper model of this that seemingly does not have POE... I would say do not go with this, as you will later have to upgrade. This device also has HDMI and VGA output. I personally plugged this directly into my TV. Now I can stream all of my connected cameras to this... 3) Setup... Setup overall is pretty simple and easy to do... Biggest issue is understanding which windows and controls... Mouse can take a minute to get used to as left click triggers, right click exits... Various windows for managing each Camera can be difficult, but again once you get the hang of where things are... It gets easier. My cameras were mostly setup already so mostly just had to have my NVR log into each. 4) LIVE... Out of the gate the NVR is accessible via web browser, or app. I use the app more often... Now if you leave your home network you will need to have some basic Networking skills to do port forwarding. Having a DNS service is super helpful. Most routers now days have these built in, and just have to be configured. 5) Reviewing... NVR's make things SO much better. Yes its still a bit clunky. However, now I can go into any given date and pull up a feed. I wish I could scan faster, but maybe that will happen in the future.. Technically it would be better to just have it setup for alerts, but I prefer 24x7 recording. Much less chance of missing something. ---- CONS / Issues 1) The fan on the NVR is rather loud. I expect either it will "quiet" down over time. If not it appears to be a standard fan, so likely can be exchanged. Definitely do not use this without one as the POE, and harddrive will overheat... Especially if running multiple channels... 2) Interfaces - These are still a bit difficult to manage, but not impossible. Take some time getting used to where things are located. My preference is using the APP to manage each option set for the cameras. Even the Web Interface as then you can export/import much easier in my opinion. (templating makes this so much better to manage multiple cameras!) OVERALL Do not start into this path of cameras without an NVR. Period... It changed my whole setup, and is so much more reliable.

I had recently purchased a complete Amcrest system for my father, and after getting it setup for him, I decided I wanted one as well. I already had the cameras, just needed the NVR instead of just being able to watch the cameras, now I could record them as well! This fit the bill perfect, just had to pop in a drive I had handy, and off I went. Using the P2P feature is great, not having to manually poke holes through the firewall and simply being able to bring up the app and there's my cameras. The recording feature is pretty great as well. You can select any or all the cameras and see them on a single timeline, making it very easy to go through recordings. The motion detection is spot on as well, any time a car would go by, or a bicycle or someone walking it would capture it and even was able to set it up to email me! Setup was super simple, just hook it up to a monitor either over HDMI or VGA, and use the included mouse to go through the setup. I had it up and running and connected to my existing cameras in under 5 minutes. Speaking of which, this thing integrates with existing cameras seamlessly. Being able to use the 4 I had already setup before hand was great. The hardware itself works a treat too. I was able to sit and watch the streams with no hiccups, no blips just a nice crisp clear image. Recording was seemless as well, the only thing I had to setup that I didn't like out of the box is that it would take a screenshot every second. I set it to only take a screenshot when it detected motion, which made looking through alerts much easier. I've attached a few pictures showing the size of it compared to a standard flash drive, it's very compact! I also took a screenshot of the main page of the device showing some of options and the nice interface. All in all, if they would have had this a few years ago, I would have bought it then. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for an easy to setup and use NVR

I got this NVR out of necessity and curiosity. I was recording on my PC using the Amcrest PC-NVR surveillance software. It’s great using software as a backup on an individual PC. This NVR is perfect for my needs. It has POE connections for up to eight cameras. Depending upon your setup you can record 4k on this NVR. It hasn’t missed since I set it up. It just does what its supposed to, Records the footage without a hitch. I have a 2TB HDD in the NVR and plan to upgrade to a bigger one to record more footage. The 2TB records approximately 18+ days of 4K footage with 2 cameras. If setup with motion detection recording it can last a lot longer than that as file sizes are a lot smaller if you cannot invest in a larger size HDD. It will write over old footage as it runs out of space. You can also setup a FTP connections to get the footage backed up to a second location which is Amazing! There is a little cooling fan that blows across the HDD and exits the opposite end of the casing. It’s a little loud but barely noticeable unless its dead silent in a room. It is in a small form factor. I have it standalone connected by ethernet port away from the cameras. So, no need for cameras to be directly hardwired. It flawlessly detected cameras on my network. The ethernet ports handle excellent without any noticeable lag from the network or cameras. This unit connects to the Amcrest Surveillance Pro software. You can access footage directly with a monitor attached, remotely from PC or from the Amcrest View Pro app for Android. It connects with many RTSP enables cameras. The NVR is P2P enabled if you want to review footage remotely through the AVP app. Reviewing footage is quite easy, the software is what seems standard, the on-screen layout you get used to after a little bit. The NVR lacks advance features such as tripwire, face detection, people counting, etc. available in more expensive units. RTSP- The Real Time Streaming Protocol AVP- Amcrest View Pro ASP- Amcrest Surveillance Pro Overall, this is a great NVR that fits my needs. It is stable and reliable. It is a great purchase worth investing. I would recommend a large HDD for 4k recording; 2TB+ HDD. Pros: Comes with a Mouse, supports up to 6TB HHD, Small form factor, easy setup, POE ports, 8-channels Cons: Fan is a little loud but replaceable if needed. Lacks advance software features possibly available with an update to firmware.

Can't complete the setup, it would NOT connect to the internet no matter what I did. AT&T ( my provider ) said everything was fine their end, they could even see the Amcrest MAC ID etc, it just completely failed to work. Constant beeping over and over as well, I called their customer "service" line - very scratchy line quality, got a support tech with an accent so strong I had to ask her to repeat nearly everything, and she kept talking over me which I had to tell her to stop doing. Before we even started trying to address the setup/connection I asked her to stop the beeping noise - then she showed me the relevant page and it turned out it was warning me there was no hard drive fitted - WTF? So an "NVR" without the "R" part??? Packaging said "10TB HDD" in a big blue box in the top right corner, but if you actually find some reading glasses and look really close it says "( not included )" underneath it. That's absolutely ridiculous - if I buy a new truck I don't expect it to say "5 liter Hemi" then "( not included )" underneath it. At that point I gave up, it wouldn't see feeds from any cameras ( presumably due to failing the setup- connection ) and apparently even if it actually worked ( hah! ) it wouldn't have been able to record anything either. This is so annoying, I had to buy another brand because 'Speco Technologies' that made my previous NVR are utter garbage - theirs at least works ( unlike this thing ) but crashes almost daily - this junk didn't even get that far. It's apparently too much to ask to get a working security NVR in this country, is it? UPDATE: I finally decided to give this brand another try, just received a second one, I put an HD in myself and went through the setup. WOULD NOT connect to my POE ( Power Over Ethernet ) cameras no matter what I did, just couldn't even see they were there despite being plugged into the back of the unit. Swapped this out and put my old Speco Technologies unit in place, it immediately recognized all 3 cameras and connected to them - I wrote down the IP addresses of all 3 cameras, swapped back ( again ) to the Amcrest unit and did a manual camera-add with the IP addresses - still nothing, wouldn't even see them. This unit is utterly hopeless. Gave up and returned it. Sadly back to using the Speco Tech NVR - I don't like it, it's not reliable and crashes about once a week, or every 3rd time you remote connect to it, but at least it works in between times - the Amcrest won't even do that. Done with this brand after 2 units returned now.

On the Initial unboxing I was extremely impressed thinking this was going to be a 5 star review. Unfortunately I’m struggling to keep it at four stars and will update this review as time and learning the new system go on. Out of the box I inspected the components and was satisfied that this was a well built unit, packaged for the consumer to easily set the system up, and for the most part this was true~except for the four black dots…. I was happily following the instructions and installing a brand new 8TB Western Digital Purple hard drive. Included in the packaging that came with the NVR for the hard drive was a @ 1” square sheet with four black rubber “mystery” dots. The instructions that came with the NVR are small and require some magnification to read, so I put on magnifiers and began reading to find out what the black dots were. The instructions themselves are vaguely written as if translated from Chinese to begin with and coupled with being small enough to require a microscope from a major university to read, were not of much help. No mention of the black dots. These were in a package with all the hard drive installation screws and cables so they must be for the hard drive installation right? I skimmed thru the entire instructions and didn’t see any mention of black dots so I regrouped and looked over the unit and instructions again. On the bottom of the NVR case was a place they would fit and function as “feet”, but why were included in the hard drive pieces/parts? So I grabbed the installation support telephone number and called it. Typical answering system with prompts to select all kinds of options, and after I found one that seemed reasonable, I was on hold for the next available technician. Once my call was answered I was speaking with someone with barely discernible English speaking skills. So I explained my question even offering my supposition that these may be intended for the bottom of the chassis as feet. The technician listened and placed me on hold. Upon returning to the call the tech said these were “antchitaon dapners”. WHAT? So I asked to repeat this and got “antchitaon dapners”. My ling silence clued the tech in that I needed help and repeated “ antchitaon dapners” to prevent vibrations of the unit. So I had my answer, but I had spent two hours researching and calling to get to this point. I was frustrated and still had to finish installing the HDD. Overall the unit seems fairly good and operable, this would have been a five star review had there been a sticker on the “antchitaon dapners” or brief mention of them in the instructions alerting to their intended use. I will update this as I have time available.

Overall I am very happy with this NVR, the limitations are ones I knew of when I got it and the pain points are minor enough I would recommend the product fully although they were frustrating in the moment. My use primary use case: Recording video from my mix of Amcrest wifi cameras, Amcrest POE cameras, and some older Swann ONVIF compatible (sorta, barely) wifi PTZ cameras (dislike these but I haven't gotten around to replacing them with POE PTZ's) while I am out of town. Triggered recording is a nice perk but I am happy with always recording and overwriting on full storage as well. Whe I am home its nice to be able to unplug and not have to worry about it capturing me in my birthday suit. First Impressions: Why is there a mouse in the box? I don't need another cheap throwaway device. (Narrator: he did need it) Oh, you use the mouse to set it up via the local interface...how do you type. I hate on screen keyboards Do I have an extra keyboard around? Oh, wait, I'm done setting it up that wasn't so bad. (took maybe 10 minutes with mouse and HDMI monitor, without a monitor your probably S.O.L I didn't read the instructions though...sorry tech writers everywhere) *Using the HDMI interface* "oh wow this is much more polished than I expected" *Later using the Web interface* "oh wow, this is kinda dated looking" *Later logging into the web interface via my phone* "wow guess that why they have an app...still not as bad as my ubiquiti Edge Router Lite on my phone" Seriously though the web interface is busted on mobile screens. WHY WONT THIS ADD TO THE APP! Added to the app, and now it just works like a Ronco Rotisserie I can set it and forget it. Pain Points / Annoyances: Adding the NVR to the app! Took me longer than anything else, adding the hard drive, adding username/pass...anything The problem is the copy below the two QR logos, I kept scanning "cellphone client" because the app on my phone was asking me to scan the code. I figured it out by accident when I panned the camera and it grabbed the "wrong one" - Device SN I would rename "Cellphone Client" - "Download App" and "Device SN" - "P2P Device Setup" SMART data is shown under Operation -> Information - HDD but not under Management -> Storage -> HDD Manager Wish the PTZ controls were hidden if not support by any camera, or just the ability to collapse the panel behind an overflow menu. The HDMI output has a much more useful/powerful camera layout than the web interface. Wish List: Image processing with object detection and OCR I would like to be able to trigger on a person/dog/cat etc even better let me tag captured faces to that the detected person is reported Grab license plates from cars that enter the frame Temperature reporting for the harddrive Better external notification reporting (things in addition to SMTP) Support central logging to a log server. Push notification support to Pushover or other push notification broker for alarm events Support for MQTT servers for alarm events Support LDAP authentication 19" Rack mount ears, This might be a product segmentation decision but I'll probably try and print a bracket to mount it as the rest of my network and AV gear is in the rack and I have a 19" monitor mounted there as well. Questions / Things That Confuse Me: Under the network tab in the web interface there is a sub tab marked "Switch"I assume this is for setting the DHCP server settings for the builtin POE switch but it's confusingly named. I want to expose it to the web for remote access but I'm not sure how hardened the web interface is. I see that it supports HTTPS certs but I don't want to manage uploading certs everytime letsencrypt rolls over. I probably put it behind a Nginx reverse proxy with an auth layer as extra security Not sure if the manufacturer would recommend this.

Kimberly competently restored my system defaults and now my NVR is working fine.

I've been an Amcrest user for the last 8 years or so. Most of their devices have some bugs, but I'm a software developer and I'm aware most software has at least some minimal issues, so I'm normally willing to work around it when I can, but this NVR is starting to challenge my patience. For starters, I have recently purchased 3 of the new AI bullet cameras (IP5M-B1276EW-AI) that support Human and Vehicle detection. The cameras are good at the human and vehicle detection but I've had an issue with those sending email alerts where part of the picture is blank. I'm not sure if that is a camera problem or an NVR problem, but I currently have an open case with Amcrest trying to fix the issue. I have never been successful at getting the instant alerts through the Amcrest ViewPro app, on any device, more than once or twice before they just stop working, so I have relied on email alerts to know when someone is around my property. This NVR "claims" to support the new AI cameras, but there is no place in the 4108E-A2 that allows you to enable or configure the Human and Vehicle detection. You have to connect directly to the camera to configure those settings, which requires you to have a POE injector to power the camera long enough to do the direct connect and modify the settings, then you can plug it back into the NVR. Aside from that annoying inconvenience, the next big bug is that it seems to lose 1 or more of the cameras when reboots. At one point I had to disconnect one of the AI cameras to be sure the motion detect was properly configured, but when I disconnected it from the NVR, a couple of the remaining cameras changed positions in the list causing them to show "red" in the status, which also prevented them from being available in the ViewPro app. In order to correct this, I had to remove all the cameras from the config, then the system automatically added them back in the proper order. Being a software developer, I decided to see if this was an isolated event, so I decided to reboot the NVR again. This time 2 cameras came up red and would not repair themselves. So again, I had to remove all the cameras from the config and let the system automatically add them back. I repeated this process 3 more times. Once or twice I could live with, but 5 times in a single afternoon is too much. Then the worst bug of all occurred when suddenly I got an "Invalid username or password" error when I tried to log in after the last reboot. Despite the ViewPro app still being able to connect and display the cameras with the password I assigned, the web interface continued to declare I was using an invalid password. I had to pull out an old monitor and connect directly to the NVR to reset the password before I could log back into the web UI. That bug is unacceptable. Your device should never lose the password and block you out. Despite being a loyal user of Amcrest products for years, I have to declare this one has too many issues, especially for the inexperienced user. UPDATE: After finally getting everything configured, I found that 2 of my cameras were sending email alerts, but did not include the picture that goes with it. Before I could even try to figure out why this was happening, I had to go out of town, and when I pulled up my ViewPro app to check out cameras, 1 camera was unavailable with and error saying “failed to connect”. I’m done, this NVR has too many issues so it’s going back now