ZOSI
Doc4pcs
I've had this system for a while. Over time some of the cameras started dropping off and I had to replace them. After replacing the cameras I started having issues with the NVR. I contacted support and Slina worked with me to replace the NVR. She kept working with me until she was sure that I was happy with the product. Very happy with the product and support that I received.
Mr. Laing
I had this system professionally installed and just after 2 years I noticed the cameras that were using infra red because of the dark areas at night, began to stop working completely. Now I just need new cameras I suppose. Just might be easier than changing whole system. Out of 8 cameras presently only 3 work.
Huascar Moreira
I purchased this model, great cameras, good price, I had problems after a few months when I noticed that it stop recording. I contacted customer service and I was extremely lucky to get Ella, it was a 1on1 VIP customer service, she was pleasant and after a few simple troubleshooting she replace the HHD with a brand new one. They will stand by their product, their customer service is amazing
Chris
No Poe or network activity on any of the cameras. The main box POE/network injector has died. This DVR is now useless.
Levi Lumbreras
To start off, I want to say that I was overall happy with the product when it was working as it was supposed to...
Setup is quite simple, you just plug in and it pretty much starts working right away. Browsing through the interface options is pretty self explanatory to dial in how you want everything to be. Now installation of the cameras is a bit more tricky, mostly dealing with crawling around in the attic reaching very tight corners and then having to fish out the wires from the outside. Doing it by yourself is so much more of a hassle since you'll be going in and out of the attic several times over, so I highly recommend a second person to cut that time in half. Using a "fish tape" makes all of the difference for fetching the wires, so get one if you don't have one. Once you decide on your camera location, made the proper holes and ran the lines through them, you're pretty much home free for the install.
Camera operation works great once everything is setup and installed. The day operation is nice and clear and the IR works well enough to have a good eye of your outside at night. I really like being able to view my cameras at anytime with the downloadable app from anywhere I have signal to my phone. You can even use playback from the app as well. All very convenient things for me, and storage goes back long enough. I've never checked how far I can view playback to be honest but it's definitely more then 2 weeks.
Now for the issues I experienced... I've had my cameras for a year and 4 months now. At around the 8 month mark is when I had my first issue. One of my cameras was malfunctioning between day and IR operation, being that it would randomly switch to IR during light hours, and at night it would randomly switch to day operation. Then later on, the camera would randomly lose signal and show no feed for a random amount of time before kicking back on. This was happening daily.
I contacted Zosi customer service about the issue and they took great care of me in completely replacing the camera for me without having to send the malfunctioning one back to them. Thank you to Zosi Customer Service Rep Cathy for all of your help on that.
This resolved my issue, but that was only until I had 3 more of my cameras fail on my in the coming year. Out of my 8 cameras that came in the kit, a total of 4 of them have malfunctioned on me. All relating to IR malfunction. As you can see in the image I provided of my monitor, 2 of the cameras are completely stuck on day operation and never switch to IR during dark hours. I have not contacted customer service for this issue. Instead I just replaced them myself with my spare cameras as I only installed 4 of the 8 cameras for my home, but this is the issue I was having here.
andrew
This was better than expected for the price. Picture quality is excellent. Cameras seem pretty durable.
I had a problem with 1 camera. At night time it looked like it was real foggy out. I contacted ZosiSmart and they had me try a few things and ended up determining it was a bad camera. Slina was very helpful and sent me a new camera and I had it within a few days and now all cameras are working great. They are very good with response time and gave me no trouble at all. Would highly recommend this system.
The only thing I don’t like about it is the nvr. A good friend has a Lorex system. It’s a little easier to use and when you back up video onto a thumb drive, it also installs an app I guess I’d call it, to playback the video on a computer. This ZosiSmart system doesn’t do that. And my windows media player can’t play the content. Still working on how to view it. Other than that I have no complaints.
Robert L Trenor
Originally the unit was working flawlessly and we loved it. About a month ago, the network stopped working. I replaced the cat 5 cable connecting to the unit and validated that my hub is still working properly. Now I cannot access the unit remotely at all. Last week, 1 camera's night vision stopped working and now this week another camera the night vision is on 24 hours a day. I just submitted a request for replacement and hope that goes smoothly but worry that similar problems will arise in the future when no longer under warranty. The attached image shows there is no network connection even thought the working network is connected. The middle camera has night vision on 24 hours a day and the bottom came has no night vision at all anymore at night.
T.I motors llc
I’m Tired of returning and exchanging I shouldn’t have to be installing it and taking apart unprofessional
pbltube
My purchase of the product entitled: "ZOSI 8CH 5MP PoE Video Surveillance System with 1TB Hard Drive,H.265+ 8Channel 5MP NVR Security System and 4pcs 5MP HD Outdoor Indoor 120ft Night Vision PoE IP Cameras for 24/7 Recording" had its bumps, but overall is very good.
I initially bought the system listed above and one additional camera to give me a total of 5 cameras for full coverage all the way around my house.
PROS:
- The interface is relatively easy to understand, though I did have to view a few YouTube videos to help me through the installation and set up process.
- The PoE system makes that aspect of the installation very easy. It is literally "plug & play".
- The picture quality on the cameras both in the day and at night is very good. We recently had an actual crime take place on our street and our cameras were able to pick up some evidence from between 80-100 feet away.
- Speaking of evidence, the system allows its owner to view, record, save, and transfer any video that was recorded on the NVR. You can also take screenshots as well. This is not easy, but you can get it figured out with the combined help of a few YouTube videos (that show how to find and transfer the video files) and the ZOSI website (provides a video player to play the videos that couldn't be read AND will convert them to a readable format - Awesome!)
- The customer service via email was very helpful. Please remember, this is a foreign (non-American) company. They do not speak "American English" and they are likely not in the same time zone as many of their customers. This doesn't mean they are taking their time or not trying to help. It just means both parties may have to work together to come to a resolution. My customer service representative was "Cathy". She was helpful, courteous, and professional. If you have an issue with a camera and are unable to easily disconnect it and return it, I would highly recommend contacting the ZOSI customer service team. They want to help. One of the cameras I purchased had the issue that some other reviewers have mentioned. The camera worked perfectly during the day, but at night the IR / Night Vision camera would cycle between IR and day camera continually. This caused it to lose its picture every five seconds or so, then keep doing that until day time. Cathy did ask a few questions and had a few suggestions. After only a few emails, she sent me a replacement camera that came only a couple of days after she said it would be sent. The new camera worked, and I tested the night (and day) vision in the closet with the NVR with a temporary Ethernet cable.
CONS:
- One out of five (six if you count the replacement camera) was bad. That isn't a great percentage. While I did have to go through the hassle of contacting customer service, the ZOSI team (Cathy) did help to solve the issue in a timely manner.
- The system is not super "user friendly" or "intuitive". The manuals only help so much. Thankfully, there are plenty of videos on YouTube to fill in the blanks.
- Installing the cameras (correctly) is not something just anyone can do (well). You may need to hire someone to do it for you.
Things to consider about the install:
1. What is the exterior of your home and how many stories is it? You want to try to keep the cameras out of the weather as much as possible to extend their lives. If you have a 2-story home, you will need special equipment (see photos).
2. Is your home currently networked (meaning are their cat5 cables already run to a central location?
3. Will you be able to co-locate the NVR next to or near your current modem / Residential Gateway? If not, will you be able to run an Ethernet cable from the NVR to the modem?
4. In my opinion, the "easier" way to run the cables is to attach them to the exterior of the home and drill holes to bring them inside. I prefer to run the cables through the attic and then down a wall to a central location. Not only does the attic / cable install look neater, it can extend the life of the cables by keeping them out of the weather. To avoid critters, try to run the cables up off the floor.
5. A word of caution about the cables that are provided: They come wound in a small bundle. When you unravel them, there is a lot of "twist" in the cable. It is nearly impossible to run it through any tight spot in an attic or something without taking that twist out first.
I have 5 years of experience installing TV and Internet service. Installing these cameras was harder, because they have to be secured to the outside of the home. Thankfully, I also have several years experience working in home improvement and vinyl siding. Knowing how to take down and re-attach vinyl siding can be tricky. I don't recommend it, unless you know what you're doing. Running the cables was pretty much the same.
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
Shortly after receiving the replacement camera for the 2nd story camera that didn't work at night, a 2nd camera (the one covering the front door) went out completely. Explaining that I needed another replacement camera proved much harder than getting the first one. I understand the skepticism of the company to just hand out free cameras, but at the same time I had two non-working cameras within two weeks of install. The one by the front door is completely protected from the weather by the front porch.
After several weeks of me sending videos and trying to explain why I wasn't going to spend an entire day to take the 2nd story camera down to send it back to them until I get the replacement was very frustrating. In the end they relented and sent the 2nd replacement. That means I had seven cameras and only five (or 71%) worked. That is not great, especially for something as important as security cameras. Fast forward to February 2022; seven months after initially installing the system. You can guess what happened. ANOTHER camera went out. This time it was the one that covers my driveway. I still have the seven cameras (I didn't want to pay for shipping to send the bad ones back), but now only four of them (57%) work. I'm done. I do not recommend this product at all. It is a waste of time and money.
Kristopher Carbone
This system seemed pretty good based of reviews however, they pretty much suck! The interface of the system is not intuitive at all nor are the included instructions. The main issue I have is that two of the four 5MP PoE cameras continuously switch from night-vision to daytime mode. It will stay at night-vision for maybe 5 seconds then switch to daytime for a couple seconds then back to night-vision. No where in the interface can I find any options to change or correct this. I have tried to contact their support on several occasions. Their website to submit a ticket is broken?? They have a contact us web-form page, that has been useless.
J. Joines
For the price these cameras are great. My last set was a samsung set that was only 720tvl.
These are clear and the menu is so much easier than the samsung set was, but it's similar in some regards so I guess that makes it easier for me personally.
I had two of the four cameras come in bad. They all worked great during the day but two of them at night would bounce in and out of infrared mode. So you would see a picture, it would dim, then go black every 10 seconds or so. I emailed customer service and they replaced. New ones came in perfect.
Only reason I knocked to 4 stars was the customer service timing. Doris is very personable and nice. It's just I told them about this problem Nov 8th. 42 emails later, seriously 42 and 28 days later we got it resolved and I'm happy.
Many of the emails asked for redundant information and you only get one email a day. So you got 24 hrs before the next response, only to ask for some other amount of information that I may have already given.
In the future, if emails are going to be that delayed, I recommend Zosi to have a template of information they need for a warranty claim.
Let the customer gather it all at once and send it in. Too much back and forth.
Kind of pushy about giving a 5 star review also. Another reason I refuse to give it.
Overall I'm happy with the purchase and may purchase another set for my garage.
jon hawley
Awesome system and great tech support.. my neighbor system was lock out on Thanksgiving, Zosi support helped me get into system on Thanksgiving.. amazing support
Nick
System worked fine till nigh and 2 cameras started flickering, customer service will replace both.of them after troubleshoot via texts.
ElusiveSasquatch
Stupidly, I installed all cameras before testing. I’ve never had an issue with a NVR and POE cameras before so I didn’t think about it.
After install all of the cameras got lights blinking and the back ports of the NVR lit up suggesting a good connection. None of the 8 cameras will show on the screen, however.
As of now it’s a defective NVR and I spent 2 hours installing. I will update once a replacement arrived. I saw another reviewer had similar issues so I wanted to post showing that it’s not a one off problem.
Bethany C.
We like the system, we are having an issue and we writing this review in response to our open ticket
JONATHAN LATOUR
A very good system for the money. Tech support was extremely helpful.
MT - Colorado
Updated 12/1
Replacement arrived quickly, booted up, no HDD clicking, cameras connected with minimal issues. Replaced my previous system with these.
why only 4 stars -
- the universal connection design is crap. small screw for setting angle easily strip out the head. Not very robust and I imagine easily broken.
- modifying the subnets is not very straight forward
- the IR at night is great, it does a fantastic job of illuminating area.(if these begin to fail I will update)
- out of the box, this is visible to the internet. pluses and minuses
(+) You can receive motion alerts and see what is going on live anywhere.
(-) I would prefer more control over what is exposed to the internet
- the system sets the cameras on there on VLAN so that is nice
- the software and UI is pretty bad. must navigate with a mouse (provided mouse is very cheap)
- motion zones are easily set and modified
- Overall a pretty good deal for the cost.
I will update if things change or cameras fail in short order.
Previous (original order)
I am returning this and looking for a replacement. Connected 2 cameras and a monitor to test before I went through the trouble of installing. The DVR booted up, went through initial setup, cameras have power, LED is illuminated and blinking, IR lights turned on in a darkened area, but these would never display images/video, the software does not see them. This was in a stand alone mode. Same result when connected to the network. HDD makes a loud and noticeable clicking sound.
April G.
Bought for our home. We LOVE these cameras. The picture is clear, even at night. We have no complaints on this product. We did install this unit ourselves, and it will take a handy person to do so as these are hard-wired cameras. Highly recommend!
Lisa M Slusher
Okay let me start . This product at 305 dollars can’t be beat ! 😎 I suggest you don’t use the cables ! Install cat 6 . If your a novice I suggest this to test your cable connections . Can buy at Lowe’s . The field grid sensors work best at night . Car lights and movement will set them off as well as clouds s passing the sun . But if you spend the time to tweek it the alarms work well . Had a problem with camera switching to night vision . They are sending me a new one . Occasionally you will notice a communication loss to a camera it doesn’t last long think it’s a communication timeout era. But for 305 dollars I’m overall impressed . 😎
