re: General security camera discussion (was "Unifi Protect security cameras")

Even after examining a bunch of side by side stills, pixel by pixel, and seeing what seems to be a clear difference in favor of the Reolink, something still strikes me about the G3 video that gives it a higher quality look and feel.

I think I have figured out why I still prefer the G3's video during playback.

The Reolink has a lot of artifacts when there is a lot of motion (birate is set the same as the UniFi). It also adjusts the saturation and contrast a lot when the lighting changes, and also just kind of randomly. I think it drops frames when these things happen, too. I have a couple Amcrests that do the same stuff. The G3 doesn't seem to do any of that. Whatever corrections it makes, it does them in a way that doesn't produce pixelated artifacts or dropped frames, or anything noticeable at all. It's just a steady, smooth video all the time.

I got right in front of the cameras to make an adjustment, and when I popped into the view of the Reolink my face and shirt were very blocky for several frames. Likewise when I left the frame, it took more than a second for the background blockiness and pixelation to fill in the details. And the entire frame of course very noticeably adjusted the brightness and contrast and such in a very jarring way. The G3 is much different. There is some slight artifacting, but it's hardly noticeable. And any larger image adjustments happen much more smoothly.

It's obvious that the UniFi camera has much more horsepower to handle all the processing that takes place. How that translates to overall real-world picture quality, eh, I'm still not sure. So far I've only compared one scene. But I will say that regardless of the pixel-level detail, when you watch the video the G3 has a more "premium" look to it.