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

We're traveling east for Christmas and I'm going to visit my elderly parents. While I'm there, I'm going to replace the ANCIENT security cams at their house. They currently have 1 camera that I'm pretty sure is standard definition or less. They used to have two, but the power supply they had for the radio camera died, and nobody makes a replacement (it's like 50v dc and a propriety connector.) Their house is 3 stores (2 above ground and a walk out basement.) and about 5,000+ sq. ft. They have mesh wifi, but I don't know how fast their internet connection is. They would say they live "back in the woods" but in reality it's a sparsely populated wooded neighborhood.

Since I'm familiar with them I was going to get them a reolink system. My problem is what to buy. I need/would like to cover 4 doors and the driveway. I know that I'm going to need to incorporate wireless cameras at multiple locations. I have access to 1 "closet" where the existing camera is mounted. (It covers the driveway). I would use the existing wires for that one to pull new ones. I should have access to 120v power at several of the locations.

Here are the two setup's I'm considering.

From a pure bang for the buck perspective, I don't think I could go wrong with this option. REOLINK 5MP Wireless Security Camera System,. I has three downsides that I see.

1). It does not have POE if I wanted to add any POE cameras.
2). It only has a 1 Tb HDD
3). I'd like to add a tracking camera for their driveway.

I'm not sure how big of a disadvantage #2 is because I have an older reolink NVR with a 1 TB HDD in it. I could easily swap that out and double their storage for the cost of my time.

My other option would be to buy their 8 channel NVR with POE and add the wireless cameras on my own. This option would run me about $200 more. This would add more storage without having to crack open the NVR case and built in POE. But I can't really add any POE cameras anyway because of the layout of their house.

Technically there's an option 3 which is buy the cameras wireless cameras individually, put SD cards in them and run the whole thing off the reolink client on a computer. But that's a little clunky and I don't want to overcomplicate things.

I'm leaning heavily towards option 1, because POE injectors and/or switches are less than the $200 it would cost me to build a built in POE system on my own. Is there a flaw in that logic? Am I missing something?

Thx,
L

ps This thread had fallen to page 6 and need a bump anyway....