When you select a specific camera in the app, you can access a simple menu for recording, audio, playback, video quality, and brightness/contrast settings. Night Owl can show you multiple cameras at once because the DVR packages the video streams before sending them across the internet to your phone. This is particularly useful for checking up on multiple cameras at once, something that isn't very common among cameras from Arlo and Ring, which require you to preview video feeds individually. The Live View tab of the app allows you to view one or multiple cameras in a variety of layouts. You can also find an infrared motion sensor on each camera, which triggers motion recording and notifications. This protects the video/power cable so it's harder to tamper with. It's a good idea to secure the cables along the top of a wall, and you can buy a cable run or cord cover to conceal them if you don't want to stress about hiding them (though it will be pricey if you do 60 feet for each camera). But having multiple cameras does make up the shortfall a little.Įach camera comes with a 60-foot video/power cable, which is long enough to reach most areas of an average-sized home-provided the DVR is in a central location. Although this is wider than you might see on other wired security cameras, it's narrower than the 130º average on most wireless cameras. We're not big fans of the cameras' narrow field of view (80º), which limits how much they can see. There are also bright spotlights for color night vision. This type of night vision is more effective than most Wi-Fi security cameras, which illuminate about 25 feet on average. Each camera comes equipped with powerful infrared LEDs that give it up to 100 feet of night vision range. The four DP2 cameras in the Night Owl system are weatherproof, so you can use them indoors or outdoors. Still, the lag was less apparent compared to a wireless camera like the Arlo Pro 4, probably because there's no Wi-Fi involved on the sending end. When you watch a livestream on the mobile app, you can expect a short lag depending on your internet speed. Still, renters in apartments (like the small apartment where we tested) might see a little motion blurring close to the camera with people walking directly in front of it. If you view the video on a monitor connected to the DVR, it looks crisp without any noticeable motion blur at a distance. Compared to wireless cameras like the Ring Stick Up Cam and Wyze Cam Outdoor, the quality doesn't hold up considering those are easier to install. With Night Owl in particular, we found the color wasn't great in dim rooms and just decent in bright spaces.

(We didn't test this, but it's true for most wired surveillance systems.) In our case, the included cameras topped out at 1080p, which is standard for security cameras these days. Still, we suspect it supports a variety of wired add-on cameras with lower resolutions as well. The DVR supports recording resolutions up to 1080p. Video quality is a tricky subject when dealing with DVRs like the one Night Owl uses.

Indoor night owl cameras