East Durham CCTV

After looking for some home CCTV I decided to go for a local firm as opposed to buying the kit myself (which I could have got for alot cheaper on Amazon, but I wanted the piece of mind of an "all in" price with installation)

I don't like the idea of the range of cloud based cameras on the market as it raises questions as to where the footage goes and who owns/has access to it, so I wanted something that recorded locally onto a drive.

We went for the Floureon system with four cameras, although we only required 3. We also provided our own Hard Drive.

Considering the 4 camera is advertised on the site for £150 I would have thought only getting 3 cameras would mean a slightly cheaper price, but the final price of £265 fitted doesn't seem to suggest that. The model also appears to be a lower one as the set top box is noticeably lacking in any physical controls,
compared to the one on the site showing a range of buttons (although that may well be the stock image on the site showing a higher model, either way it doesn't make much difference in the real world).

I'll split this review in two, one for the kit and one for the service:

Service:

When I initially used the contact us feature on the site to request a quote I was called back within 5 minutes and we talked through the requirements. I was talked out of the 720p Anker model (which makes you wonder why they're for sale really...) and instead went for the 1080p Floureon ones. We also decided to get two tplink power line adapter's to allow network connectivity and remote viewing.

The quote was agreed and we booked in a time slot.

The installer came round on time and has done a great job of mounting the cameras and making it look neat and tidy. He also showed us the field of view for each camera as he was installing them to make sure it was covering what we required

The power line adapter's were £30 for the pair but definitely aren't tplink. So all told the camera and power line adapter's seem to be lesser models than what was advertised.

Equipment:

Once I put my spare SATA HDD in it formatted quite quickly and connected the monitor I'd provided we were off. The picture is great in fullfcolour when viewed and the playback is intuitive enough. The night vision on the cameras is superb

The installer set the cameras up and took us through the basics.

The suggested app is awful and seemingly needed permissions to everything to work, which I'm not happy with. The footage is uploaded to "the cloud" but when asked for details it was vague at best. Where does it upload to?, who has access? What encryption does it use? How long is it stored for?

The idea of footage being uploaded to some unknown place and then accessed via an app that needs keys to the kingdom is fairly counter productive for a security solution, so I've taken the network connectivity away for time being until I can set something more secure up.

For me, I have a setup that has great image quality, records locally to a HDD and I can quickly and easily review and export the footage, and that's exactly what I wanted.

If you're going for the same kit as me keep in mind the default admin credentials for the box are so easy to guess it's comical, so change them as soon as possible.

If you're looking for local CCTV for your house I'd recommend these guys as they installed what was required, on time and to the price that we'd agreed, but if you're going for local CCTV it's probably because you don't want a cloud based service so I'd suggest not bothering with any of the network connectivity.

Overall a mixed bag. Yes, I got what I paid for and the service was good, as is the kit, but the kit all appears to be slightly different than I was offered, although it all works fine so does it really matter at the end of the day?

3.5/5 seems a fair score but I'll round it to 4/5 More...

great company and thank you again recomend to everyone

Reviewed on Facebook

fantastic service from East Durham CCTV, phoned for a free estimate, Derrick came out same day, I was very happy with the quote and decided to have it installed, This company is very professional fast and reliable. The engineer John who fitted the cameras was friendly courteous and professional and I am over the moon with them and will br recommending them to friends n family. thankyou so much for my peace of mind guys, job well done More...

Reviewed on Facebook

Fantastic job..thanks again x

Reviewed on Facebook

Outstanding Service Every Time!! Ive used the services of East Durham CCTV Three Times, ive Reccomended to my dad and grandad over the last 2 years and he's done a fantastic job every time id highly recommend to anyone

Reviewed on Facebook