D-Link Vigilance DCS-4802E
A great-value outdoor camera for small businesses – although image quality is merely acceptable
“The lens is surrounded by a generous 14 IR LED illuminators, which give a promised night-vision range of 20m”
SCORE PRICE £137 exc VAT from ebuyer.com
The DCS-4802E mini-dome IP camera is designed to be equally at home indoors and outdoors. Its IP66 rating confirms that it’s fully weather-proof against dust and heavy jets of water, while its modest dimensions make it ideal for low-key surveillance. It should be mounted high enough to be out of harm’s way, however, as it doesn’t have a vandalproof IK rating.
That’s not to say it’s flimsy. The camera dome casing is held in a sturdy mount, and its three-axis friction joints allow it to be manually rotated and adjusted both vertically and horizontally. A captive, waterproof 65cm Ethernet cable emerges directly from the camera’s base; the expectation is that you’ll power it via PoE, although you can buy an optional 12V power supply if you prefer. The camera can be mounted directly on a wall or ceiling, or for a sturdier siting, D-Link also offers optional metal mounting brackets costing around £35. Note that the cable has a chunky housing measuring around 3cm in diameter, so wherever you choose to mount it you’ll probably need to drill a big hole to feed it through.
Once the camera’s in place and connected to your network, you should make it an immediate priority to open up the web interface and set an admin password – it’s blank by default, which is a bit worrying.
We were also unimpressed with what happens next. The interface opens up with the camera’s live view, but in both Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome this comes with a warning that you “may have difficulties receiving images and video”, due to unsupported plugins. You can ignore these warnings, but the live view is so jerky it’s virtually unusable, and the digital zoom function isn’t available.
The simple solution, if you can stomach it, is to switch to Internet Explorer 11. Doing so immediately gave us smooth video in both H.264 and MJPEG formats at all resolutions.
The web interface offers plenty of advanced features, too. We were able to create separate stream profiles for desktop and mobile viewing, each with its own resolution, codec and frame rate. From the live view page, handy buttons let you switch to a full-screen view, record on demand and take snapshots with a click.
You can also draw grids to decide where motion detection should be active, and set an overall sensitivity level. Actions such as sending video footage or snapshots to FTP and NAS servers or email addresses can be automatically triggered when motion is detected. If you don’t fancy firing up IE, you can alternatively use D-Link’s free D-ViewCam software. This is pretty decent, supporting up to 32 cameras with recording to multiple storage locations. On our Windows 10 host it gave us perfectly smooth video, plus a functional PTZ control panel.
The camera has a 2MP CMOS sensor with a native 1080p resolution, and in good light it delivers clean video with natural-looking colours. It’s perfect for monitoring indoor office spaces and corridors, although the focus did seem a little soft, leaving distant objects slightly blurred. If you’re planning to position it outside, however, then be warned: in bright sunlight, we found the exposure automatically dialled down so far that shadowy areas were very dark, and some detail was lost in the murk. We weren’t impressed by the DCS4802E’s night-time performance either. The lens is surrounded by a generous 14 IR LED illuminators, which give a promised night-vision range of 20m, but we found that overnight footage came out disappointingly grainy, and suffered from an unpleasant smearing effect.
Clearly the DCS-4802E isn’t the greatest camera in the world – but it is very affordable, and nicely compact. If you’re happy using IE, and don’t demand the highest standards of night vision, it’s a decent choice for small businesses on a limited budget.
SPECIFICATIONS 1/3in 2MP RGB CMOS 2.8mm f/1.8 lens 1080p (max res) 30fps IP66 MJPEG/H.264 10/100 Ethernet PoE 14 x IR LEDs 10x digital zoom D-Link D-ViewCam software 113 x 113 x 78mm (WDH) 2yr RTB warranty