Lilin ZMR6542X
This four-megapixel camera delivers bags of detail and plenty of high-end features – at a very reasonable price
SCORE
PRICE £288 exc VAT from networkwebcams.co.uk
Lilin might not be as familiar as the other brands in this month’s roundup, but this Taiwanese company has a solid pedigree, having been in the surveillance game since 1980. Its latest ZMR6542X mini-dome camera ticks all the important boxes – and it features a four-megapixel CMOS sensor, delivering a betterthan-HD video resolution of 2,688 x 1,520 pixels at up to 20fps.
It’s up to you whether you mount it indoors or out: with an IP66 rating, the enclosure can handle the worst the British weather can throw at it, should you choose to use it for external monitoring. Lilin doesn’t quote an IK mechanical impact rating, but the solid metal lens housing and plastic mounting feel like they could handle a good beating.
The camera itself works very nicely. Video looks sharply focused, and colour balance is very natural. If we had to criticise, we’d note that its exposure compensation isn’t quite as fine as you’ll find on Axis’ camera: it’s not bad, but if you’re monitoring an outdoor scene in full sunlight, areas of shadow tend to get a tad murky.
On the flipside, the ZMR6542X is very good in the dark. Two powerful IR LEDs sit next to the lens, and in our night-time tests the camera captured an impressively clean image with plenty of detail, right up to the (uncommonly long) quoted maximum range of 30m.
Viewing the footage was easy too, as the live view streamed perfectly in Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 11. The web interface isn’t entirely browser-agnostic, however: the snapshot and instant-record buttons only appeared in IE 11, and while zoom buttons are available in Edge and Chrome, IE 11 gives you the friendlier option of panning and zooming by dragging with the mouse.
Another slight hiccup is the fact that the live video contains more detail than will fit into a regular browser window. On a 1080p display, we had to scale our browser window down to 60% to see the whole scene. Alternatively, you can click the screen-scale button, which automatically shrinks the video to fit the browser window.
You’re not limited to a single view, either: you can monitor up to three video streams from the browser interface, which may be from multiple cameras, or separate streams from a single unit. For each stream you can choose between H.264 and MJPEG codecs, with resolutions ranging from 1080p down to 352 x 240 pixels for mobile viewing.
On the motion detection page, meanwhile, you can use the mouse to select image areas to be monitored for movement. We particularly like the tripwire feature, which lets you draw lines onto the live view and triggers an event if anything passes through them. You can even link tripwire events to semaphore options, so events are only triggered if a line is crossed while the semaphore rectangle is showing a specific colour, such as a red or green traffic light. Once an event is registered, images can be automatically sent to FTP and HTTP servers, a network share and up to five email addresses.
For those who prefer to use Lilin’s native software, the free Navigator Lite 2 application worked fine on our Windows 10 host. It automatically detected our camera, and presented us with a well-designed console capable of displaying up to 16 camera views in one screen. Register with Lilin and this goes up to 36 simultaneous camera views across dual monitors.
If you weren’t previously familiar with Lilin, the ZMR6542X confirms the company as a force to be reckoned with. At £288, it’s a very attractive choice for SMEs that want to keep an eye on the big picture.
SPECIFICATIONS
1/3in 4MP RGB CMOS 2.8mm f/1.6 lens 1080p 30fps MJPEG/H.264 10/100 Ethernet PoE 2 x IR LED illuminators IP66
Lilin Navigator Lite 2.0 software 115 x 115 x 91mm (WDH) 436g 3yr RTB warranty
“The tripwire feature lets you draw lines onto the live view and triggers an event if anything passes through them”