Lorex Review: Best 2K Video Security System

The Lorex wire-free home security system is a bundle consisting of a couple of cameras that can be utilized outside or inside. These battery-operated and weatherproof cameras are easy to install and wireless. They give useful features, including warning sirens and lights to scare off intruders, local video storage, person detection, and color night vision. They give sharp 2K video and work with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa voice commands. But they lack the support for IFTTT and HomeKit applets that you can get with some of its closest rivals.

The Lorex wire-free home security system has a couple of outdoor or indoor cameras and a hub that connects more than five cameras to the home network. The additional cameras cost about $180 each. In addition to the hub and the cameras, the system also comes with a couple of USB power cords and USB power adapters, camera battery packs, mounting brackets, a quick start guide, a microSD card, and a LAN cable. The hub is a tiny silver-and-white cylinder that stands 3.6 inches wide and high. It is meant for indoor usage only. It also has a small status LED on the front that is green when all the sensors are connected and functioning properly, blinks purple when it is ready to pair with the cameras, and blinks red when it has lost the connection to the internet.

A tiny speaker at the bottom and back is a microSD card slot, a pairing button, a USB power port, and a LAN port. The hub also comes with a micro SD card for storing the recorded videos and will also accept media of more than 200 GB. You can connect the hub with the home network using the LAN port or connect it wirelessly using the dual-band Wi-Fi radio. The cameras are weather-resistant with an IP65 rating. They are white, with a silver base and a glossy black face. The dimensions are pretty small and can be mounted on any wall or placed on a flat surface using the brackets included. The front of all the cameras has a motion-activated LED light on the top and a speaker at the bottom for both-way conversations. These elements, along with a built-in siren, make up the Smart Deterrence functionality developed to scare off any unwanted intruders.

There is also a status LED, a light sensor, a motion sensor, and a microphone. The status LED flashes green when connecting to the network or pairing with the hub, flashes purple when getting a Wi-Fi signal from the hub, and goes solid red when the cameras are connected successfully. Around the back are a mounting screw thread and power port. A removable cap on the bottom hides the rechargeable battery pack and a reset button. The battery is rated to last for more than eight months before needing a recharge, but this varies with the use. You can charge the battery while it is still placed in the camera utilizing the power port or remove it and charge it inside the house. Under the hood is a Wi-Fi radio for connection to the hub.

The camera takes video at 2k and has a wide field of view and zoom. It utilizes a couple of infrared LEDS to give black-and-white night vision when the Auto Night Vision is on and low-light color night vision when it is disabled. The camera will give push alerts and record the video when the motion is detected and store the video on the SD card of the hub. Also, the hub will give a chime when the camera detects any motion. If any user enhances the Person Detection setting, they will only get alerts when any person is detected. The hub and cameras utilize the same mobile app as the other Lorex products and appear on the Devices screen and the other installed Lorex devices. Tap the play arrow for a live stream that can be seen in full-screen mode by rotating your phone sideways or tapping on the full-screen button at the lower half of the video panel.

Other buttons below the video panel are a video pause button, a mute microphone button, and an SD & HD button. Below the buttons is also a timeline of the recorded video events. Below are the Privacy Mode, Light, Siren, Talk, Record Video, and Snapshot buttons. To get to the camera settings, tap on the three dots in the upper right corner. Here, you can select between performance modes such as high, optimized, and power-saving, disable and enable notifications and auto night vision, check the battery status, enable privacy mode, adjust talk and siren volume, configure the motion settings, and update the firmware.

Installing the cameras and hub was easy and rapid in our Lorex review. We downloaded the mobile app, created the account, plugged in the hubs, and tapped the plus icons in the right corner of the Devices screen. We used the phone camera to scan the QR code on the bottom half of the hub, and the device was recognized immediately during our Lorex review. So, we tapped Next to configure the hub completely. We chose Wired Connection from the menu, ensured that the LED showed green, and tapped Next. We were prompted to give the device a name and password, and it was added to our account. Following all the instructions to add the cameras, we inserted batteries in both. We ensured that we were within a few feet of the hub. Then, we pressed the pairing button on the back.

After that, the LED light of the hub began flashing blue. We tapped Next, removed the base from a single camera, and pressed the reset button. When the camera's LED began flashing green, we tapped Next, and the camera was paired with the hub. We gave it a name, tapped on Set Up Another Camera, and went through the whole process a second time. We then tapped Complete, and the whole pairing was done. To complete the setup, we mounted a camera in the front of the home and placed the other one in the backyard. The Lorex cameras give sharp resolution video. The daytime footage gave excellent detail and vibrant colors with no distortion. The color night video was also good, but the colors were a little dull. The black-and-white night video appeared well-lit and sharp, but the color night video was not quite as colorful and crisp as the daytime video in our Lorex review.

We have experienced this with other color night vision cameras. The person detection function ignored motion from vehicles and animals and gave notifications only when any person was detected. The audio was loud and clean, and the siren deterrent and warning light features worked well. But we think that the siren could have been a little louder. The cameras will have no trouble streaming any video using Alexa voice commands to an Amazon Echo Show.

The Lorex wire-free security system gives you a couple of battery-operated cameras that are simple to set up and can be utilized virtually anywhere in the house or on the property. The cameras gave distortion-free and sharp video and responded quickly to the Alexa voice commands. The motion detection functioned well also. The kit gives intelligent motion sensing and color night vision, apart from voice control. It does not need a cloud subscription as it keeps the recorded videos locally on an SD card. That said, it does not have any support for the IFTTT or Apple HomeKit applets, and it needs a hub.