Reolink Altas review

Reolink Altas: Introduction

• Type: Outdoor
• Connectivity: 2.4 / 5GHz Wi-Fi 6
• Ecosystems: Amazon Alexa, Google Home

Reolink is fast becoming one of the standout performers in the smart security camera space, offering a range of great cameras with varying features, but all with no extra-fees needed and at great price-points.

On test for this review is the latest camera from the Chinese company to offer continuous recording from a battery: the Reolink Altas.

Boasting a mammoth 20,000mAh battery – that’s almost quadruple the size found on the likes of the Reolink Argus Track and the Reolink Argus Pro – as well as ColorX Night Vision, which impressed us on the Argus 4 Pro and Altas PT Ultra, the Altas also has 2K visuals and Wi-Fi 6 on board for increased wireless coverage.

I have had the Reolink Altas stuck to my garden fence for the last few weeks, so read on for my full review.

Design and installation

Reolink made its name making smart security systems before they became more mainstream in the home, and some Reolink models – I’m looking at you Duo 3 WiFi – still bear the more ‘industrial’ design quirks of the brand’s past.

The good news, with the Altas, is its a lot more modern looking, albeit with an antenna that screams of days gone by.

The front of the Altas is dominated by its large lens, positioned prominently within a sleek, minimalist black faceplate that contrasts nicely with the camera’s predominantly white, bullet-style body.

It’s a more traditional shape compared to some of Reolink’s other battery cameras, but with rounded edges that give it a contemporary feel.

Its compact dimensions, measuring 126 x 78 x 76 mm (weighing in at 554g), make it relatively unobtrusive and easy to blend into various environments, whether mounted indoors or out.

Spinning the Altas around, you’ll find a fairly clean rear panel, with just a screw for the mounting bracket.

On the bottom, protected by a silicone cover, is the USB-C charging port for continuous power if paired with a solar panel, or a constant power supply.

Next to this, also tucked safely behind the silicone cover for waterproofing, is the microSD card slot, allowing for local storage of recordings up to 512GB, which is next to the reset button.

Unlike the Argus Track there’s no security screw protecting the microSD from potentially being stolen though.

The single, prominent external antenna is adjustable, allowing you to optimize its position for the best dual-band Wi-Fi 6 signal, though its presence is perhaps the most obvious nod to the “days gone by” mentioned earlier.

The front of the camera also features a PIR motion sensor, an ambient light sensor, a discreet microphone hole for two-way audio, and a row of white LEDs above the lens that provide illumination for its impressive ColorX night vision. There’s also a small status LED indicator on the body.

As is usually the case with Reolink security cams, you’ll have a few options when it comes to where you want to place the Altas.

In the box you’ll not only get a couple of different mounting brackets for wall or ceiling fixtures (with a nice ball and socket joint so as you can angle it exactly as you want), but also a couple of straps that will allow you to fix it to a post, tree or drainpipe.

I actually swapped the Altas in for an Argus 4 Pro, for the review, and was pleased to find I could use the same wall mounting bracket.

Setup, features and the app

One you’ve completed the physical installation it’s time to get the Altas paired up with the Reolink app.

When you first power it up, by pushing the reset button underneath, you’ll hear it say “Welcome to Reolink, please install the Reolink app” in numerous languages. You do that by scanning the QR code on the device from your phone.

Security-conscious users will be pleased to know that you don’t have to sign up for a Reolink account or give up any details to sync the Altas to the Reolink app, though you will need to do so if you want to make use of certain cloud features, or sync your Reolink with Amazon Alexa or Google Home.

A big plus point for the Altas, as is the case with many of the Reolink’s cameras, is that it has dual-band 2.4 and 5GHz Wi-Fi so you can tap into that faster 5GHz band, should you have an access point near enough to reach it. It’s also got Wi-Fi 6 tech on board as well.

Obviously a key selling point of the Altas range is that continuous recording option but that has a huge impact on battery life – more on that in the next section.

Another key feature that Reolink introduced for battery cameras for the first time with the Altas range, is the Pre-Recording Mode, which grabs footage before a motion trigger kick starts one.

By default this mode is off, but if you turn it on in the app – when using SD card recording, FTP or cloud storage. When turned on you’ll get a few seconds (you can set between 2 and 10) of low frame rate video captured before an actual motion event happens.

It’s 3fps as standard, but you can pop it up to 5fps if you want – although this will have an impact on battery life. There’s also a 1fps option too, and you can tinker with the settings to turn the option off completely if the battery reaches a certain level.

A warning that I include in all of my Reolink reviews is that the level of customization and the amount of options on offer from the Reolink app can be pretty overwhelming – especially to first time users.

That’s because Reolink offers a level of control that is pretty much unrivalled across similarly-priced smart security cam rivals, but that also means you’re going to have to get your head around an absolute plethora of options in order to get the Altas set up exactly how you want it; and it’s not always obvious where certain settings are hidden in the various menus.

Notifications can also get a bit overwhelming too. If you turn on motion detection, for example, the Reolink app sends you push notifications and also emails when it has spotted movement. The good news is that you can reduce these by using the object detection feature; with animal, person and vehicle tracking on offer.

You can choose if you want to be notified about your combination of people, vehicles, animals or all motion, and you can schedule when you want to get each type of alert.

So you could choose to have people and vehicle notifications during the day, but only people notifications at night. You can also set minimum and maximum sizes for each of the categories, as well as creating privacy zones too.

All of your clips are shown on the app’s timeline view, with thumbnails provided to make finding a clip easier, marked with a little icon if a person or pet has been spotted.

You can filter by event and motion type, so it’s simple to find the clip you are after, and to save it to your phone permanently.

Be sure you change the download quality if you do want full resolution clips though. By default it selects a ‘fluent’ clip that is nowhere near the 2K (‘clear’) that it records at.

On the clips, you can choose where to show the camera’s name, date / time, or the Reolink logo, and you can also turn all of these off too.

From the live view, you can jump into the two-way talk, which is a useful feature if you want to scare off someone that shouldn’t be in loitering around your property.

There’s also a built-in siren so you can, if you what, create a sound and light alarm to scare off unwanted visitors too, if motion is detected at set times. You can even record your own personalized warning too, which is fun… “Hey you, get the hell of my property!”

The good news, as with all Reolink cameras, is that there are no subscription fees, thanks to the microSD storage, unless you specifically want cloud storage.

In the US there are cloud plans with 1GB of free storage (7-days of history), and also paid options at $3.49, $6.99 or $10.49 monthly. It’s £3.49 or £6.49 a month in the UK.

That gets you 30 days of history (60 days for the top tier), plus 10, 50 or 100GB of storage space respectively for 5 to 10 cameras. This is a fraction of the cost of the likes of Ring Protect or Nest Aware.

But none of these extra costs are needed. All you are paying for is storage, there are no features cut if you don’t cough-up unlike other brands that make you pay for full use of their cameras.

However, the usual warning applies that if the camera or card is stolen, you will lose everything – although Reolink now offers a Hub for centralised storage.

Reolink offers both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa Skills, which let you stream footage to a compatible smart display. 

Battery life

Reolink states 540 days of life from a single charge of the 20000mAh battery but that obviously comes with a few caveats. That 18 month lifespan is based on you having the bare minimum turned on – so no spotlights, continuous recording or pre-recording functionality – and just 5 minutes of recording per day.

With everything turned on full whack, battery life will be more a week, or double that if you turn the continuous recording option off.

However, you do have the option to keep the Altas powered up via its USB-C port, and Reolink actually bundles a 6W solar panel in the box, which it claims requires 2 hours of sunlight per day to keep the battery full with all the major settings switched on.

I’ve had the Altas set up over the start of a British summer – so a mix of cloudy and sunny days – and I haven’t seen the battery level drop below 85% with the solar panel plugged in. But that’s with continuous recording turned off, and just pre-recording and motion based recording on.

With continuous recording on, even on some sunny days, the battery was taking a hit. On cloudy days I was seeing the battery drop around 15-20%; on sunny-ish days it was more like 5-10%. However, on really sunny days I was actually seeing the battery level increase.

The long story short there is that, if you want continuous recording on, battery life is going to depend massively on where you live and what sort of sunlight you get.

The cable for the solar panel is 4m long, so you should easily be able to find and optimum place to mount it.

One weird quirk I did notice though – and this won’t affect 99.9% of people reading this review most likely – is that when I just tried to use my old Reolink solar panel, from a previous model, it took the Altas offline. Using the one that came in the box caused no issues at all though.

Performance

Last year, Reolink unveiled the Argus 4 Pro, with claims that is was the world’s first smart security camera to offer full color vision at night, and that tech is onboard the newer Altas, as well.

There are a range of smart security cams available that offer night vision in technicolor already, such as the Eufy Floodlight Camera E340 and the Arlo Pro 5, but, thanks to its ColorX technology, the Altas boasts color visuals in the dark even in low light conditions, with no need for infrared lights or spotlights, thanks to a F1.0 aperture + 1/1.8’’ sensor that captures double the light compared to more traditional setups. That’s the same image sensor that you get with the top-end Altas PT Ultra.

On the front of the Altas, on the top of the lens, you’ll find the spotlights. These can be used in a couple of ways; you can have them set to an auto-mode, where they’ll come on based on the ambient lighting conditions, or just have them off.

For the optimum color night vision, you’ll want them on, but I did find color night vision still worked pretty well even with them off, with just a nearby streetlight providing ample ambient light.

There is no IR night vision option though, so if you don’t have enough light in the vicinity you will need to make use of those spotlights.

Daytime visuals are great too; captured at 2K 15fps, the footage superbly crisp and detailed, although the pre-record footage is obviously much choppier.

The viewing angles are also impressive; diagonal at 110°, horizontal at 90°, and vertical at 50°, providing a pretty comprehensive security blanket.

The Reolink Altas is rated at IP66, and can handle -20°C to 55°C temperatures.

Final thoughts

If you’re looking for a security cam that doesn’t nag you into a monthly subscription and gives you full control over how it operates, the Reolink Altas should be high on your list. It’s got that rare combo of proper continuous recording and battery power, something we almost never see in the smart cam space.

Battery life is excellent if you’re strategic with the features, and the bundled solar panel makes a huge difference. Just know that if you want to max everything out, you’ll need to live somewhere sunnier than the UK.

It’s not the sleekest-looking thing, and that antenna might make design purists twitch, but performance is excellent day and night. The app can be overwhelming, but that’s also what makes Reolink special as it gives you more control than rivals like Arlo or Ring ever will.

How we test

When we publish our reviews, you can rest assured that they are the result of “living with” long term tests.

Smart security cameras usually live within an ecosystem, or a range of products that – supposedly – all work in harmony. Therefore, it’s impossible to use a security camera for a week and deliver a verdict.

Because we’re testing smart home kit all day, everyday, we know what matters and how a particular camera compares to alternatives that you might also be considering.

Our reviews are comprehensive, objective and fair and, of course, we are never paid directly to review a device.

Read our guide on our review process for smart security cameras to learn more.