Reolink Duo 3 PoE review: Twin lenses, 1 cable for power & video

Best Prices Today: Reolink Duo 3 PoE

Security cameras equipped with super wide-angle lenses allow users to get broad surveillance coverage, but they also sacrifice image quality, due to the barrel distortion those lenses produce. One solution to this problem is to use dual lenses. Reolink first tried the concept a few years ago with its Duo series of cameras.

Each lens in a Duo-series camera captures separate footage, and the camera then stitches the two views into a composite image, resulting in an ultra-wide field of view without any compromises in image detail.

Reolink’s dual-lens approach is very different from the one Eufy takes with its dual-lens security cameras, including the outdoor Eufycam Solocam S340 we reviewed recently. Eufy’s camera’s are outfitted one telephoto lens and one wide-angle lens, and their feeds are streamed separately over the network and displayed in discrete windows in Eufy’s app.

The Duo 3 PoE is easily Reolink’s best outdoor dual-lens camera to date, delivering a noticeable boost in image clarity and in the rendering of fine details.

We like Eufy’s cameras, and at this point, Reolink has more or less perfected its own dual-lens approach, so the Duo 3 PoE brings mostly evolutionary enhancements. Image quality is the most significant improvement here. Where the earlier Reolink Duo 2 PoE delivered impressive resolution of 4608 x 1728 pixels, the Duo 3 PoE bumps resolution all the way to 7680 x 2160 pixels. At the time of this writing, the Duo 3 PoE was discounted to $149.99 on Reolink’s website, and it was available on Amazon for the same price with a coupon.

Reolink also introduces a new technology here: Motion Track, which allows you to see a detected person’s trajectory without needing to review one or more lengthy video clips. Instead, the camera overlays a person’s path of movement over a 15-second period and presents it as a single image that’s sent to you via email.

This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best home security cameras.

The last noteworthy improvement is a higher IP rating: The Duo 3 PoE is rated IP67 vs. the Duo 2 PoE’s IP66, indicating it is dust-tight and able to withstand short periods of immersion in water. You can learn more about IP ratings in our guide.

The camera includes essential surveillance features such as black-and-white and color night vision, intelligent motion detection and alerts (people, vehicles, and animals), motion tracking, and two-way audio. It also has a built-in spotlight and siren, both of which can be triggered when the camera detects motion. Google Assistant and Alexa are supported, allowing you to view the camera’s feed on compatible smart displays.

Setup

Setting up the Duo 3 PoE is a bit more involved than the typical home security camera. As its name indicates, the Duo 3 PoE is a power-over-ethernet device (more specifically, it’s based on the IEEE 802.3af standard). This means the camera uses a single ethernet cable to carry both data and enough electrical current to power it. For this to work, you can’t just plug the camera into your router; you need a special ethernet switch with a power injector between it and the camera.

For the initial setup, you’ll need to plug in the power supply for the PoE switch—I used a TP-Link JetStream 8-Port Gigabit Smart PoE+ switch, but any PoE switch will do the job—then connect the switch to your router with an ethernet cable. Next, you’ll plug a second ethernet cable into the Duo 3 PoE and connect the other end of that cable to the switch. If you don’t have a PoE switch and don’t want to buy one, you can purchase a DC 12V 2A power adapter instead and plug that into the camera’s stub power cable (shown in parallel with the stub ethernet cable in the picture above).

The ethernet cable that comes with the camera is about 3 feet long, so you’ll likely need a much longer one for an outdoor installation. Fortunately, ethernet cables are very inexpensive. You can buy a 20-foot CAT5e cable on Amazon for less than $8.

The next step is to download the Reolink app and follow the onscreen instructions to initialize the camera. I had problems with the iOS app freezing every time I tried to create a password for the camera. After futzing with it for 15 minutes, I gave up and downloaded the Reolink client for PC onto a laptop and completed the setup that way.

The final step is to mount the camera. A mounting plate, screws, and anchors are all included, and you can install the camera on a wall or ceiling. Routing and concealing wires is the biggest challenge of outdoor camera installations, but this is where you’ll come to appreciate PoE technology because you’ll only have one cable to deal with.

Performance

The Duo 3 PoE combines footage from its two lenses into 180-degree footage that you can view in a single scene. At the highest resolution, there’s a noticeable boost in image clarity and the rendering of fine details over previous versions of the camera. IR night vision provides about 30 feet of illumination, and color night vision, enabled by the camera’s motion-activated 560-lumens spotlight worked flawlessly in my testing.

The camera’s various detection modes were accurate and responsive in my tests. It’s worth noting that pet detection has been reclassified as “animal” detection here because the algorithm now recognizes more than dogs and cats. That’s important to know if wild critters roam the area around your camera installation. You can customize the sensitivity for each type of smart detection in the app settings to improve accuracy and minimize false alerts. You can also create non-detection zones to block areas you don’t want to receive alerts about.

The new Motion Track feature seems useful, but it wasn’t easy to set up. You must enable email alerts in the app to use it, which sounds simple enough, but how smoothly it goes seems to depend on a host of factors, including which email service you use, whether or not you use two-factor authentication to log in to your account, and your grasp of SMTP settings.

One or more of these elements hampered my attempts to get email alerts, and thus Motion Track, working, resulting in a frustrating 30-minute process. You might have better luck, but I can’t help thinking there’s a better way to implement this feature.

The camera stores all video locally on a microSD card (up to 256GB cards are supported, but none is included). Currently, Reolink’s cloud storage doesn’t support the Duo 3 PoE.

Should you buy a Reolink Duo 3 PoE?

The Reolink Duo 3 PoE is easily the best version of Reolink’s dual-lens camera to date. But it’s probably not for everybody. Its industrial look and the intricacies of its installation aren’t a great match for users concerned with aesthetics or who want a turnkey setup. But if those qualities aren’t deterrents, the camera is a great option for anyone who wants to monitor broad outdoor areas.

Best Prices Today: Reolink Duo 3 PoE