In the past few years I have played around with a fair few security cameras. In some locations I have stayed with the same hardware but toyed with various software to add AI smarts. When the Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi was launched, I just had to get my hands on it.
It features 4K 8MP dual-lens camera, with flood lights up to 3000 lumens and back with AI-powered monitoring.
I sadly know the pains of sifting through hours of footage looking for that one critical moment. It is right there, buried in amongst everything else. The Reolink Elite FloodLight WiFi claims to be purpose-built to help users see more, find faster and protect better.
tl;dr
The Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi is a powerful, hardwired security camera that combines an ultra-wide 180° view from a 4K dual-lens with bright 3000-lumen floodlights. Its standout feature is the advanced, subscription-free AI that offers person, vehicle, and animal detection, plus smart perimeter and loitering alerts. While the app can be tricky for fine-tuning detection zones and the sensor is technically overspecced, it delivers impressive real-world performance, especially in low light. With native Home Assistant support and robust features, it’s a strong, all-in-one solution for broad area monitoring.
Planning the installation
First up, the Elite Floodlight is a hardwired solution – it must be wired into power to get all the features working. Don’t mess around with it yourself, just get it done by a qualified electrician. That’s the PSA out of the way.
The dual-lens on this camera gives you a ridiculously wide angle of view, and I mean this in a good way. Before the sparky mounts the camera into position, you could power it up via USB-C for limited functionalities, enough to add it to the Reolink app.
This will also give you a live feed of the camera, which allows you to figure out the best location to mount the camera before the sparky does it for real.
Now is also a good time to plug in a SD card into the unit. This is located on the underside of the camera module, behind a flap and secured by two screws. Do this before the camera is mounted in a hard to reach place.
For me it was pretty simple. I wanted to replace a camera that has always under performed in low light conditions. There was a circuit near the camera with a LED panel so with the Elite Floodlight, I could take out the LED and the old camera and replace it with a single unit with minimal work.
Positioning and field of view
Adding the Elite Floodlight into the app is simple. I have done a few Reolink units now and it is one of the simplest and most robust setup I have come across.
All you need to do is to scan the QR code printed on the camera in the app and just follow the instructions. For this unit, the QR code is printed on the upper side of the camera lens module.
Once the camera is added to the app and mounted in it’s final position, it is time to adjust all the bits and pieces. The camera module is on a ball joint which can swivel and rotate to give the best coverage. Reolink also includes a tool to help tighten (or loosen) this as required.
The camera module must have some weight to it, as I did need to use the tool to help keep it in place.
The two floodlights are on a swivel joint that allows you to rotate it in the vertical plane.
Some Key Specifications
The Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi has a stated resolution of 5120 x 1552 (8 Megapixels). This is paired with a 1/2.7″ CMOS sensor.
The lens has a fixed focal length of 2.8mm, with an aperture of 1.6.
What does that mean?
Working backwards because it is easier.
The aperture is considered “fast”, which is crucial for low-light performance. Something that underpins the decision for surveillance cameras.
The lens is designed for a very wide angle of view, but with a fixed focal length there is no optical zoom. To change that you have to physically move the camera closer or further away from the area of interest.
The 1/2.7″ sensor is a common size in surveillance cameras. More accurately, it is a common compromise to reduce cost. Larger sensors are more expensive to manufacture, and also require upsizing the lens as well. Economics.
The resolution of 5120 x 1552 sounds pretty odd, but this is not uncommon for panoramic or camera systems that stitches two or more images together to create a wide-angle view. The Elite Floodlight does use two lens to create images resulting in a single wide angle lens so this tracks.
It is not truly 8MP though, calculations put it at 7.95 Megapixels which is close enough!
The field of view is a full 180° horizontal and 59° vertical.
What should we expect from these specifications?
Truthfully, the megapixel count is overspec for the 1/2.7″ sensor. The sweet spot for this size sensor is between 3 to 5 MP.
By “cramming” in 8MP, Reolink sacrifices raw low light capabilities. This is because by making each pixel smaller to fit, it reduces the ability to collect light. This can result in grainy low light footage.
The technical discussion is over, so let’s see what the Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi can do in the real world.
Base Housekeeping Setup
A word of advice, the Elite Floodlight comes with a lot of features. Some have been available in the existing product line, others, such as AI features are new.
To get all the relevant features working in a way that delivers the best outcome for you will take some trial and error. I highly recommend adding them one by one, adjusting each set to how it best cover the territory with minimum false positives.
I of course, did not follow my own advice. How else could I bring it to your attention?
A few basic features to cover off quickly, privacy mask and non-detection zone. These should be pretty standard in a security camera. If your camera does not support it, return it or throw it out.
Privacy mask is pretty self explanatory. You draw a section of your field of view and a big black zone will sit there, preventing that area from viewing and recording.
In my case, the field of view was wide enough to look down into one of my neighbour’s backyard. So I just drew a zone that blocks it off.
Then along the fence line where there is a lot of foliage, I marked that as a non-detection zone. I don’t need the branches swaying in the breeze to trigger an alert. I certainly don’t need the family of possums who likes to use those branches as a freeway to trigger an alert either.
By marking it as a non-detection zone, I can still see the area but it gets a pass when it comes to movements.
This is the basic housekeeping taken care of.
The AI Smarts
Gone are the days of getting a generic notification of “motion detected”, Reolink leverages AI to distinguish between people, vehicles and animals.
Whereas many competitors locks these smarts behind a subscription service, Reolink stays true to being subscription free to access all features. So yes, the AI features are all included in the upfront cost.
What got me all excited is that the Reolink AI is more than just object identification. The Elite Floodlight has AI-powered Perimeter Detection:
- Line Crossing Alert: Used to detect activity near the boundary of a specified area.
- Zone Intrusion Alert: Used to detect the presence or movement of objects or individuals within a specific area.
- Zone Loitering Alert: Monitors a designated area and triggers an alarm when a person, vehicle, or object remains in the area for an extended period, which is considered loitering.
Lifting this from the Reolink Comprehensive Guide to Reolink Smart Event Detection, there are some concept distinctions to understand.
Difference Between Line Crossing and Zone Intrusion:
- Line Crossing focuses on whether a target crosses a predefined boundary into a specified area.
- Zone Intrusion focuses on whether a target enters a predefined specific area, without involving boundary lines.
Differences between Zone Intrusion and Zone Loitering:
Zone Intrusion detection emphasizes the act of entering a zone, with its main characteristics including:
- The target is intrusion: This function is primarily used to protect specific areas by detecting if anyone or anything crosses the boundaries.
- Focus on entry points: It mainly focuses on the entrances and borders of the monitored area.
- Trigger conditions: An alarm is triggered when someone or something enters the preset monitoring area.
Zone Loitering, on the other hand, is concerned with the act of loitering within an area, with its main features being:
- The target is loitering: It is mainly used to identify lingering behaviours within a specific area.
- Focus on loitering patterns: Attention is given to whether a person or object moves back and forth, lingers, or loiters within the area.
- Trigger conditions: An alarm is triggered when a person or object remains in a specific area for a certain period of time.
Below are how it can look configured in the Reolink app. This is actually not the most effective detection schema in my use case, it is just an example.
The general idea is layered protection:
- set up a perimeter
- define an intrusion zone that is further in from the perimeter and escalates the alert
- watch for loitering behaviour in high risk areas
These areas of interest does not have to overlap and you can have three zones for each type.
Be prepared to spend some time fine tuning and revisiting your configuration over the initial periods of time to achieve the best outcome.
Also an important point to note is to set the direction for line crossing. You can specifically set the detection for ingress, egress or both.
Image and Audio Quality
Let’s start with daylight which is when I am writing this section. We are just days away from spring but it is a typical cold Melbourne winter day. It’s cold, dreary, rare burst of sunshine and heavy downpours.
It’s not the ideal lighting but the Elite Floodlight was pretty flawless here. The image quality is more than adequate looking at the whole scene overall. Looking at the screenshot below, you can see some distinct loss of fidelity the further away you get from the camera.
Looking at the zoomed in image, you can identify the type and colour of the vehicle, but you would not be able to distinguish faces or licence plate details. Not that this should be a surprise, contrary to CSI, you can’t just punch a magic button and pull data out of thin air.
In the sample video, the Elite Floodlight is tracking one of my kids coming home from school. He showed up looking like a drowned duck after being caught in the rain. The snippet of conversation could clearly be heard despite the camera being about four metres away from the door.
In the icons assigned to the video, he has triggered motion, line crossing, zone intrusion and zone loitering.
At night, the imagery is supported by nine infrared LEDs rated at 850 nanometres wavelength. This wavelength is common for surveillance cameras night vision, and is suited for the type of sensor (CMOS) that the Elite Floodlight has.
Due to the proximity of the wavelength to the visible red, you will see the characteristic red glow when you look at the device.
For me with where the Elite Floodlight is mounted, the infrared is bouncing off the tiles in the foreground which unduly impacts on the image quality in the background.
In the below video where the Fantastic Mr Fox (it could be a Mrs too, no judgements) came wandering down next to my car. The image quality overall picks right up when the LEDs are triggered.
The LEDs on the Elite Floodlight is 19W with maximum of 3000 Lumens output. If you need an old school reference, it would be equivalent to two 100W incandescent bulbs in output. These LEDs have a temperature range from 3000K to 6000K, so you can set them from warm to cold white via a slider.
By turning off the infrared LEDs altogether, the low light performance is significantly improved in my case.
It is absolutely pitch black outside and pouring rain, the camera is looking out as if there is plenty of ambient light. There isn’t, there are two street lights in the distance and the Elite Floodlight is doing some serious low light magic. There is no Colour X technology here, but it is still impressive.
Despite my concerns earlier about sensor size and megapixels, Reolink has done a great job here.
Other Features
The Elite Floodlight has a IP66 waterproof rating, meaning dust tight and protected against powerful jets of water.
It also has a built in 105 dB siren, and the capability to play a pre-recorded voice warning.
For smart home integration, it supports Alexa and Google Home natively straight out of the device. If there is one failing, it is the lack of support for Apple Homekit.
And my favourite integration? Official support for Home Assistant. You do have to enable HTTP/S access via the Reolink app first, but adding it HA was a breeze. No third party integration, no Googling for workarounds, just adds in and all the entities are listed. *chef’s kiss*
AI Video Search
When I first started testing the Elite Floodlight, this feature was not available in the app.
After I added the camera into my Home Assistant dashboard, I got notified of an available firmware upgrade (v3.2.0.5026_250710419) through HA. Checking in the Reolink app, it showed that I was already up to date on the older version (v3.2.0.4772_2504072195). Go figure.
The AI Video Search button popped up after I push through the firmware update. I of course immediately went to try the function but got absolutely no hits on anything.
I had initially assumed that it is a app side feature, but it seems the smarts are all done on the camera side and it is not retrospectively added to existing footage.
Is it good? This one might need a little more training, it called me an animal! It wouldn’t be the first or last time I have been labelled that I suppose.
I ran a bunch of search terms:
- animal
- car
- man carrying bag
- man carrying box
- car moving
- animal carrying bag
- mule
Aside from quite a consistent mis-tag of me being an animal and mule, the AI Video Search does help to filter down the recordings.
The more details you provide, the better the filter works. For example “man carrying box” returned relevant filtered results over just “man”.
My feelings about the AI Video Search is that it is an up and coming tool. It should save a lot of scrubbing through footage but it would not be wise to put all your eggs in one basket and assume it is perfectly accurate. What it can do is to narrow the focus of the search to make it manageable. I would expect over time that it will get better with more training.
Things that could be improved
First up, the app. I am no stranger to the Reolink app and by and large, it is pretty good.
But with the Elite Floodlight and the full 180° horizontal view, the image gets squished in to fit on a phone screen. That’s fine and you can use gestures to zoom in and out on the view.
However when you are trying to set detection zones and masks, the app does not allow you to zoom into the image. This leaves me and my fat fingers to push and prod at the dots, peeking underneath my finger to check if I have dragged the point to the right place. It’s doable, but it can be challenging.
This is asking too much, but if I could control the two floodlights separately for brightness and colour … that would be aces. For example the side closest to my neighbour I would ideally dial it down a notch. The other side I don’t mind a blinding sun.
I would love a package detection added to the AI list.
Moonshot Wishes
I know I know, this is all pretty new to the Reolink product line, but boy do I have a wishlist.
First up would be able to define a friendly object. For example my car would generally be in view and having a zone over it will keep triggering alerts. It would be nice to be able to define that as a friendly object so it does not trigger alerts. For the time being the workaround would be to draw areas around it.
I would also love to see linked notifications. Say if I have multiple line crossings set up in sequence, or if a line crossing is followed by a zone intrusion, then the system sees it as intent.
I would love Intrusion Zones to be directional, but this probably is not for everyone and could get complicated.
Lastly, ability to snooze notification. If I am working in the garden I would like to just snooze the notification for an hour or two. I could go turn off detection in the app, but snoozing is simpler and I won’t forget to reactivate it.
Final Verdict
After quite extensive play with the Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi, I mulled over how I feel about it.
You could use the Elite Floodlight as a one stop shop for wide angle coverage, but I feel that it is best used to provide an overview of the area you want to monitor. The AI features are useful for smart detection for perimeters and zones.
This should then be supported by a camera designed to pick up details closer in, something like the Altas, Argus 4 or the E1 Outdoor options. Like I said earlier, security should be layered for the best outcome and not put all your eggs in one basket.
The Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi has a RRP of A$299.99, and at time of publishing is discounted to A$254.99 and is available from Reolink directly or Amazon Au (with coupon).
DRN would like to thank Reolink for providing the review unit.
Great review, Kev… So what you’re saying is, if I need to burgle you, just swing in like a possum and I’m in the clear – got it! 🫢