Hikvision 2 megapixel low light WDR network camera review

Network box camera is becoming the ideal choice for professional video surveillance systems due to it can allow user to choose different C/CS mount lens for specific installation environment. Herein, we share the test & review of DS-2CD4026FWD from Hikvision, DS-2CD4026FWD is a professional network box camera comes with WDR, low light, as well as defog functions. Since this product is from top leading manufacturer, this network camera's performance and quality is excellent.

Product highlights

• Support 120db WDR, suitable for changing light scenarios
• Superb defog, utilzing optical and digital defog algorithm
• Support H.264/MJPEG/MPEG4 video codec, H.264 supports Baseline/Main/High Profile
• Power supply supports AC24V / DC12V / PoE(802.3af)

Completely new aesthetic housing design 

Hikvision DS-2CD4026FWD/D is a 2 megapixel WDR network box camera supports defog, utilizing aluminum metal housing, the housing painted with white and black colors. Compared with Hikvision previous models, the new model has changed slightly on appearance design, added with Fin heat sink design to maximize thermal dissipation, which greatly help camera provide reliable performance.

Then check its rear panel interface, this network camera has 3.5mm Mic in and Line in, as well as audio output jacks, network RJ45 port, 1 RS-485 and 1 RS-232 port, additionally has microSD card slot for on-board storage, when camera encounter network disruption, video can be stored in SD/TF card, after network connection restored, utilizing resuming technology video will transmit back to storage centre.

Full HD 1080p high image quality

This network camera adopts 1/1.8" CMOS image sensor, effective pixel reaches up to 2 megapixel, delivers high clarity video with 1920x1080 resolution. In this test, the network camera was mounted with a 5MP auto-iris manual zoom lens (F1.4) from Hikvision, video parameter was 1080p@30fps, 4Mbps.

Firstly check its imaging capability. Put the camera aim at resolution testing card under minimum optical zoom condition, after the measurement, we found the camera's horizontal and vertical resolution reach approximate 1100TVL, edge resolution is 1000TVL, imaging performance is excellent. Then put the color reproduction testing card, the overall color reproduction is quite accurate, except green is a little yellowish. In greyscale testing, the network camera's recognizable greyscale level can reach up to 17.

Stable network video stream control

DS-2CD4026FWD/D supports TCP/IP, ICMP, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, DHCP, DNS, DDNS etc protocols, also is compliant with ONVIF standard, supports H.264/MPEG4/MJPEG video compression. Moreover, it supports one-button recovery, anti-flicking, triple-stream, mirror, password protection, video mask, water-print etc functions. Put camera aims at outdoor traffic scene, the captured video was clear, crystal and color was vivid. Running bitrate monitoring software, wait for a period of time, we measured that its average bitrate was 4.3Mbps. Meanwhile, its video streaming is stable, video latency time is approximate 280ms.

Superb WDR and Defog technologies

Make network camera aim at strong light area inside the room (front scene illumination >30,000Lux, background scene illumination <100 Lux), when all the image improving functions are disabled, turn on WDR function, image had been improved significantly although background scene became a slightly dark, when increased the WDR value to maximum, the strong light had been greatly suppressed, the doll inside lamp shade became recognizable and other surrounding objects became clear, presented its 120 dB extraordinary performance.

Then we continued to test its defog performance. In this test, we put the camera into simulated foggy environment. When defog was turned off, the overall image was dull and blur, objects were not very clear. When we manually turned on defog function, the image had a significant improvement compared with previous image. The defogged image became sharp and clear, it seems defog no longer existed. So Hikvision defog technology is awesome.

Star light low illumination

This is a star light network camera. In order to test its low illumination performance, this time we used Tamron 3MP manual zoom lens (F1.6). Enabled 3D digital noise reduction, put the camera into dark box, gradually reduced the illumination inside the box, the camera kept adjusting its AGC value intended to keep image brightness and saturation; when illumination reaches to 0.78Lux, camera switched to B/W mode from Color mode, the image kept clear and bright; when illumination is 0.04Lux, image emerged color delinces and noises, but overall image quality was still quite good. Continued reducing illumination, when Lux meter showed 0.00Lux (real illumination <0.009Lux), image kept clear. Change camera image mode to Color mode, to obtain color image requires minimum illumination value is approximate 0.04Lux.