Late to the conversation, but I can share my CCTV setup. I started out with two Reolink units and built up as need & funds developed.
Currently have 5 POE cameras,
2x Bullet RLC-510A
2x Dome RLC-520
1x PTZ RLC-823A
And an EZ-Viz DB2 hardwired doorbell, with the WiFi Chime.
I bought an 11 port Yuanley POE switch which powers the 5 cameras, via outdoor rated Cat5e and 2 WiFi 6 access points via indoor Cat6 (upstairs/downstairs).
Originally I put 250Gb micro SD cards in the first two cameras, which allowed me to access footage (approx 10 days worth, before re-writing) whilst I worked on the house before we moved in. The app is reasonably smooth, although looking at recordings takes a fair while to queue up.
When I added the other two cameras (each corner of the end of terrace house), I got a great deal on a Uniview NVR (NVR301-08X-P8) 8 channels, up to 8MP, with a 4Tb Seagate Skyhawk drive for just under £180.
It took a fair amount of fiddling to get the NVR to recognise the Reolink cameras, but I managed to figure out that each camera needed a manually-assigned IP (they default to the same IP on start-up), which was best done on my PC, connecting each camera to the Poe switch in turn, logging in via my browser, changing the settings, then disconnecting before installing them where needed.
The NVR is brilliant - can use AI search terms, vehicle/number plate recognition, etc. Playback is smooth and when I added another 4Tb Skyhawk drive, I get approx 6 weeks of full resolution footage, with sound.
I added the 8MP PTZ camera after our next-door neighbours got burgled - the cameras overlooking our garden & rear entrance caught the movement, but not in sufficient detail to be of any use to the police. Another neighbour had their car broken into, which was parked behind ours. Again, the 5MP bullet caught the incident, but without enough details to be helpful.
The 823A is mounted on the external rear corner of our house, usually set to monitor our car, but I've set trigger zones on the NVR: if the garden or front cameras catch anything suspicious (human-shaped), then the NVR tells the PTZ camera to move and light it up, recording in the higher resolution.
The system works really well, considering it was put together with very basic knowledge. I still kept the 250Gb SD cards in the front & rear cameras, as it's easy to just pull a quick 30 seconds of footage via the Reolink app, rather than logging into the NVR and downloading the much higher resolution recordings.
We will at some point swap the doorbell for the new POE Relink version, so all footage can be stored on the NVR, but for now it works well for our needs.
