Dahua vs Hikision
- Thread starter Don Schultz
- Start date
nayr
IPCT Contributor
Hardware wise yes, very similar quality and capabilities.. software.. no, imho worlds apart and thats where most people make the deciding factor.
I prefer Dahua because firmware and supporting clients are very stable, platform agnostic and feature rich. There firmware is not publicly published, but the cameras are not region locked so all cameras are the same just different language firmware. If you buy from a good shop they can and will get you any firmware updates, but you probably wont need any as everything should work out of the box. I hear hikvision has better motion processing reliability but I've learned from experience that all video motion detection is unreliable (esp outdoors) and rarely worth the hassle, I record 24/7 and use real motion sensors where needed.
I do not own any Hikvision cameras, but I was turned off by there region locking and various reports of features not being functional or stable.. the lack of any real OSX support was death nail... I may still buy a Hikvision Pinhole camera for inside, but it will be hooked to a Dahua NVR so I can pull t he camera up in the Dahua OSX client.
Dahua and Hik start to separate on hardware similarity ~$200 and up; Hik gives you more form factors and more options to choose from on fixed cameras... Hikvision lets Dahua dominate the PTZ market and Dahua lets Hikvision dominate the mid-range fixed camera market... but on the low end of things theres not much of a gap.
I prefer Dahua because firmware and supporting clients are very stable, platform agnostic and feature rich. There firmware is not publicly published, but the cameras are not region locked so all cameras are the same just different language firmware. If you buy from a good shop they can and will get you any firmware updates, but you probably wont need any as everything should work out of the box. I hear hikvision has better motion processing reliability but I've learned from experience that all video motion detection is unreliable (esp outdoors) and rarely worth the hassle, I record 24/7 and use real motion sensors where needed.
I do not own any Hikvision cameras, but I was turned off by there region locking and various reports of features not being functional or stable.. the lack of any real OSX support was death nail... I may still buy a Hikvision Pinhole camera for inside, but it will be hooked to a Dahua NVR so I can pull t he camera up in the Dahua OSX client.
Dahua and Hik start to separate on hardware similarity ~$200 and up; Hik gives you more form factors and more options to choose from on fixed cameras... Hikvision lets Dahua dominate the PTZ market and Dahua lets Hikvision dominate the mid-range fixed camera market... but on the low end of things theres not much of a gap.
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Dear nayr. I found this thread because I am thinking of buying a dahua ptz.
How would you describe the difference between the two today/in 2016?
How would you describe the difference between the two today/in 2016?
nayr
IPCT Contributor
Hik's only gotten worse since I made this post originally.. Dahua's caught up on all the cool fixed form factors (turrets/wedges/pinhole/cube) so I'd say the times favor Dahua even more strongly now than before.
now Hik seems to be blocking Chinese cameras from even connecting to more recent firmware/models.. so they have just cranked up the warfare even more.
now Hik seems to be blocking Chinese cameras from even connecting to more recent firmware/models.. so they have just cranked up the warfare even more.