Welcome
@Elgato54
1:
"For the NVR's they give you some features but very little in specs and all seem about the same."
You'll need to take a closer look at the spec sheet on the NVRs.
For the Dahua OEM ones: Lorex ( most of the NVRs are Dahua OEM ), Amcrest, and Dahua - Dahua should be providing the basic spec sheet to Lorex, Amcrest, and others so in theory you should be able to compare them. Look for the bandwidth specs. This will give you a idea of the ability of the NVR to process video streams. The better NVRs will be rated higher, for example Lorex NVR NR9082: Network Bit Rate
320Mbps total
The larger units with an internal power supply seem to have the higher total bit rate. 320 seems to be the best and a lot of the small ones are 80 total. Was not sure if it was a true reflection of power. I like the 9082 but they said it has been discontinued. On some of the packages they were substituting the small one with round corners.
2: "
Does one stand out above the others?"
A lot depends on the particular cameras and NVRs. Lorex carries many models, though due to recent BF-cyberweek sales the seems to be out of stock of some of the nicer deals. Amcrest seems to have a limited selection, and not the newer models. I would look for the cameras that have the 1/1.8" sensors.
Reolink is not well liked by members here for numerous reasons including: more affordable components in the cameras producing poorer low light results, issues with iframe and compatibility with
Blue Iris, astroturfing this forum, manipulating amazon voting results...
3:
Does a 16 port have more processing power or memory than an 8 port? Maybe a larger PS?
( as TonyR already provided an answer I'm going to add some additional info which is appropriate when looking at some of their kits )
Remember to double check the specs of the particular model, and keep track of what you order.
Note that some models of the Lorex NVRs with 8 ports are significantly lower spec'ed compared to the
different 16 port NVR models they sell. Lorex recently was replacing the better NVRs in their kits with lower tier models and NOT changing the kit "sku". Which imho is very sneaky and perhaps even fraudulent if a customer ordered the better version of the kit and got sent the cheaper version.
4.
Some have fans while others do not.
Typically you only see fans in the NVRs which have internal power supplies. The NVRs which have ac/dc power adapters tend to be smaller NVRs and w/o fans in general.
5.
Lorex has some small units that support one hard drive and larger ones that support up to 2 10g drives. Price is similar.
The smaller units / NVRs are typically lower tier models in terms of bandwidth they can handle.
Total network bandwidth seems to be the only real apples to apples comparison. It would be nice if they provided CPU and memory specs.
Are you planning to buy an NVR separately?
No, I will buy a package based around the specific NVR. Like Amcrest for the stand alone option and Lorex for the two year warranty.
Is Color Night Vision significant or just a marketing gimmick?
