The ReoLink Altas is a fully featured, battery-powered, waterproof wireless security camera that can run indefinitely using the included solar panel. With no need for mains power or Ethernet, you can install it almost anywhere with a Wi-Fi signal, which is ideal for sheds, garages, or remote spots around your property. It has 2K video, excellent low light performance and supports continuous recording, pre-recording and smart detection for people, vehicles and animals – all without requiring a subscription.
In this article and accompanying video, I’ll walk you through setup, key features, and how it’s performed in real-world use, to help you decide if it’s the right security camera for you.
So let’s take a closer look.
Overview
In the box you get the camera itself, a 6W solar panel and a generous assortment of accessories for mounting both the camera and solar panel. There’s also a USB-A to USB-C charging cable – you’ll need to give the camera a full charge before installing.
It charges its 20,000mAh or 74Wh battery using Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 at around 11W if you have a fast charger, otherwise it’ll charge at around half that speed. And disappointingly it won’t charge off a USB-C to USB-C cable.
There’s no microSD card which you’ll need for both motion capture and continuous recording. I’d recommend getting an endurance card intended for continuous use in security cams like this one I’m using. The Altas support cards up to 512GB in size. It will automatically record over older footage, so it really depends on how long you want to keep your recordings.
After inserting the microSD card, turn the camera on with a 2 second press of the power button. You’ll be prompted in multiple languages to download the ReoLink app and then scan the camera’s QR code to complete setup. The whole process is very straightforward and takes just a few minutes.
You can then mount the camera and solar panel with the included screws or you can use the included strap mount.
I mounted the camera and solar panel to the back of my shed. ReoLink includes templates for both base brackets but you can just mark directly through the screw holes. The main camera bracket screws on to the base, and locks the camera in position. This is a little difficult to tighten fully, but you can get it tight enough to hold the camera in position. You can use the app to check positioning.
A nice touch is the camera has a standard ¼” tripod mount – so you could set the camera up temporarily on a tripod for ad hoc use.
The camera supports dual-band WiFi 6 but there’s no Ethernet or POE support, which is standard for a battery-powered camera, though having the option would make it even more flexible. You could still record footage locally to the microSD card without a WiFi connection, but for motion alerts and live monitoring make sure you have a good WiFi signal at the location you want to install the camera. When mounting the camera on a wall, position the antenna vertically, pointing upwards. If mounting it on a ceiling, keep the antenna aligned parallel to the camera body for optimal signal strength.
The solar panel can then be screwed on and connected to the camera with the integrated USB-C cable. This needs to be fully inserted to maintain the camera’s IP66 weatherproof rating. Reolink recommends tilting the panel to your latitude + 5° which is around 55.5° where I am, and facing as close to south as possible. An hour of sunshine a day should allow continuous recording 24/7 indefinitely. I’ll come back to this shortly.
That’s setup complete – you can now configure the camera as you see fit, either via the ReoLink app or you can download the desktop app on your Mac or PC. There’s no direct web access to this camera or any of ReoLink’s battery operated cameras via its IP address.
In the app tap on the camera’s preview image to see a live feed from the camera. From left to right, you can pause the live feed, toggle the microphone, capture a still image, capture a recording of the live feed and switch between two quality streams: ‘Fluent’ for lower bandwidth and ‘Clear’ for high-res 2K footage. The far right icon switches to full screen.
The bottom Talk icon lets you use your phone’s microphone to speak to the camera’s speaker. Then there’s the Playback icon I’ll come back to shortly.
Along the top you can activate the siren, manually turn on and off the LED spotlight and enter Settings.
Here you can check the battery life. In Display you can configure low and high quality streams up to a maximum of 2K,15 fps. I like that you can also set the bitrate up to 4096 kbps.
The camera records to the microSD card using the High or Clear settings. The Fluent configuration you can switch on in the live preview – perhaps on a cellular connection away from home. I’ll discuss image quality shortly.
In Display you can also configure a Privacy Mask to block out an area of the capture – for example a neighbour’s window.
In the Light settings, you can permanently disable the camera’s built in LED spotlight, configure its brightness and you can turn off the blue Status LED.
In Alarm settings you can toggle the PIR Motion Sensor, configure detection zones for People, Vehicles, Animals and Other and there’s a Motion Mark feature still in Beta that highlights the active motion with a rectangle.
There’s no facial recognition, which would have been useful for excluding yourself or family members from motion alerts – so you may get more notifications than you’d like depending on where the camera is. That’s something I’ve found frustrating with my Ring system too – I now only keep notifications on when I’m away on holiday.
In Camera Recording you can toggle and set a schedule for Motion recording and Continuous recording. You can also configure up to a 10 second pre-recording for motion events.
You are limited to between 1 and 5 fps though.
It is nice to see continuous and pre-recording on a battery operated camera. That’s often the reserve of wired cameras. We’ll see how it works shortly.
Under notifications you can turn on Push Notifications to receive messages on your phone when motion is detected. If you enable Rich Notifications and sign up to a free Cloud account, you’ll also see a preview image of the detected motion with the alert.
Here you can also configure recordings to an FTP server – so even if a thief steals the camera or memory card, you’ll still have your footage. ReoLink doesn’t make this very clear, but this doesn’t support continuous recordings – only motion events. I set it up with my Terramaster NAS running TrueNAS – it works very well. If FTP is not an option, ReoLink offers fairly reasonably priced cloud-based storage, or you can purchase their Home Hub which can store footage from multiple cameras locally without a subscription.
There’s also a Time Lapse function, which could be interesting given the long battery life and tripod compatibility. I got a decent result just pointing the camera up at the clouds but this would be great to track a house build for example.
Performance
The Altas features an f/1.0 lens paired with a 1/1.8” sensor, delivering very good 2K image quality in good lighting. Colours are accurate, and there’s plenty of detail across the frame.
Impressively, image quality holds up well as light levels drop, thanks to the bright aperture and Reolink’s ColorX Night Vision technology.
When it gets close to pitch dark, the camera switches on its onboard LEDs. These aren’t especially powerful but provide just enough illumination for the sensor to produce a clear, usable full colour image. You will get some glare with the LEDs turned on though, from reflective objects, rain etc. If you live in a built up area or have any lighting in your garden, the camera shouldn’t need to enable its LEDs.
Although the LEDs are designed to trigger only with motion, I found they often came on randomly. You can control them manually in the app – or turn them off completely if preferred.
The Altas lacks infrared night vision – it relies solely on its spotlight in total darkness. While IR would only offer black-and-white footage, having both would be more flexible, especially in locations where visible lighting is intrusive or disruptive, such as outside a bedroom window. And currently you can’t set a schedule to turn off the LEDs completely when everyone’s asleep.
It’s important to be able to easily playback your footage which you can do via the mobile or desktop app.The Reolink app’s playback interface isn’t as intuitive as some competitors like Ring. Here I’ve set the camera to continuous recording.
You can select the date and scrub the timeline, but instead of simply scrubbing the timeline to play back, you have to tap a 5-minute thumbnail segment, which adds an extra step. Ring for example makes it so much easier to scrub the timeline. And you can easily skip to any motion event using the left and right skip icon.
In the ReoLink app, I need to filter by Event Type but again it’s a little awkward to use. I can scroll through the thumbnails or I can try and tap on a blue bar for a specific motion event.
Despite continuous recording being active and at least 80% battery, I still experienced occasional gaps in the footage. I’m looking at this issue with support and will report back in the written article.
The camera did do a good job of capturing motion events though. And if you have Push Notifications enabled, you’ll receive a notification within a few seconds of the event taking place. It’s not quite as fast as Ring but then my Ring cameras are all wired to mains. The 10 second pre-record feature works well and adds peace of mind. The quality is more than acceptable, even with the lower frame rates.
ReoLink claims 8 days of continuous recording on battery alone. In my tests that seems a little optimistic. With the camera set to continuous recording the camera dropped from 100% to 79% after 24 hours – so you’re unlikely to get more than 5 days of continuous recording but that’s still pretty good. With continuous recording off, capturing around 5 minutes of motion-activated footage a day, Reolink advertises 540 days of battery life – which sounds a lot. I haven’t had the camera long enough to really test that. But currently the camera is only sold with the Solar panel, and even with some pretty rubbish spring weather recently here in the UK, the camera remained on 100% with continuous recording enabled.
Checking the 6W solar panel in bright conditions I measured around 3W maximum with my USB meter. So in ideal conditions it’d take roughly 24 hours to charge the battery from completely flat. In real use I did see around 10% charge in 2-3 hours of mediocre British weather so I’m confident you could keep this camera running continuously as claimed by ReoLink.
Conclusions
The ReoLink Altas offers good quality 2K footage and excellent low light performance. It’s one of the few battery cameras to offer both continuous and pre-recording features, which, combined with local microSD storage and optional FTP backup, makes it a flexible and subscription-free solution out of the box.
The included 6W solar panel appears to keep the camera running indefinitely even recording continuously – although that will depend on where the camera is installed.
I did find the playback experience in the app a little clunky compared to its competitors like Ring, and I missed having an IR sensor for night vision – the LEDs may be intrusive near bedrooms or neighbours.
Still if you’re after a solar powered security camera that offers robust features without locking you into a subscription, the Reolink Altas is well worth considering.
Don’t forget to take a look at my YouTube video at the top of the page, and again please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I’m releasing videos every week on the latest technology and how to get the most out of it. If you tap the bell icon when you subscribe you’ll get a notification as soon as I release a video, and there’ll be a link to my site here for the written article. YouTube is also the best place to leave a comment. I read all of them and respond to as many as I can!
Affiliate Links & Discount Codes
If you’re planning to purchase the Reolink Altas, please consider purchasing directly from the manufacturer using the link below. It helps support the channel — and you’ll get 5% off with the code TheTechnologyMan5 (enter it at checkout):
👉 Buy Reolink Altas direct — Use code: TheTechnologyMan5 for 5% off
If you prefer to shop at Amazon, I’ve included Amazon affiliate links below. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission — at no extra cost to you:
Reolink Altas with 6W Solar Panel
SanDisk Endurance MicroSD Card
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