The Wi-Fi Security Camera You’ve Been Waiting For

Summary

• The Atlas PT Ultra offers visible security with its large design and does not require a cloud subscription, providing reliability.
• Its superb 4K video quality and ColorX night vision offer excellent visibility day and night.
• Equipped with a 20,000mAh battery and the option for a solar panel, the Atlas PT Ultra offers extended battery life and pre-recording features for added security.

The Reolink Atlas PT Ultra offers superb 4K video quality day and night, intelligent 355-degree pan-tilt auto-tracking, and a huge battery. It’s designed for more remote locations and is entirely battery-powered without compromising video quality. If you have a decent signal, this is the best 4K PTZ Wi-Fi security camera yet.

Price and Availability

The Reolink Atlas PT Ultra is available now, direct from Reolink or Amazon, in a bundle with the Solar Panel 2 for around $160 at the time of writing, though the non-sale price is $230.

Design: Overtly Visible

The Atlas PT Ultra is enormous compared to most home security cameras—weighing in at 853g (1.88 lbs), it’s seven inches deep, six inches tall, and four inches wide—and looks more like a relic you’d find on the ceiling of a department store. That’s not because it’s old technology, though. It’s entirely down to the 20,000 mAh battery that makes up the bulk of the main camera body.

If you want something discreet to monitor the babysitter, this isn’t it, but I’d argue that’s a good thing. Security systems should be overt and easily seen.

Prevention is infinitely better than dealing with the aftermath. I placed the Atlas PT Ultra about ten feet up in a prominent location by the front gate.

Other than the bulk, the Atlas PT Ultra doesn’t break any new ground for design. The lens is inset within a ball for pan/tilt motion tracking and features a row of six white LEDs to flood an area.

The bulk comes from the body it’s attached to. The underside features a speaker grill for the alarm and communication and a large Wi-Fi antenna that sticks out the side. It’s rounded but far from elegant.

Setup: No Cloud Required

Like all Reolink cameras, the Atlas PT Ultra doesn’t force you to subscribe to a cloud storage subscription to use basic features. It’s compatible with a number of Reolink NVRs; you can also use simple on-camera recording to a microSD card.

Before the physical installation, it’s recommended that the camera be set up with your Wi-Fi details and connected to the app (available on Android and iPhone).

Mounting the Atlas PT Ultra is a little more involved than some cameras, but that’s due to the increased weight and the need for a more secure fix. A small, lightweight bracket is included that should be screwed securely to a wall or ceiling, saving you from holding up the main body of the camera while you struggle with your screwdriver.

A drill template is provided for masonry, but I’d recommend your own fixings as the included ones strip too easily. The main camera body slides on and screws into the bracket. It shouldn’t take more than half an hour in total.

You can also use the fabric strap for attaching to a tree or post, but I’ve never found those to be reliable, so I opted to screw the bracket to a tree instead (don’t worry, it’s a Leylandii, it doesn’t care).

Fixing the solar panel is much the same, but the 12-foot cable gives you more freedom to get the ideal angle for maximum generation.

Video Quality: Superb

ColorX is Reolink’s color night-vision technology, which means you can also have full-color 4K night vision with just a little light. Turning on the spotlight gives even better quality if the ambient light is limited.

Still, no low-light mode will be perfect, and in Reolink’s ColorX case, moving subjects can be a little blurry compared to the static background; this is likely an exposure issue, where the sensor captures light for longer to provide further accuracy.

The Atlas PT Ultra can keep track of anything with a 355-degree horizontal pan and a 90-degree vertical movement. But you should set the home location, as it’ll only track a subject once it sees it rather than panning around on a schedule.

Reliability: Improved, but Doesn’t Catch Everything

The AI recognition in the PT Ultra continues to be generally accurate and reliable, with one big upgrade: it now recognizes multiple targets simultaneously, so you might see a notification of “Person, Animal detected.” While that sounds minor, I found it quite helpful.

However, it doesn’t catch everything. If a car or van passes through its field of view in less than a second, it doesn’t pay any attention. I have another camera further along the driveway that notifies when delivery vans park, but the Atlas PT Ultra doesn’t recognize them driving down. It could just be a case of needing to tweak the recognition object sizes or sensitivity, but you shouldn’t need to. After all, object sizes will vary significantly depending on where you place the camera; ours is about ten feet up a tree, looking down onto the driveway.

Person recognition is generally more accurate, though sometimes it could get confused. For instance, it tracked someone entering our grounds and standing by the shed, but they had a dog on a leash. After they stood still briefly, the PT Ultra decided the animal was more important, panned over to center the dog in the frame, and in doing so, lost track of the human. We have no footage of what they did next until they re-entered the frame close to the dog. Again, this could be tweaked by ignoring animals, but then we wouldn’t know if a random sheep has wandered onto the property (country life).

Ideally, the “AI” would identify any motion and then ask you to tag the objects a couple of times until the accuracy was dialed in. While you can set a monitor point for the camera to pan back after tracking something—and define other points of interest—you can’t schedule it to auto-scan an area every so often.

Lag and streaming performance depend entirely on your Wi-Fi speed and signal; it supports Wi-Fi 6 for optimal performance. In the average family home looking out over the yard, you shouldn’t have to wait more than a second when starting the video in standard mode. Our gate is about 25 meters away from the house, though, and buried within some trees, so the reception isn’t ideal. It takes about five seconds to start a stream. But that isn’t a typical arrangement, so consider that an extreme setup.

Battery Life

The PT Ultra is oversized compared to many pan/tilt security cameras for one simple reason: it features an absolute beast of a 20,000mAh battery. Combined with the solar panel, averaging several recordings a day, the battery has remained above 90% for me for at least a month.

Of course, your experience will vary, and it depends on a variety of factors:

• How much activity is there
• Whether you’re using the spotlight or siren
• How often and for how long you view the live stream
• If you have pre-recording enabled
• Sensitivity
• Which notifications are enabled

The 6W solar panel can potentially mean you never have to charge the Atlas PT Ultra, but if it’s situated in an area of extensive traffic, using the spotlight at night, recording for long periods of time, and being watched constantly, then it won’t be able to top up the batteries sufficiently. Set your expectations for a battery-powered device; don’t treat it like a wired one, and you’ll be more than pleased with the battery life.

Reolink claims up to 96 hours of continuous recording even without a solar panel. I accidentally left the stream open on the desktop app, which killed the camera in about a day and a half (that was viewing, though, not recording).

Pre-Recording: Never Miss The Action

The problem with many battery-powered security cameras is that you aren’t given context. Until a PIR motion sensor or object threshold is detected, the recording doesn’t start. Pre-recording enables the Atlas PT Ultra to buffer the video constantly. This isn’t quite the same as continuous recording, as it’s discarded if not used, but it’s still much better than only motion detection.

When motion is detected in pre-recording mode, the Atlas PT Ultra saves ten seconds of buffered footage to the start of the captured event.

The pre-recording mode is a major benefit over the competition (though the basic Atlas PT also featured pre-recording, so it’s not an upgrade on that), and has a few configuration options of its own, including frame rate (5/10fps), schedule (maybe you don’t want to pre-record at night), and the ability to completely disable pre-recording if the battery level dips too low.

File Encryption: An Essential Security Feature

While recording to a local SD card is one of the standout features of most Reolink cameras, it does pose a bit of a privacy risk. If a determined burglar knows where to look, they can pull the card out and have access to all your recordings. However, the Atlas PT Ultra is one of the few Reolink devices that can enable file encryption. This requires setting a passphrase and will only apply to new recordings, but some will appreciate the peace of mind.

The other option is to purchase the Reolink Home Hub (a Network Video Recorder) and store those recordings indoors. This can also be encrypted in the same way.

Should You Buy The Reolink Atlas PT Ultra?

While I prefer a wired solution wherever possible, for more remote locations, a battery-powered device with a Wi-Fi connection is the only option, and the Reolink Atlas PT Ultra is the best I’ve found yet.

The Atlas PT Ultra is bulky because of the enormous battery, but that’s not a bad thing when it comes to outdoor security cameras. It has all the features you could wish for: motion-activated recording, superb color night-vision, AI recognition, configurable notifications, optional siren and floodlight—and best of all—it doesn’t need a cloud subscription.