Introduction
Welcome to our review of the Hikvision DS-2CD2355FWD-I 5MP Turret, the 2355 is from the latest EasyIP 3.0 range and features H.265+ codec and EXIR nightvision LEDs. Now we should point out that we reviewed this camera just after testing the 3 and 5MP Hikvision mini bullets and before we had reviewed the 8MP turret, so this review will dissect the pros and cons of the 2355 by looking at how the turret design works when compared to the classic bullet design.
What’s in the Box?
As we have come to expect from Hikvision’s packaging it’s clean & simple in design and gives off a professional look that is attractive for an end-user. Inside the box, you’ll see all the usual bits, screws, drill template, instructions, and a waterproof gasket. When we actually get the camera out we finally get to see the turrets unique ball and socket, flat-faced, 2 window design up close and, like all Hikvision cameras, it is as well built as it looks.
This 5MP turret model is part of the 2nd iteration of turret cameras, but even at this early stage of the designs lifecycle, they’ve still made some big design improvements including changing the design of the mounting ring and managing to squeeze in space for a MicroSD slot. On the other hand, some of these design changes aren’t as well thought out as others, the big one being the smoothing of the ring around the face of the camera which makes adjusting the camera’s lens position much harder.
Installation and Setup
The physical installation of the 2355 is made really easy by having all the accessories you’ll need for installing included in the box with the camera, everything but the screwdriver. The physical installation of the camera from box to wall takes very little time and is easy to install for security installer and end user alike. The technical setup of the 2355 is the same as all new Hikvision cameras, in that it can be set up multiple different ways depending on your IT skills and knowledge. Beginners can simply scan the QR code on the camera to activate, or you can use Hikvision SADP tool and set it up via a browser.
Performance
Now we come to the most important part of the review, the camera performance, we had the camera up for several days to test it across day and night, as well as a variety of lighting and weather conditions. You can see a video review including some of this test footage by clicking here, whilst here in the written review, we will be highlighting some of the points covered in video and explaining them in greater detail.
So to start our review we are going to look at how the 2355 turret performs in an average daytime scene that was not too bright or dark, now at first glance, this scene looks really impressive with very sharp focus and excellent colour rendition. On closer inspection we really couldn’t find much wrong with the camera’s performance in these lighting conditions, even the smallest details like individual leaves and the stripes on the chair cushions are defined and not pixelated.
Next we looked at a late afternoon scene with a lot more shadows than the previous scene, what surprised us was that with this little bit of extra shadow the detail of the scene actually improved as the auto settings of the camera were able to balance much better across the scene, never being too dark or too bright. During both of these examples and throughout our testing of the 2355 we saw the camera’s sensor do something which we had also seen happen on most of the other Hikvision cameras we had tested, the sensor auto adapted to changes in the lighting of the scene incredibly fast for an IP camera. This might seem like a really small thing but a sensor that is slow to adapt can really damage the quality of your recording and the camera only has to be slightly under or over exposed for faces to become distorted and unrecognisable.
After this we moved on to testing the 2355’s IR night performance, now at first glance the performance is solid but there is definitely a clear resolution drop between day and night performance. Although even with this slight resolution loss the 5MP turret still does a good job of picking up some smaller details like the fur pattern on the cat, in fact, the turret actually performs a lot better than most of the other 5MP hikvision models. In our video review we actually put a similar IR scene from the 5MP mini bullet side by side with the 2355 and the difference is really quite shocking, the mini bullet scene was much darker and more pixelated than the 5MP turret, the cat was present in both scenes and on the mini bullet recording we could barely make it out as a cat let alone identify it as the same cat from the 2355 recording.
