My review of the Duo 2, compared with the Duo

[user_587919500296214_587919500296214]

I have both Reolink Duo and Reolink Duo 2 cameras. They're both great cameras with good low-light performance, easy to set up, good viewer software, and just the right amount of options so it's customizable without being confusing. Image quality on both cameras is good for this price range. Both cameras look identical from the outside, and the unboxing, mounting, and connections are the same. But between the Duo and Duo 2, there are big differences inside.

Duo:
- Total field of view: 150 deg horizontal 44 deg vertical.
- Configuration is as a single camera, but when you actually view the video the left/right streams are split between the two cameras. On the Windows and iOS viewer apps, the Duo shows up as two 2560x1440 images side-by-side (total resolution 5120x1440) with a max frame rate of 25FPS.
- I tests two Duo units, and with each of them I saw different color tinting between the left and right lenses. It's really obvious (and somewhat irritating) to see a line down the center of the image, with different colorization on each side.
- There is a bit of overlap that's noticeable for objects in the center of view. The overlap is about 40 pixels in the center where objects are doubled.
- In the Reolink Windows and iOS apps, each side of the Duo camera must be viewed as their own stream and zoomed separately. That means if you're watching someone walk across the camera and you want to zoom, you need to switch between the two streams as they cross the centerline. One advantage to this is with the viewer's grid view, because each of the left/right streams can be viewed in two side-by-side squares in the viewer app. (Think of a four-square checkerboard. The Duo's two streams are displayed in, say, the top left and top right squares, leaving the bottom two squares for other cameras).

Duo 2:
- Field of view 170 deg horizontal, 60 deg vertical. Reolink claims this as a 180-degree camera, but that's a "cheater" number measured diagonally. Still, the 170 degrees horizontal field of view feels like you can see full left to full right. Combined with the increased vertical angle, the total viewable area is much larger than the Duo.
- With the Duo 2, Reolink combines the two cameras into a single wide aspect-ratio image and, as far as the end user is concerned, this is configured and viewed as a single camera with 4608x1728 resolution and a max FPS of 20. The image is near continuous between the left and right camera lenses, with only a very slight boundary visible down the center. Along that centerline, it also appears that the image loses some detail, which makes sense since it's it's losing angular resolution at the inner edges on both lenses.
- Since the Duo 2 appears in the viewer software (Windows and iOS) as a single camera, it occupies a single square in Reolink's viewer grid display. This is perfectly fine if you have just one security camera. But if you use the software's grid layout to display multiple camera, with a single square dedicated to the Duo 2, the image is very small with black bars top and bottom. (Say you have four cameras in grid view. In that four-square checkerboard, the Duo 2 would occupy the top left square only, leaving the other three squares for other cameras.) It would be really nice if Reolink updated their viewer software to allow for double-wide squares to accommodate the wide aspect ratio of the Duo 2 camera.

Which one is best? It depends. If wide field-of-view is important, the Duo 2 wins hands down. And really, that's probably why you're looking at this camera in the first place. Some people may want the 5 extra FPS that the Duo offers, or the ability to automatically stretch the Duo's two image streams across two squares in the viewer. But other than that, I think the Duo 2 is the better camera.

[Tom Scheifler_59775922064]

Thanks Ron for sharing the info. I was hoping for an improved picture quality with the 8MP (4K) Duo 2. Instead, all those extra pixels are used to increase the FOV. So the result is a wider FOV with basically the same picture quality when you digitally zoom in to see detail of something.
Below are photo captures using the iOS Reolink App. The first is the Duo (camera 1 only) configured at the highest resolution. The second is the Duo 2 configured at the highest resolution. When you digitally zoom in on the license plate on top of the orange cone, the clarity for reading the license plate is basically the same for both cameras even though the Duo 2 has twice the pixel count of the Duo. For my neighborhood where the camera is typically mounted 20-30 feet from the street, there is no benefit to the wider FOV. It would be much better to have more detail when zooming in to see a person or vehicle.

I do much prefer the user interface/experience for the Duo 2 so I REALLY hope they update the app/firmware for the Duo to seamlessly stitch the two images like they have for the Duo 2.

Duo


Duo 2