Hikvision, Dahua and HiLook Compared

Every installer has brands they prefer, and most of the reasons are practical rather than technical: what the local supplier stocks, what the app is like to support, and what fails least often. Here is where these three actually differ.

The short version

• Hikvision is the largest of the three and has the widest model range. Its strengths are ColorVu, which gives full colour footage at night, and AcuSense, which filters detection down to people and vehicles.
• Dahua matches it closely feature for feature. Full-colour is its equivalent night technology and WizSense its detection filtering. Its TiOC cameras combine camera, siren and strobe in one unit and are excellent for active deterrence.
• HiLook is Hikvision's value range. Same ecosystem, fewer features, lower price. Good value on secondary positions and on jobs where the budget has to stretch across more cameras.

What actually changes your footage

Four things decide whether a camera gives you something usable, and none of them is the brand.

Sensor size. A larger sensor collects more light, which is why two cameras with the same resolution can look completely different at night. This is the specification worth paying for and the one least often mentioned in a quote.

Lens and field of view. A 2.8mm lens sees wide and identifies nobody past a few metres. A 4mm or 6mm lens narrows the view and puts far more detail on a face at the distance you care about. Choosing the lens per position is most of the skill in specifying a system.

Aperture. Night performance depends heavily on how much light the lens lets through. An F1.0 lens gathers significantly more than the F1.6 or F2.0 found on standard cameras, which is what makes colour night vision possible without a floodlight.

Bitrate. The recorder decides how much data each camera writes per second. A 4K camera set to a low bitrate throws away the detail you paid for. We set this on every install and it costs nothing but drive space.

Night vision compared

Infrared is the baseline on all three brands and gives you black and white footage in the dark. It works, it is reliable, and it strips out the one detail that identifies a car or a jacket: colour.

Hikvision ColorVu and Dahua Full-colour both solve that with a large sensor, a fast lens and a small warm light so the footage stays in colour after dark. Given a choice between a higher resolution infrared camera and a colour night camera at the same price, take the colour one. Being able to say the car was dark blue is worth more than a few extra pixels.

HiLook offers colour night models too, further down the range, and they are respectable for the money. They need a little more ambient light than the flagship models to look their best.

Detection and false alerts

Older cameras trigger on pixel change, which means every moth, spider and swaying branch sends you an alert until you turn notifications off and stop using the system. Hikvision AcuSense and Dahua WizSense both classify what they see and alert only on people or vehicles.

Both work well. Set up properly on a suburban house you get a handful of meaningful alerts a day rather than hundreds of useless ones. This is the single feature most likely to determine whether you still have notifications enabled six months after installation.

Active deterrence

Dahua TiOC and the equivalent Hikvision models add a siren, a strobe and two way audio. When the camera detects a person after hours in a zone you have defined, it lights up and makes noise, and you can speak through it from your phone.

For sheds, yards and rural properties around Cashmere and Joyner, this is the feature with the clearest real world effect. Most people leave as soon as the siren starts, which beats identifying them afterwards.

Recorders and apps

Stay within one brand family for the recorder and cameras. Mixing works through the ONVIF standard but the smart detection features usually do not carry across, so you end up paying for AcuSense and running basic motion detection.

The apps are similar in capability and neither is beautiful. Both do live view, playback, exporting clips and push notifications. We set the app up on every phone in the household on the day and walk through pulling up footage from a week ago, because that is the part people need when it matters and the part nobody reads the manual for.

Our honest recommendation

For most Brisbane homes: colour night vision cameras on the driveway and front door where identification matters, standard infrared models on the side and rear positions, all on an eight channel recorder with a drive sized for thirty days. That is a better system than four flagship cameras with no thought given to lens choice, and usually costs less.

Whichever brand goes in, change the default password, keep the recorder behind your router rather than exposed to the internet, and keep the firmware up to date. That applies to every brand of camera made.

Common questions

Which brand do you install most?

Hikvision and Dahua about evenly, with HiLook on budget conscious jobs. The choice usually comes down to which model has the sensor and lens combination the position needs, not the badge.

Can I mix brands on one recorder?

Sometimes, through the ONVIF standard, but you often lose the smart features. We keep a system to one brand family so the detection settings, app and recorder all behave the way they are supposed to.

Is a more expensive camera always better?

No. A well chosen mid range camera aimed properly beats a flagship camera pointed at the whole front yard. Spend the extra on the positions that need identification and use standard models elsewhere.

What about the government restrictions reported in the news?

Several countries, Australia included, have removed these brands from sensitive government sites. That is a procurement decision about government facilities. For a home or a small business the practical steps are the same either way: keep the recorder off the open internet, change the default password and keep firmware current.