Lorex U-Series 8Ch 4K review

The verdict in one line

Best CCTV system for a lived-in room

Channels

8

Cameras included

3 dome, 4K

Cooling

Fanless, heatsink

Detection

Face, person, vehicle

Cabling

PoE

Fee needed

No

Buy it if

The recorder has to sit in a study or a cupboard off a bedroom and you do not want to hear it.

Look elsewhere if

You want the most cameras per dollar. REOLINK gives you four in the box at a lower price.

Is the Lorex U-Series 8Ch 4K worth it?

Drawn for this site. Not a product photo.

Recorders are usually installed and then resented, because a box with a fan in it is audible in a quiet house. This one is fanless with a heatsink and vents instead, which the listing makes a point of.

Eight channels with three 4K dome cameras supplied, each on a single PoE cable, with face, person and vehicle recognition handled on the recorder.

The caution is evidence. This listing had single-figure ratings when we checked, which is not enough to say anything about reliability. Lorex is an established name, but this specific product is new and the rating should be read that way.

The quiet recorder, and the thin record

The listing's distinctive claim is the recorder: fanless, cooled by a heatsink, designed for a living space or an office. If the box has to sit in a study or a bedroom cupboard, that matters more than any camera specification. It ships with a 2 TB drive, expands to 10 TB, and takes up to eight U-Series cameras on PoE.

The caution is evidence, not engineering. The listing had single-digit ratings when we checked, so the 4.7 says almost nothing about how it holds up. Lorex is an established name and this specific system is new. If a long track record matters, the REOLINK RLK8 has thousands of ratings behind it at similar money.

What it costs to keep running

Plan fees for the Lorex U-Series 8Ch 4K over five years: $0, because it keeps its own footage; the hard drive is already fitted in the recorder.

The Lorex U-Series 8Ch 4K's 2 TB drive holds about 15 days of continuous 4K from all 3 cameras before it starts overwriting the oldest footage. Recording on motion instead stretches that to more than a year.

Different card or recording mode? The storage calculator uses the same assumptions.

If this is not the one

• REOLINK RLK16-800B8Best large CCTV system
• REOLINK RLK8-800D4Best CCTV system for continuous recording
• Tapo C560WSBest 4K pan-tilt camera for the money

Head to head

• Lorex U-Series 8Ch 4K vs REOLINK RLK8-800D4Side by side
• Lorex U-Series 8Ch 4K vs REOLINK RLK16-800B8Side by side