Reolink Altas PT Ultra review: a seriously powerful home security camera

There's no shortage of contenders for our best security cameras guide, and the latest to get the T3 review treatment is the Reolink Altas PT Ultra: a heavy duty outdoor camera with a huge battery and a variety of clever tricks that make it an appealing pick.

One of those clever tricks is support for a solar panel accessory, which can top up the battery and mean you have to spend less time plugging in the camera to recharge it. The solar panel was included with my review unit and you'll see it mentioned below.

I've spent a couple of weeks testing the home security camera in all the areas that matter to come up with this Reolink Altas PT Ultra review, and you should find everything you need here to help you decide whether or not this is the smart home camera for you.

Reolink Altas PT Ultra review: price and availability

If you're convinced by what the Reolink Altas PT Ultra has to offer, it's available to buy right away: the widgets embedded on this page will direct you to the best prices currently on the web, but you can expect to pay around £185 / $199 at the time I'm writing this review (that's with the solar panel included). Those of you in the UK can pick the device up from retailers including Amazon, as well as from Reolink directly.

Reolink Altas PT Ultra review: design and setup

The Reolink Altas PT Ultra is a rather chunky looking security camera: it's not the easiest on the eye, but then that's not such a priority on a device like this, and the extra size does mean a bigger battery (and more time between charges). The dimensions of the camera are 178 mm x 151 mm x 102 mm, and it weighs 853 grams without the bracket.

The mounting bracket attached to the camera and the battery lets you screw it into a wall or to a ceiling (or any surface above it), so you've got plenty of options about where to place this – and you get the bracket, a template, and some screws in the box. If you can use a screwdriver, then you can get this set up in just a few minutes.

Reolink also sent me the solar panel accessory which extends battery life even further, if you're in a sunny part of the world. Again, you get the mount and the screws included, and it's then simply a case of running a wire from one device to the other. It's an extra that's going to appeal if it means you're recharging the battery significantly fewer times yourself.

Thanks to the way the camera ball hangs down from its mount, you get a lot of leeway in terms of what it's able to look at: it's able to pan round the full 360 degrees, and tilt up and down 90 degrees, so it can take a look at whatever you need it to look at. It's a level of flexibility above and beyond your standard home security camera.

With the hardware in place it's time to turn to the Reolink app for Android and iOS, and the software setup process is refreshingly straightforward. There's dual-band Wi-Fi support for both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks – not always a given with smart home gadgets like this – so you should have no problem establishing a connection with your router.

As usual there's a cloud storage option for your video – starting at £3.49 / $6.99 per month – but you can also use a microSD card slotted in the device (with support for capacities up to 512GB). It's also worth mentioning that this works with the separate Reolink Home Hub and Home Hub Pro servers, which can also store your video and are worth considering if you invest in a lot of cameras from the company.

Reolink Altas PT Ultra review: features and performance

You've got 4K (3840 x 2160 pixels) video recording here, with a 90-degree horizontal field of view and a 50-degree vertical field of view – though remember the tilting and panning features that let you have a good look around. There's two-way audio, as well as a rather loud alarm you can use to warn people off your property. You can connect it to Google Home or Alexa, but not Apple Home.

With an IP65 rating, the camera should be able to withstand any weather you want to throw at it (though it was just cloud, sunshine, and a bit of drizzle during my testing), and there are six LEDs on the front that can form a spotlight of sorts if you need illumination. You get a microSD card slot for local video storage, though there's no memory card included, so you'll need to buy one separately.

Video quality is more than satisfactory, and is saved at 15 frames-per-second. I had absolutely no problems picking out what was being shown in the feed, and that goes for nighttime shots as well: the colour night vision offered by the Reolink Altas PT Ultra is very well done. It's good enough to recognise faces at close-ish range.

There are numerous clever features available. The camera can tell the difference between people, vehicles, and animals (which helps with reducing unnecessary alerts), and it also has a prerecording mode that captures 10 seconds before a motion-triggered event (it does this by continuously recording, then overwriting the video if nothing happens).

The prerecording does reduce battery life to a few days though, rather than a few months (more than a year, if there aren't many motion events). That's without the solar panel though: Reolink says 10 minutes of sunshine a day can power the camera continuously in triggered recording mode, or 5 hours of sunshine a day for prerecording mode.

I certainly enjoyed testing out the pan and zoom functions, tracking across my garden to see what was happening on either side of the camera. Given how many features and functions are packed in here, it feels like a much more expensive bit of kit than it actually is – or that it might look like from its outward appearance. It can auto-track people, vehicles, or animals as they move as well.

As far as I could tell during my time with the Reolink Altas PT Ultra, the motion detection worked more or less flawlessly, and there is the option to adjust the sensitivity in the app if you're finding you're getting too many or too few alerts. You can even encrypt the video recordings stored on the memory card, if you're worried about someone stealing it and going through your footage.

The usual functionality is available in the app: you can check up on logged events, see a live feed, make use of the two-way audio and other features, and manually control the pan and tilt. It's not the most polished app out there (it has more rough edges than apps from the likes of Google and Ring, for example), but it gets the job done without any issues.

Reolink Altas PT Ultra review: verdict

The Reolink Altas PT Ultra may not be from one of the biggest names in tech, or have the most aesthetically pleasing looks, but it certainly impresses. It's packed with features – from solar panel support to continuous recording to 360-degree coverage – and it has local video storage, which is always welcome if you don't want to pay for cloud storage.

While this is more expensive than a lot of home security cameras on the market, the price isn't exorbitant, and you do get a lot in return for your money. Just about every camera feature you can think of is included here, from night vision to prerecording to two-way audio, and I'd definitely say you're getting value for money with this.

The large, chunky aesthetic isn't going to suit everyone, but it does mean you get that large 20,000 mAh battery. There's no wired option here unfortunately, but recharging the camera isn't difficult – you just need to slide it out of its mounting bracket and plug it into the mains. I suspect the solar panel will be an appealing add-on for a lot of people, especially those in sunnier parts of the world.

This isn't a perfect home security camera – what with the slightly expensive price, no wired option, and an occasionally clunky app experience – but it's a very, very good one, and one that I'd recommend. If you want to get serious about home surveillance and you're prepared to pay for it, then it's definitely worth a look.

Reolink Altas PT Ultra review: alternatives to consider

As I said at the start, there's plenty of choice in this product category. If the Reolink Altas PT Ultra doesn't suit you, you could consider the Ring Outdoor Camera Plus Battery. It's not quite as packed with features as the Reolink option, but it's more compact and cheaper – although with Ring cameras you are more reliant on a cloud storage subscription (there's no microSD card slot).

The eufyCam S3 Pro is well worth considering too, with its 4K video recording, excellent night vision, and local video storage. You even get two cameras and a hub with this particular purchase, though that's reflected in the higher price. Like the Reolink Altas PT Ultra, it suits those who want something comprehensive, with a stack of features, and have the budget for it.