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Gizmodo
10-07-2025
- Gizmodo
Reolink Altas Review: As Good as a Battery-Powered Security Camera Gets
I find cameras bolted onto my home supremely useful, although maybe not for the reasons I'm expected to. Yes, I care whether a camera reliably detects that someone is on my porch, but it's not about break-ins—I mostly want to know when my packages have been delivered. Otherwise, I want a security camera to reliably record, be easy to use, last a long time on a charge, and not need a cloud subscription to work. So far, after more than a week with the Reolink Altas, the battery-powered Wi-Fi camera fits that bill. See at Amazon In the world of smart home cameras, Reolink tends to get overlooked for more consumer-targeted options. A lot of its cameras have all the charm of a pawn shop CCTV surveiller. But the $149.99 Altas, a slightly less fancy version of the pan-and-tilt Altas PT Ultra, has a friendlier, less utilitarian look. Best of all, it doesn't need the internet to be good. Reolink Altas The Reolink Altas security camera has the trappings of a big brand, and no cloud subscription is required. Pros Cons Setting up the Altas feels familiar if you've ever tried something like a battery-powered Ring camera. You mount it using a three-piece base—a mounting plate, then a piece you screw onto that after threading a ball joint through it. Screw the camera onto the ball joint, and you're done. Reolink also includes a strap for mounting around things without drilling holes, but attaching the Altas this way doesn't feel very snug or secure. The company says the Altas has an IP66 rating, which means it's dustproof and protected against jets of water; my local weather tested that for me with some heavy rain. (It survived!) Where the Altas physically differs from other cameras I've tried is size and battery: this is a big boy, about twice the size of the other cameras I compared it with. That makes it stick out like a sore thumb, which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you want out of the thing. On the plus side, it's handsome, in a Star Wars droid sort of way. At least some of the Altas' size you can chalk up to the beefy, non-replaceable 20,000mAh battery inside, which Reolink claims is good for 540 days on a full charge, or up to 8 days of continuously recording at three frames per second. I didn't have a year and a half to test Reolink's big 540-day claim, but with some effort, I managed to totally drain the Altas from the 36 percent charge it arrived with in about a week. While it didn't budge from there for the first couple of days, it lost 10 percent of its charge during a daylong gathering in my backyard. After that, I connected the 6V solar panel that comes with the Altas; about 30 minutes of sun was enough to keep it around 25 percent battery for the next two days. Out for blood, I turned on continuous recording at 5 fps, which did the trick of fully draining the battery from 25 percent to zero within two more days, even with solar power. I can't say if the camera will last 540 days on a charge after all of that, but I do think it would likely go many months with the right settings, and perhaps much longer with the solar panel and plenty of sun. The camera comes with a USB-C to USB-A cable for charging, but no power adapter, so you'll need to provide your own. Connectivity is a particularly bright spot for the Altas. Its dual-band Wi-Fi radio—unusual for battery-powered Wi-Fi cameras—lets it talk to a router's 5GHz radio instead of its 2.4GHz one, which is often a congested hellscape in a dense urban area like mine. The latter can contribute to problems like the camera's live feed refusing to load in its app, which never happened for me with the Altas. One drawback is the camera's 110-degree FOV, which is pretty narrow compared to the 160-degree FOV of my Arlo Pro 4. Otherwise, the Altas' 2K-resolution footage comes across well—it's detailed enough to make out the grated pattern of a metal outdoor table sitting about 20 feet away from the camera in my yard and doesn't blow out brightly lit areas or crush too much detail in shaded ones. You can choose a much lower-res, muddier 896 x 512-resolution option for space saving and faster loading, although I didn't notice a difference in the latter on my home network. Which resolution you should choose depends on how much video you want to hoard and how fast the connection is in your situation. See at Amazon The Altas includes a passive infrared, or PIR sensor to detect motion, which doesn't beam infrared out for improved night vision like other cameras. Still, it handled the shadowy parts of my yard well at night, preserving a surprising amount of detail in areas, like that in the heavily cropped screenshot below, where I'd normally need a flashlight to see. Compared to the Arlo Pro 4 and EufyCam 2C that I mounted on either side of the Altas during testing, Reolink's camera did about as well as either at detecting motion and shipping notifications to my phone. It was faster than both in most of my testing, but not especially so. The camera can detect people, vehicles, animals, and generic motion—all on-device—but not packages. The Altas app is simple and familiar if you've ever used a Wi-Fi security camera like this. Its home screen lists any Reolink cameras you've set up, and tapping on one loads its feed, along with controls for things like starting a manual recording, triggering its alarm, or viewing past recordings. The Altas only records video locally, to a microSD card or Reolink Home Hub, with the option to encrypt video if you'd like. Neither of those things is included, which is a little annoying since there's no cloud storage option for this camera. You can get by without that by connecting the camera to a local FTP server such as an always-on desktop computer or NAS—I set it up to drop footage onto my two-bay Synology—but without microSD, you can't see recordings with Reolink's app. Also, it's worth noting that if you do use a microSD card with encryption on, you'll need to use the Reolink app on a PC to decrypt the files before you can view them. As for other settings, boy does Reolink let you go granular. There are gobs of options for things like adjusting resolution, flipping the display if you mount the camera upside-down, and tweaking its refresh rate to deal with any nearby flickering of LED lights. You can also black out regions of the video or paint in where you want it to detect motion, and it lets you set schedules for all kinds of things. Want it to continuously record but only on Fridays after 10 p.m.? That's a thing you can set. Reolink includes an always-rolling video cache feature it calls pre-recording. This is aimed at that irritating phenomenon where detection-based security cameras often start recording way after someone has popped into view—which isn't so helpful when it means only catching the back of someone sauntering away with your package. With pre-recording on, the Altas can prepend up to 10 seconds of those missing moments to the recording, albeit at a very, very low frame rate, configurable to between 1 fps and 5 fps. Every camera should have this. It's convenient to be able to look at your Wi-Fi camera footage from anywhere. But far too often, tech companies, including security camera makers, turn out to be piss-poor stewards of our data, whether through creepy police partnerships or insecure video streams. (Even Reolink has had its share of privacy and security issues.) So the more I can keep things local the better, and the Altas does this well. Not only does the Altas offer local-only storage, but it doesn't need an internet connection for you to connect and see recordings or even to be on your Wi-Fi network to do the basic job of saving video to a microSD card. Those come with caveats like losing push notifications or being unable to easily view the camera's feed or recordings when you're away from home, but it's nice to have options. That said, you can add Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) support, which lets you view its live feed with third-party software like Synology's Surveillance Station, if you buy a $99 Reolink Home Hub, though it feels like you shouldn't have to. The trade-offs of the $149.99 Altas are few, but they exist. No out-of-the-box RTSP support is a bummer, but not a deal-breaker for me, and its size makes it more of an eyesore than a lot of comparable options. I'm also giving some real side-eye to its non-removable battery—Reolink has made these replaceable before and I don't see why it didn't this time. Still, I'll take the drawbacks if it means having a good security camera that doesn't withhold features unless I pay a monthly fee that—experience has taught me—could double or triple in price in time. That included solar panel doesn't hurt, either. See at Amazon
The Sun
10-07-2025
- Business
- The Sun
Amazon has turned my life into a living hell as HUNDREDS of parcels arrive at my house – and I can't stop them
HUNDREDS of large Amazon packages kept arriving at the doorstep of one California resident for over a year - and she had no idea why. It emerged that a shady Amazon seller had been using the woman's home as its US return address to dodge the tech giant's refund policies. 4 4 4 The China-based seller appeared to be violating Amazon's return policy by listing a false US return address - in this case, a home in San Jose, located in California's Silicon Valley. Operating under the name Liusandedian, the seller offers faux-leather car seat covers, supposedly designed to fit a wide range of sedans and SUVs. But many dissatisfied shoppers have been returning the products - all of which have ended up at a woman's doorstep. "Kay" (not her real name) told ABC 7 News:"I couldn't even get my mother in the house… It's just been another form of hell." The packages even blocked her driveway, mail carrier and doorway, making it difficult to park her car and for her 88-year-old mum, who is disabled, to enter the home. Showing reporters her crammed driveway, she said: "What you see now is a fraction, because I have refused delivery on more packages than you see here." Online reviews show customers complaining that they never received their refunds. One shopper wrote: "It's going to cost me $124 to return this item" - an item that she already paid at least $129 for. Kay said: "Oftentimes, what it costs to return it is about more than 50 percent of what they paid for it. "Plus, these consumers aren't getting their money back!" Amazon 'price label change' blasted by Trump press sec Karoline Leavitt as she insists it's a 'hostile' act by retailer Kay said she had contacted Amazon numerous times over the past year to try and resolve the issue - including filing six complaint tickets. "And every time I was absolutely assured this will stop… You won't get any more of these packages, you'll hear from us in 24, 48 hours," she said, adding that she was even offered a $100 Amazon gift balance. She claimed Amazon told her to give the packages away, donate them or haul them back to USPS or FedEx herself. But Amazon denies ever advising Kay to return the boxes to postal carriers. "Why is it my responsibility to get rid of this, when your seller is not following your rules Amazon?" Kay asked the TV channel. According to the tech giant's policy, international sellers must either provide a US address to which to send the return. Alternatively, sellers can provide a prepaid international shipping label within two days of the return request or issue a "returnless refund", meaning the buyer does not have to ship the item back. If sellers don't respond within two days, Amazon refunds the customer, charging the amount to the seller. If Liusandedian were to abide by the policy, the seller would either lose all proceeds from the sale or pay return shipping to China. Kay said: "This is thousands of dollars they've paid to send these boxes back to my house!" ABC affiliate KGO reached out to Amazon, who responded, saying: "We'd like to thank [KGO] for bringing this to our attention. "We've apologised to the customer and are working directly with her to pick-up any packages while taking steps to permanently resolve this issue." The tech giant removed all the packages on Kay's property on Wednesday morning. In other news, Amazon is selling a tiny home kit for $9,300, complete with up to 4 bedrooms and "quick assembly". Tiny homes are gaining popularity as a practical solution to rising living costs and skyrocketing real estate prices. Millennials and Generation X are the primary adopters of tiny homes, with the majority of tiny home dwellers being between 30 and 50 years old. Millennials and Generation X are leading the charge, with most tiny home residents falling between the ages of 30 and 50. 4
Gizmodo
05-06-2025
- Business
- Gizmodo
Amazon Looks to Replace Pesky Paid Workers With Humanoid Bots That Don't Need to Pee
Amazon is pretty serious about robots, and for a long time now, its factories have been teeming with them. Big squat ones, tall crane-like ones, and some big slug boys. It's like the e-commerce, capitalistic version of a George Lucas droid ecosystem with somehow worse naming conventions (I'm looking at you, Xanthus). While those bots are hard at work automating warehouses around the country, there's still one part of Amazon's draconian business that hasn't been irrevocably touched by the cold steel hand of robotic automation, and that's package delivery—at least for now. According to The Information, Amazon is ready to take the next step in its quest to automate the final step of package fulfillment with a fleet of humanoid robots. The report, which cites an anonymous source involved in the effort, says that Amazon will test the humanoid robots at an indoor park in San Francisco that's the size of a coffee shop. Those humanoid robots are reportedly being trained to 'spring out' of Amazon's Rivian-made delivery vans for last-mile package delivery and actually drop the package at your doorstep. Apologies in advance to your dog and its already sour relationship with delivery guys. Since it's 2025, that effort to bring humanoid robots into the delivery fold is being coupled with internal attempts to craft AI software that's designed to operate the bots and guide them to your door. To me, that effort feels maybe a little ambitious considering Amazon hasn't even fully rolled out its LLM-powered Alexa+ voice assistant yet, but hey, never underestimate the appeal of automating the workforce. And naturally, since this is Amazon we're talking about, that's what this is all about. In case you weren't already aware, Amazon has a slightly strained relationship with its labor force, and this is another step toward eliminating that perceived nuisance altogether. A robot, after all, probably isn't being coded to form a union, and it certainly won't have to pee in a bottle after being forced to remain on the factory floor for too long. As much as I love the idea of humanoid robots and the pie-in-the-sky vision of our Jetsons-esque future, I can't help but feel like humanoid robots, in this case, won't really benefit anyone but Amazon in the end. I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly itching for a robot that gets confused about whether to deliver a package on the steps outside my apartment building or in the much safer foyer. We'll see if Amazon can really pull the whole robots delivering your latest impulse purchase thing off, though. There are still lots of hurdles before humanoid robots can really handle the stress of walking on two legs, or God forbid, carrying something with real weight. There's obviously no timeline on when or if robots like Digit, which is made by Agility Robotics, a company that's already partnered with Amazon on humanoid robots, will find their way to real-life applications. Digit is currently being tested in Amazon's factories, but those are much more controlled conditions than, say, the chaotic streets of New York City, where I—and millions of other people—live. Those obstacles won't stop Amazon from trying, that's for sure. Best of luck, Digit, or whatever robot lands this unpaid perma-internship with Amazon; if past employer/employee relationships are any indication, you're going to need it.
