How Well Does Sony’s 4K IP Surveillance Camera Perform?

SSI put the Sony SNC-VM772R fixed dome camera under the microscope.
Published: July 20, 2016

SONY has been supplying products to the CCTV industry for many years. Its video surveillance offerings have primarily been based on the IPELA line of CCTV cameras.

The test assembly I was shipped included a mounting bracket and cap to allow the camera to be mounted in a traditional wall mount method. The bracket and cap were also of high quality and the pieces mated well for assembly.

The only issue I had when assembling the parts to test their fit was with a gasket that is part of the cap assembly. I worked on getting the gasket to sit in the groove inside the cap for 10 minutes and didn’t have very much luck getting it to stay in place. This was with the unit sitting on my test bench, so I can only imagine what it would be like trying to get the gasket to stay in place in the field on top of a ladder. It may be possible to get the gasket to stay in place with a couple of dabs of silicone caulk but, that is something I wasn’t going to try with a demo unit.

As can be seen in the photograph above, the camera has a half moon of IR illuminators built into the camera housing. The camera also has a rubbery lens protector/shroud that, when placed properly, allows the lens to block out the majority of the IR “blowback” that can be seen on the domes of IR equipped cameras.


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Features

The SNC-VM772R has many nice features and is designed to provide the end user with a robust video image. The unit gets its picture quality from a 1.0 type back illuminated Exmor R CMOS sensor, which allows the unit to render the 4K video image. This sensor also allows the camera to obtain excellent detail in bright sunlight or in very low light conditions.

The camera provided a detailed image when set up in an outdoor test environment. The colors were vibrant and the image was clear throughout the image field. The camera’s lens assembly can be remotely zoomed in or out to provide whatever field of view is desired. The camera can optically zoom in 2.9x plus the unit can also zoom in 2.0x digitally and “clear image zoom” for a total of 11.6x zoom.

The SNC-VM772R has several unique design offerings when it comes to the video images that can be configured from the camera’s video streams. The camera’s Intelligent Coding programming allows the end user to focus the camera’s higher image quality on two specific zones of interest while retaining the peripheral areas at a lower image quality through a high compression ratio. With the Intelligent Cropping feature, the end user can focus on up to four areas of the camera’s field of view with 4K resolution while retaining the overall field of view in full HD mode. Both of these settings allow the end user to reduce their overall network bandwidth by up to 50% versus the 4K standard image.

The SNC-VM772R has a half moon of IR illuminators built in to its housing, and a rubbery lens protector/shroud to block out the majority of IR “blow-back.”

Keep reading to see the final report card…

Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series