DVR Review - Hikvision DS-7204 4 Channel DVR

I recently purchased a Hikvision DS-7204 4 Channel DVR. Here is my review.

1.The overall appearance of the DVR is sleek, simple and small. Can be controlled by buttons, mouse, or remote control.

2. Upon turning on the DVR, the DVR appears to process live video just fine. I know this sounds like an obvious feature it should have but I have bought a few chinese DVR's in the past where the video looks washed out and ugly. This one appears to check out fine

3)My initial thoughts of user interface was pretty simple and straightforward. It definetely wasnt the "prettiest" interface I have seen, it was actually kind of boring, but it was very easy to understand and straightforward which is the most important thing in my book. One thing that I thought was odd is whenever I wanted to set a channels settings and copy those settings over to my other channels, I would have to completely reboot the DVR.

4) Some early recognizable features are it records in either Qcif, CIF, 2CIF, 4CIF. Bit rate is fully customizable up to 2mbps

5) I did my first test run on recording it in 4CIF. At 4CIF, it allows me to record at 6FPS per channel. If I wanted to go CIF, I could have 30 FPS. But I prefer to record at the highest quality so I set it to CIF. By Default, it switched the Bit rate to 896 KBPS. I tried it on this setting because I assume that most typical users would not know what bit rate means and would keep it at that setting as well. I played back the recorded video and it looked fairly well as it should at D1, very slightly compressed looking but nothing to get aggravated about. Nothing too overly compressed and no artifacts. The one thing that does suck is when recording at D1, it can record all channels simultaneously at D1 but it will not playback all 4 channels in D1 simultaneously or show a quad view playback in D1, this means you have to select the D1 file you want to watch and if you want to watch another camera, you have to stop that recording and go back into the menu and select the other file. Supposedly, you can get multi-channel playback if CIF is used but I couldnt get it to work for some reason. Also, one thing I noticed is recording rez didnt look much different between 896 kbps and 2 mbps. Cif recording actually looked pretty good compared to alot of other CIF DVR's I have seen, still, you cant beat D1.

6) The web GUI was pretty easy to use and straightforward. Actually probably one of the DVR's stronger qualities. See screenshots below for pic.

Thats about all I tested. All in all, I give it a B-. Only reason I didnt give it a higher grade is because of the inability to have more than 1 channel playback. I can understand if I had a DVR that was 8 or 16 channels, and it could only playback 4 channels, that is fine with me. But to only playback one channel at a time is kind of frustrating. But there are some other great strong qualities about the DVR, so it should work for most small business owners or homeowners.

Let me add to this review; you have reviewed an old/discontinued model, DS-7204HI-VS. I am quite positive this model (which has been on the market for quite a few years) is no longer being manufactured, and it has been replaced with DS-7204HVI-ST, which is a renewed unit.

7204HI-VS: http://www.hikvision.com/En/Products_show.asp?id=20

7204HVI-ST: http://www.hikvision.com/En/Products_show.asp?id=1919

Some differences; the new model has 4ch audio input, the old model only has one. New model can record D1 at 12fps on all channels, old model could only record up to D1 6fps. New model has two USB connectors (front/back) which is great to use mouse and memory stick at the same time, old model only had one USB connector on the back. 7204HVI-ST does support playback of 4ch at the same time, but I think that the old model also did, maybe it does not support it over web interface, but I think it was possible locally.

Also, 7204HVI-ST uses the newest firmware series from Hikvision, which is way better than the one the old 72xx recorders had. The unit you have reviewed has a very old firmware/interface, as you said kind of boring, that interface is gone for good.

Interesting to know. Thanks. This was my first Hikvision DVR to test, although I wasnt dissapointed, I was expecting more from Hikvision. Its good to know that they made some improvements on the new model.

Interesting to know. Thanks. This was my first Hikvision DVR to test, although I wasnt dissapointed, I was expecting more from Hikvision. Its good to know that they made some improvements on the new model.

I install lots of Hikvision, and the 7200 is the "budget" series. A 7204 is just a little bit more expensive than any non brand chinese DVR, and is way better not just in hardware, but I think most importantly in software. While it is an old series and it has been around for many years, with newer and better Hikvision models around, now with the HVI-ST models I think they have brought them back to life again.

New firmware/menu system is way better