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Choosing a Hikvision NVR for 16 Cameras
DS-7616NI-K2/16P // DS-7616NI-I2/16P // DS-7716NI-K4/16P // DS-7716NI-I4/16P
There are 2 families to choose from when looking for an NVR for a 16 camera system: the 7600 family or the 7700 family. Within these 2 families are 2 series; -I series and -K series meaning that there are a total of 4 NVRs to choose from.DS-7616NI-K2/16P // DS-7616NI-I2/16P // DS-7716NI-K4/16P // DS-7716NI-I4/16P
In this post we'll break down the key specification, features and differences of these NVRs and hopefully make the choice easier.
Key Features and Specification
All of these NVRs also support smart features from Hikvision's cameras and a range of other features such as HDD quota and smart search.
Let's take a look at some of the key features and specification and find out exactly what they mean:
Recording Resolution - The resolution of a camera tells us how many million pixels will be in it's images. 8MP = 8 million and 12MP = 12 million. Currently, the highest resolution available in Hikvision's most recent range is 8MP. This is really high quality and pretty much the best consumers can get on the market for a CCTV system.
12MP cameras are rare and tend to be something like a DS-2CD63C2F-IVS Hikvision Fisheye camera. However, 12MP spread across a 360° field of view isn't actually very impressive and the image would seem of low quality.
To summarize the above points, either the 76/77-K series or 76/77-I series NVR would be a great choice unless you were looking to use above an 8MP camera. If you'd like to see some different resolution's compared please see our post on differences in camera resolutions.
Incoming Bandwidth and H.265+ - You may be wondering how you're supposed to know whether 160 Mbps worth of incoming bandwidth is enough bandwidth to support your 16 cameras. Below is a guide to roughly how many Mbps are needed by 3MP, 5MP and 8MP cameras from the Hikvision EasyIP 3.0 (G1) Family:
With H.265 at 15fps -
3MP - 2.5Mbps
5MP - 4.2Mbps
8MP - 6.7Mbps
With H.265+
There aren't any exact measurements for how many Mbps are used by cameras running H.265+ yet but Hikvision's literature tells us that H.265+ offers a 83.7% saving over H.264 and a 66.8% saving over H.265.
In conclusion, you could use 16 x 8MP cameras on all 4 NVRs and have no incoming bandwidth issues.
Please see here for an article explaining H.265 and H.265+ video compression.
H.265+ also offers a huge saving on storage needs meaning that hard drives will reach maximum capacity much slower. Western Digital Purple hard drives are recommended for CCTV use and are available in a range of sizes from 1TB-10TB. I use this storage calculator to help customers choose a hard drive size.
Outgoing Bandwidth - This tells us how much outgoing traffic the NVRs can handle. This covers things such as remote viewing your system from a browser or from an app such as Hik Connect. If you'd like to know how Hik-Connect works you can take a look at our post explaining Hik-Connect in a nutshell. We can see from the comparison that the 77 family has a slightly higher outgoing bandwidth than the 76 family.
Physical Differences
7600 Series
Both the DS-7616NI-K2/16P and the DS-7616NI-I2/16P look the same at the front and have the same interfaces on the back.
7700 Series
The 77 series is a noticeably bigger to make room for the additional 2 SATA interfaces inside. You'll also notice that there are more alarm interfaces than the 76 series.
In November 2017 there was a new V4 firmware release for Hikvision NVRs which changed the user interface dramatically. However, this firmware was only made available to the -I series NVRs and this is still how the situation remains today. We aren't sure whether this firmware will be made available for the -K series.
You can look at our article about the New Version 4 Firmware for Hikvision NVRs if you'd like more information.
Hikvision also recently released a video called "Hikvision Product Lecture -- I series NVR V4 .1. 50 Firmware Introduction" which will explain a few more of the key differences.
One other thing to note is that only the -I series NVRs support POS integration.
For some users this may be enough of a reason to make the jump from the -K to the -I series. For others, it may not be an issue but it's something we like to mention so that our customers are aware!
What's in the Box?
- NVR
- Power supply
- SATA cables
- A short network patch cable
- Mouse
- Screws for hard drives
- Software disk (The software disk is often out of date so please check here for the most up to date Hikvision software)
- User manual (Customers often complain about how unclear this manual is so we wrote our own "Getting started with your Hikvision system" tutorial which we think is much better
)
Something we've been asked about recently is whether we plan to stock the Hiwatch series of NVRs and cameras. We decided not to sell Hiwatch for a number of reasons but it boils down to quality and future-proofing:
- Only cameras up to 4MP are supported
- Only supports H.264+ video compression
- Hiwatch NVRs don't receive any firmware updates
- There has been reported issues about mixing Hikvision cameras with Hiwatch NVRs and vice versa
- Hiwatch is already being phased out to make way for another budget series called Hilook
- The 76 family has a smaller maximum memory capacity than the 77 family
- The 76 family has less alarm I/Os than the 77 family
- The -K series has a lower recording resolution than the -I series
- The -K series has lower outgoing bandwidth than the -I series
If you're interested in which is the best 4-Channel NVR then please take a look at one of our previous articles.
If you're trying to figure out which is the best NVR for 8 cameras then take a look at last weeks article.
Next week I'll be taking a look at 32 channel NVRs.
As usual, if you have any questions please feel free to contact us!
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