To choose a Hikvision camera kit, count the doors and the spots you need to see, then add any cameras you may want later. A kit with 4 cameras covers a front door, a back door and two more spots, such as a driveway and a side gate. An 8 camera kit suits a larger house, a garage plus a house, or a small shop. A 16 camera kit is for bigger sites. Treat these as a rule of thumb, not a rule: the layout of your own property decides.
How to count the cameras you need
Walk round the outside first. Mark every door and ground floor window someone could use, then the places you want a clear view of, such as the drive, a gate, a yard or the garage. Each of those is one camera. Inside, a camera on the hall or the main stairs is usually enough. If your count lands between two sizes, pick the larger kit: an unused channel on the recorder costs nothing, while a full recorder means buying a second one.
The Hikvision kits at a glance
Every kit we sell is Hikvision and arrives as one box: the recorder, the cameras and a hard drive. The drive size is in each kit's title.
| Cameras | Kits | Recorder | Hard drive | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 7 | iDS-7204HQHI-M1/XT or iDS-7204HUHI-M1/XT | 1TB | Coax (Turbo HD) |
| 4 | 5 | DS-7604NXI-K1/4P | 1TB | PoE |
| 4 | 3 | DS-7616NXI-K2/16P(E), 16 channels | 1TB | PoE |
| 8 | 3 | IDS-7208HQHI-M1/XT | 2TB | Coax (Turbo HD) |
| 8 | 3 | DS-7616NXI-K2/16P(E), 16 channels | 2TB | PoE |
| 16 | 2 | iDS-7216HUHI-M2/XT | 4TB | Coax (Turbo HD) |
| 16 | 2 | DS-7616NXI-K2/16P(E) | 4TB | PoE |
That is 25 kits in all. You can browse each size in our 4 camera kits, 8 camera kits and 16 camera kits categories.
PoE or coax?
A PoE kit uses network cable: one cable to each camera carries both the picture and the power, so there is no separate power supply at the camera. A coax kit uses Turbo HD cameras on coaxial cable, which suits a property where coax is already in the walls or is easier to pull than network cable. Whichever you pick, buy cameras of the same type later, because a coax recorder takes coax cameras and a PoE recorder takes network cameras. Our IP (PoE) kits page lists the PoE sets together.
Room to add more cameras later
Some PoE kits pair a 16-channel recorder, the DS-7616NXI-K2/16P(E), with only 4 or 8 cameras. Those leave free channels on the recorder, so you can grow the system without replacing it. The 4-channel and 8-channel recorders in the other kits have a channel for each camera in the box, so adding to those means a larger kit or another recorder. If you expect to add cameras, a 16-channel recorder with 4 or 8 cameras is the easiest starting point. Extra network cameras for a PoE system are in our IP cameras category.
One last check before you order: look at the hard drive in the kit title, as the 4 camera kits come with 1TB, the 8 camera kits with 2TB and the 16 camera kits with 4TB. If you plan to add cameras, a larger drive or a second one is worth considering.