Hik-Connect - for End user Reviews

I keep on making the mistake of updating HikConnect. First, I could keep all of my cameras on HD. Yes, the cameras were choppy, but I prefer quality over quantity. Then an update made all cameras automatically display as Basic, and I then needed to set them to HD every time I switched cameras. So I tried contacting the company through the feedback feature in HikConnect . No reply.

Now, this most recent update only displays one camera and I must manually add each camera EVERY time I want to see my cameras. Close out of HikConnect ? Add each camera again. Maybe I want to multitask, and according to Hik-connect I lose connection for a bit? Oh, that's means I need to login again to Hik-connect, and I then need to add each camera, again. I can't view the cameras I have installed immediately when I need to. Please, change HikConnect back to what worked before. This current version is not an upgrade.

Ultimately, considering I bought my system to use on my mobile devices (like anyone else living in the 21st century), I would not recommend others buying Hikvision products until they fix the very methods you must employ to use those said products. A hi-def CCTV system is only worth buying if it's hi-def and a CCTV system. Not mobile friendly = not a CCTV system worth buying in my book. I'll wait to buy any more cameras (have 6, need 10 more) until this gets fixed.

Like others have stated, the account vanishes as soon as you log in. Soon as you open HikConnect , there is a brief flash on the screen and everything disappears. Can’t see any cameras again, even though still logged in. You have to delete HikConnect , re-download and log back in. But that only works for a couple of uses. Then it does it again. Have to delete and start all over. Not good. Please fix as soon as possible. This is useless as it stands right now. When it worked, it was 5 stars. I’ll revise my review when you fix! Thanks…

It has been fixed with latest update! Works great again. 5 stars!

On my second system and it is not good. The Cameras are supposed to be HD, honestly I do not notice any improvement. The system crashes often. When this company provides an update you can count 100% that it will totally mess your phone, pad and computer viewing.
If you call this company’s Tech Support, it prompts you to press #1 to leave a message as they only work bankers hours 9-5. Back to trying to leave a Tech Support Message... pressing the number 1 does nothing but rewind the message. Totally frustrating.
If you are counting upon this system for your personal safety at your home... look somewhere else! I just emailed the company that I have a relationship with and who recommended this system to me and asked that they come asap and remove it then find me a better one that works. One whereby the actually company itself answers the phone and if you send them an email for tech support, it is kicked back as a bad email address.

Very disappointed, going to dump it asap and never look back. Do your homework before you commit thousands of dollars in custom installation and get let down. Heaven forbid if you experience an act of violence or break in and this system is down. Oh and I angry at this company’s lack of customer service.

This is one of the worst pieces of iOS software I’ve ever had the displeasure to use. It’s badly designed, it’s not easy to use, it violates many iOS conventions, it crashes a lot and clearly the developers did not understand how to write a decent iOS app. The thing I find most frustrating is how the developers have not made correct use of the iOS APIs which makes HikConnect difficult to use because it does not function the way other iOS apps do. Another thing that contributes to the poor quality of HikConnect is that it is just plain ugly, well designed iOS apps are usually aesthetically pleasing but not this one. The developers of HikConnect also did not bother to get HikConnect properly translated into English so there are horrible mistranslations such as when one is asked whether one wishes to overwrite existing data and HikConnect asks one if one “wants to cover it”. A truly horrible piece of software, if people have given HikConnect a rating of 4.7 it’s only because they like the information HikConnect makes available not because it’s a good app. YUK !

I am not impressed at all. We had security cameras installed and specifically requested to be able to have remote access. The cameras are wonderful, but the remote access via HikConnect has been very inconsistent and unstable. Initially we were getting a lot of “device offline” notices when we tried to access the cameras from a remote location. After talking to the security company It was explained to us that the cameras were working as expected, but that the instability was coming from HikConnect itself.
This problem seem to have been corrected after a short period of time with an update and then the most recent update that occurred a couple of days ago has been nothing but trouble again. It is been “device offline” ever since and there is nothing we can do about it.
Not impressed And now we have a need that continues to be unmet. No remote access!

I generally don’t write reviews for any app. The update that was released about 2 weeks ago caused me to lose the ability to control the camera from my ipad. I am running a Hikvision PTZ camera through a Hikvision NVR. I never had a problem with either device. In my opinion,the image quality of the Hikvision camera is unsurpassed. I was really disappointed when this problem occurred. Within days, Hikvision released an update which corrected the problem. I am very happy that unlike a lot of developers that release updates and abandon them, these developers seem to be pro-active and worked quickly to resolve
problems with HikConnect .

Old black control box of Camera system was troubleshooted remotely and very effectively by Dermot Breslin of Reliable Security Products Ltd. From Dublin to our home in Rosslare Co. Wexford. Without Dermot’s skill and perseverance we would never have found the root cause of this problem. It is vitally important to us as we live abroad and rely on the Camera System. Dermot sent the Hikvision control box and a camera to us overnight and it was picked up in Wexford at 8:00 am next morning. The new system was up and running by 10 am same say with Dermot’s guidance and expertise. This was just a brilliant customer service experience backed up with a great brand.

Version 4.15.0 released on June 9, 2021 causes errors and full system crashes. After updating to 4.15 I could no longer view my cameras. On top of that I noticed that every time I did try to view them via HikConnect the entire system would freeze up and reboot. My iPad with the older 4.12 version still worked perfectly……until it updated to 4.15 and now that one causes the same errors and reboots as my iPhone.

Update:

Version 4.15.1 released on June 24, 2021 and addresses whatever the problem was with 4.15.0. Everything works perfectly again.

I suspect that all of you who are having problems with HikConnect must not know what your doing. It works just fine for me. I’ve never had an issue adding a camera, or NVR. The stream is selectable. It defaults to the sub stream (for a reason) but you can change it to the HD feed if you want. My only complaint is that I haven’t figured out a way to separate different alarms. I want to be notified by my doorbell camera if someone hits the button, but I don’t like my phone constantly alerting me every time a cat walks by! I wish I could silence the motion alarm, while retaining the intercom alarm

Please restore the auto connect to all devices to allow customers with multiple devices to scroll through all cameras/all devices without the need to manually select the device to view the cameras. It was removed on the last update. This was a great feature for customers with multiple devices. This feature is important for multi sites/devices. This is an advantage over other competitors and it’s a great feature. Please restore this feature. Other than that, we have no issues. Great app.

Hik Connect (HC) is improvement on 11 month older Hik Vision iVMS 4500 lite. Hope HC will update frequently, weekly/monthly, unlike the yearly or longer wait for other Hik apps. Please Hik, please add real world practical features, such as: 1. NOTIFICATIONS per cam! with Hik recorder at 16 cams, imagine getting 250+ notifications daily! this way you can turn Notification on specific cams on/off! 2. TURN ON/Off individual CAMS. in case you are not traveling/out & do not want your privacy, if every room has cams, to be disturbed. 3. Allow Notifications per eMAIL and/or sms and/or screen, give choice. 4. SEARCH notification videos by cam to avoid 100s/1000s to scroll througj.
5. RENAME CAMS in/from app
thank you

I use the Hikvision app on both my IPad and IPhone about 2 or 3 months ago HikConnect was updated. They changed the PTZ function previously the pan and tilt functions were separate from the zoom, the pan and tilt icon was on the bottom left corner of my screen and the zoom was on the bottom right. “Very easy to operate” now for some stupid reason they combined both the pan/tilt and zoom into one icon which now means you have to exit out of pan/tilt in order to use zoom or exit out of zoom in order to perform pan/tilt. You have to continually do this step constantly if you’re following a moving object. I hope Hikvision gets enough negative feedback and changes the PTZ function back the way it was previously “separate icons for pan/tilt and zoom”

The iOS app is clunky at best. The UI is very poor and cumbersome. Calls come through like typical phone calls; however, accepting the call really does nothing. If the Call button is pressed and my phone is locked, it takes multiple steps to be able to fully answer the call and communicate with the caller. I have launch HikConnect , tap a fingerprint icon (not really a Touch ID) in the center of the HV screen, perform a Touch ID, then touch the icon in HikConnect associated with my camera, wait for the video to fully load and then touch the microphone icon. A lot of times, the process simply times out and the camera says “we are not available.” Good gracious, could it get worse?

“I really like having my car parked at Rockwell Storage” knowing that it is secured at all time’s”. “Suzanne does an excellent job there and is alway’s very pleasant and she is very helpful whenever I ask her for some assistance”. “Thank you for giving me this opportunity to respond to your request of this survey and I hope it is helpful”. “My Best Regards”, Joe Simonini “Happy Holidays To All Of You”⛄️

“Glad I have my car in a safe place and I like how you keep the area clean all the time”.

Cameras have great picture, live view works fine, but the whole reason for having security cameras is so you can easily playback recent events....not so with HikConnect. Playback FAILS TO LOAD 95% of the time and even when it does you are stuck watching the video in real time i.e. no fast forward or rewind, to go forward or back wether a couple of minutes or 2hrs you have to move the slider which leaves you back with the fails to load problem.
Unless you can sit an watch your cameras all day/night, or you happen to be really lucky checking them at the exact time something you need to see is happening, or if you have time to go sit at the base station(ff/rw feature works there) to review footage every time something happens then
Don’t Waste Your Money On This System!!!

Overall app is pretty functional in meeting my needs. It does have a few flaws that need fixing, the main one is after logging out and logging back in at times you have to start the cameras again. Much easier if once you present your credential it brings up live view with all the cameras. Overall it’s pretty fast and provide quick access to notification, live view and play back

The cameras are fantastic however the networking connection to HikConnect is horrible. On top of that the customer service is rude.
I asked them why they make the system so difficult to connect and their answer is that basically as an end user you should not be connecting the system to your network and Hik-connect app, as it is the job of a technician. I’m not sure why hik connect over complicates the set up
Process. Why can’t they simplify or just spell out the process on HikConnect instead of making you find some obscure menu on their web site to connect the system ?
My cheap Arlo camera was a cinch to connect, I don’t see why Hik-Connect can’t make it easy., it’s not rocket science.

We recently had several cameras and a doorbell installed. Nothing but problems. We get hundreds of notifications daily because the cameras will not save changes we made. We have changed all sorts parameters but they change right back (microphone, sensitivity). What good is it when you get over 500 notifications in a day. We can’t possibly check each one because it continues to send a notification every time afar goes by. We have shut off microphone ( comes right back on) moved sensitivity to the minimum and changed area to steps of the porch. But still hundreds of notifications daily. Horrible app!!! I would give it a “0” if I could.

HikConnect gets 2 starts for working.
The cameras connect slowly, but I guess I’m lucky that they do anyway. HikConnect does NOT support the iPhone X despite it receiving multiple updates since the phone’s release, which is particularly annoying. And finally, it shows more cameras than you have on your account and lists them as buffering but they never load. For example we have 4 cams on our account but HikConnect always shows 6. 4 cameras load and we can see the live feed but the other 2 say buffering all the time. This is stupid because we only have 4 cameras.
Anyway, not a very good app and not a very good company.

Since last update when i run HikConnect it go out (crash)! so i hope you have solution for that soon as possible.

Generally HikConnect is good but should be ( preset ) in PTZ control when i use 4g/5g ,because now preset jut work when i connect to the same wifi that Hik NVR is connected and use local network configuration , but when i am outside my home and use remote configuration thae preset not work with 4g/5g network.

HikConnect gets 2 starts for working.
The cameras connect slowly, but I guess I’m lucky that they do anyway. HikConnect does NOT support the iPhone X despite it receiving multiple updates since the phone’s release, which is particularly annoying. And finally, it shows more cameras than you have on your account and lists them as buffering but they never load. For example we have 4 cams on our account but HikConnect always shows 6. 4 cameras load and we can see the live feed but the other 2 say buffering all the time. This is stupid because we only have 4 cameras.
Anyway, not a very good app and not a very good company.

The people giving HikConnect a negative rating are not familiar with how their internet effects the stream of their cameras. If you have a poor upload speed at the camera’s site, you’re going to run into issues trying to view them remotely from HikConnect. That is not HikConnect ’s fault, you just need a faster upload speed from your internet provider.

The problem I’m having is when you view a single camera and set the HD to better picture, it goes away after I view the next full screen camera. It will not hold at HD... So when you view it in full screen again you have to set it to HD again. Needs to be fixed. We also need to be able to adjust the brightness and contrast. I hope this can be fixed. Other than that, it loads up fast. New update Nov 12, 2019 a little better but now in hd it goes into streaming and stuck at 60% you have to hit the clear button for it to come in.

I have had these cameras for 6months now. The installer said we purchased the best of the best as far as the cameras go. Only being able to view the cameras from an APP only is and not from a website disappointing. When trying to review past activity on HikConnect that never works the way it is supposed to i can only load past footage only up to 90% on HikConnect then says network error. HikConnect is updated. I have tried many times on both cellular and wifi. I am ready to have simply safe come and remove these cameras and go back to ADT cameras which i had for 5 years with no issues.

It’s annoying that this system doesn’t work properly, when sometime happen and there is no energy for a while, when the systems came back it sets automatically to the date 1970 which is insane, I mean you can’t not make a playback it something bad happen in that time lapse because of the date, if this work with internet, why the hell it doesn’t go to the actual date? You can’t no be all days all time seeing if the date change because of the system and then u do this for security but when u really need to check something on the cameras you can’t see anything for you bad system.