Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought 5 of these cameras: (3) IP3M-941 and (2) IP2M-841 models. All of them are constantly checking in / dialing home to AWS servers (several IP Addresses including 35.169.221.250 and 54.84.228.44) that Amcrest uses for their cloud service and I believe to check for firmware updates. The problem is I am not using their cloud service as I have all my recordings saved on a local NVR. Also from what I found while googling, despite the manual check button on the web interface, the camera still checks every couple of seconds for new firmware anyway? I contacted Amcrest support and after a bunch of back and forth, their final response is shown below... "I checked with our product engineers and this behavior is intended. " Funny thing is, they have a support page that states something that contradicts this (again shown below)... "With respect to the Amcrest Cloud connection, each time your camera is powered on it goes in to "listening" mode for 2 hours while waiting for a confirmed connection from Amcrest Cloud. If you do not set up your Amcrest Cloud within 2 hours, the signal will stop." and there was another support article that said something similar... "Built into all of our Amcrest IP cameras is a security feature that disables the ability for an Amcrest IP camera previously connected to a network for more than two (2) hours to be added to amcrestcloud.com. The reason for this feature is to ensure that unauthorized users will not be able to connect the device to alternative accounts. " Obviously, what I was told was a fallacy. I had these cameras connected for weeks and they never stop trying to contact Amcrest AWS cloud service. I am currently blocking these connections with firewall rules, which is causing my log file to balloon because each camera tries to contact Amcrest's AWS service every 5 seconds or so. If you want better control of your data then avoid these cameras like the plague. I have other modern cameras on my network that do not "dial home" when I disable that feature. NOT SURE WHY AMCREST WOULD THINK THIS BEHAVIOR IS ACCEPTABLE. Many power users prefer our devices not creating backdoors into our network with random Internet connections. Besides this major "bug" in the firmware, the cameras are pretty decent for the price. The image is excellent in the day but only OK at night. Vertical panning is quite limited (less than 80 degrees I believe) but horizontal panning is much better (almost a full 360 degrees). Image quality between the 2MP and the 3MP is not that distinguishable but the 3MP consumes much more bandwidth on your network as expected. If Amcrest ever fixes their buggy firmware this would be a camera I could recommend to others. If they do, I will be happy to update this review. -Jeff