Yup, understood that is at least part of the reason. I’m sure bandwidth into/out of AWS is another part. The happy medium would to be able to choose to save lower compression files to the SD card. But as I said -
Ring updated their cameras via firmware to get 2k up from 1080p and now Tapo have 4k cameras about to launch,
EDIT: it was Ring not Blink.
I think Reolink has 4k as well.
2K is overkill for me. V3 is my ideal camera.
Options are nice, but then folks will want 8K for $35.
1080P is 2k (there are several formats that fall under 2k, and 1080P is one of them). A lot of companies have started using “2K” as a marketing term for 1080P. So the firmware update may have changed some wording but that’s about it.
These companies aren’t in the business of putting in high resolution image sensors then disabling them via firmware (unless they also offer a subscription to “unlock” the higher resolution, which they would do from day 1).
1920x1080 is not 2k, it would need be 2048x1080.
They (it was Ring not Blink) AFAIK updated to around 1440p, I have owned Eufy 2K (2304 x 1296) and Tapo 2K (2688 × 1520) cameras.
I have seen cams that claim to have higher res sensors even though the video is say 1440p they can take 4k stills
There is no excuse today in 2025 for not having 4k options with a decent bitrate even over 2.4GHZ but many do 5GHZ also and No I do not expect it to cost as little as £20-40.
1920x1080 is one of many flavors of “2K” as I mentioned.
Just like “4K” can be 3996 or 4096
Those would both be considered 2.5K (maybe not 2304, that’s a strange one)
1440P is 2.5K, which is what several Wyze cams are using now.
I do not like the “K” notation since it does not tell you the actual resolution. At least HD, FHD, QHD, UHD, SUHD, etc refer to one specific resolution.
Of course, that’s extremely common to have one resolution for video and another for stills. The image sensor is the resolution of the best still it can take, but the CPU or something else can’t keep up for video recording.
Excuse? They don’t need an excuse, they release the products they want to release, if you don’t like them, you buy another brand. Considering they seem to want 1Mbit/sec max for their video streams, 4K wouldn’t buy you much, they’d just crank the existing extremely high compression up even more.
I’m a proponent of them having two lines of cameras, a cheap standard line and a more expensive pro line with stuff like 4K resolution, lower compression, etc. Detailed that in a “pipe dream” post at one point. But obviously, I don’t decide what they’re going to release. They have a target market, I don’t see them swaying from that.
Wow. I learned something new, if true.
Can you provide any technical reference?
I am curious and may need to update my thinking.
The “K” notation is far from a “standard”, hence my dislike for it, it gets abused for marketing. At least the other marketing terms they’re using now (HD, FHD, QHD, etc) refer to a specific horizontal and vertical resolution, there is no abiguity. Of course the least ambiguity is the old 1080P, 1440P, etc, but some marketing folks decided to ditch that.
You just had to quote a Reolink site huh? They’re actually listing a 2.5K resolution as 2K in that quote…
For television and consumer media, the dominant resolution in the same class is [1920 × 1080]
Examples of 2K resolutions|Format|Resolution|[Display aspect ratio|Pixels|
| — | — | — | — |
|2K scan from 35 film (typical)|2048 × 1556|1.32:1 (512:389, ≈4:3)|3,186,688|
|DCI 2K (native resolution)|2048 × 1080|1.90:1 (256:135, ≈17:9)|2,211,840|
|DCI 2K (flat cropped)|1998 × 1080|1.85:1|2,157,840|
|DCI 2K (CinemaScope cropped)|2048 × 858|2.39:1|1,755,136|
|QXGA|2048 × 1536|1.33:1 (4:3)|3,145,728|
|WUXGA|1920 × 1200|1.60:1 (16:10)|2,304,000|
|Full HD|1920 × 1080|1.78:1 (16:9)|2,073,600|
|QWXGA|2048 × 1152|1.78:1 (16:9)|2,359,296|
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I thought the measurements were vertical x horizontal. The second number should be near 2000.
It is confusing.
Thanks for the info but I am still confused.
I need to read more.
Resolutions are horizontal x vertical, but when referred to as 1080P, 1440P, etc that is the vertical number only, to make it confusing. So 1080P (1920x1080) is 1080 vertical lines. Screens are wider than they are tall which makes it easy to remember.
1080P = 1920x1080 = FHD (Full HD) = 2K (but it isn’t the only 2K).
They never bothered creating a “K” for 720P HD, it would be like 1.3K or maybe 1.5K
Pretty much everything except the actual resolution in number format is marketing. Another example is UHD and SUHD (SUHD just being a Samsung version of UHD/4K, like when they had QLED to make you think you were getting OLED).
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Thanks @dave27 . I will ponder on this more tomorrow. I am beginning to understand your logic.