Overall, Sapphire Audio Visual Experts did a good job installing three cameras, three Ethernet wall plates (two 1-port plates, and one pass-through plate), and one WiFi access point in my house. If I need additional Ethernet routed in my house I will probably come back to them.
The good:
- There were no surprises with the price. The price I was quoted was the price I paid.
- Everything worked right away. There were no major problems with any of the work.
- The installation was fast. The crew arrived at around 9:30am and was done at around 3:30pm the same day.
- They were able to improvise. The original plan was to install a 6-port Ethernet plate that I provided. However, it turned out that there was not enough room in the wall for my plate. Thankfully, the installers were able to install a pass-through plate that they provided.
The bad:
- Two of the three cameras still had a protective plastic sheet applied to the lens. This caused the video image from the cameras to look slightly washed out at night. It took me a minute to surmise that it was probably because of that plastic sheet. I had to get on a ladder to remove the plastic sheets from the two cameras.
- One of the cameras was not fully secured. While I was up on the ladder removing the plastic sheet from one of the cameras, I noticed that the camera was a bit loose. I had to bust out my screwdriver to tighten it up.
- I seemingly got no discount for providing my own Ethernet cables. It's not a huge deal, but 600' of Cat6 cost me $84 on Monoprice.
- The cameras were not placed quite exactly where I specified. Two of the cameras are placed so that there is some wall in the video frame. All security cameras have wide-angle lenses, so I hoped that the installers knew where to best place the cameras in order to avoid walls showing up in the video frame. I was able to jiggle, rotate, and zoom the cameras into a pretty good position -- but it's not perfect.
- The cleanup was lacking a bit. After the crew left I had to hop on my ladder to close the access door to my attic, and clean up some minor trash left in the yard.
For those looking to get similar work done, I've attached the $1,483.02 quote. read more