Use NVR or native camera functionality?

[plusfour]

I've got a couple of IP4M-1056EW cameras and was wondering whether it was worth getting an NVR to run them or use the camera's native capabilities. What I'm interested in is mostly record on motion detection (not continuous recording) and getting sent alerts, it looks like both the cameras and the NVR can do this, with quite a bit of overlap between the two. Does the NVR use the camera's built-in motion-detection capability, or does it just treat it as a dumb camera and do the motion detection in the NVR? For this basic use, is there any benefit to getting the NVR? At the moment the main one seems to be that management is a lot easier, for the standalone camera you need to use a combination of the web interface and Android app, and some things are a bit of pain to set up, while presumably the NVR acts as a one-stop control center for everything.

A related question is which NVR to use, the info on the 2104E, 2108E, and 4108E-HS are pretty confusing (there are numerous questions in the Amazon forums about this), they all claim 6 or 8MP but it looks like the 2104 and 2108 downsample to 1080p for 30fps on multiple cameras, for example the 2108 says "Live View and Playback at 1080P 4CH 30fps / 3MP 4CH 20fps / 4MP 4CH 15fps or 2CH 30fps / 5MP 1CH 30fps / 6MP 1CH 30fps". The same model also says "8-Channel Recording at 30fps in 1080P, 3-Megapixel, 4-Megapixel, 5- Megapixel and 6-Megapixel", so it's only playback where it has problems? The 4108-HS says "8CH Recording, Playback & Live View in Up to 8MP Resolution @ Real-Time 30fps" but given the details hidden in the other NVR's specifics I'm not sure what the "up to" is hiding, is it also 1080p as you add more cameras or can it do 8MP 30fps on all 8 channels simultaneously?

[Melvin]

Hello plusfour ,

Yes the NVR basically gives a bigger storage option than the cameras SD cards. Also you can manage the setting and preview the cams from a monitor directly connected to the NVR.

With the NVR there is a limitation in live view/play back for higher resolution cameras. For example the NV2014E can record 4CH @ 30fps in 4 MP format and playback 4CH @ 15fps only where as it can playback at 1080P resolution on all 4 channels.

[plusfour]

Hi Melvin,

Thanks for that. I'm not really fussed about playback resolution, so it looks like any of the three will meet my requirements.