Synology BC500 Review: Surveillance Station’s Solid but Pricey Native IP Cam

The BC500 is one of the first two IP cameras from Synology designed with the company’s popular Surveillance Station in mind.

As such, it simplifies the setup process, comes with many useful features/settings, and does away with the camera license normally required for a third-party cam.

In return, it’s expensive. At the suggested retail price of $219, it’s about three times the cost of other similarly-specced non-Synology cams. And it only works with Synology network video recorder (NVR) hardware.

Still, this review will explain why convenience and native support are potentially worth the hefty price for those looking for a basic non-Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) cam.

Synology BC500: A special yet typical bullet cam

The BC500 looks great and has a good build out of the box. It feels solid and sturdy. Still, overall, it’s a typical bullet cam with mounting accessories.

Unfortunately, the cam doesn’t include everything for users to get it up and running. There’s no power adapter or a PoE injector. You must have a PoE switch or a standard injector to use it.

The new IP cam features PoE (802.3af), the lowest requirement of Power over Ethernet. It has a Fast Ethernet port which caps at 100Mbps. And that’s a good thing.

For one, as a 5 MP cam using H.264 compression, the BC500 generally won’t need more than a tenth of its network port’s bandwidth, as shown in the table below. So, a Gigabit port would be overkill.

Resolution	H.264	MJPEG
1 MP (1280 x 720)	2 Mbps	6 Mbps
2 MP (1920 x 1080)	4 Mbps	12 Mbps
4 MP (2560 x1440)	8 Mbps	24 Mbps
5 MP (2880×1620)	10Mbps	30Mbps

Most importantly, the low bandwidth requirement means any standard injector or PoE switch will do—you won’t need to spend a lot extra to get it to work.

I tested the BC500 with a few Gigabit and Multi-Gig standard (active) injectors I had readily available (PoE, PoE+, and PoE++), and it worked flawlessly with each. Technically, you can use any standard low-cost injector or PoE switch, and that’d make no difference.

Still, considering its over-the-top price tag, it would be nice if a powering device was included in the package.

Synology BC500 vs. TC500: Hardware specifications

	Synology BC500	Synology TC500
General Specifications
Dimensions	Ø4.33 x 6.34 in (Ø110 x 161 mm)	Ø3.82 x 3.46 in (Ø97 × 88 mm)
Weight	0.78 lbs (353 g)	0.85 lbs (387 g)
Weather Resistance	IP67
Impact Resistance	None	IK10
Power Source	PoE (802.3af) or 12V DC
Power Consumption	4.8 W
Network Port	1 x Fast Ethernet (100Mbps) PoE
Built-in Storage	MicroSD (up to 128GB)
Operating Environment	• Temperature (IR off): -30°C to 50°C (-22°F to 122°F) • Temperature (IR on): -30°C to 40°C (-22°F to 104°F) • Relative humidity: 5% to 95% RH (non-condensing)
Certification	IP67, FCC, IC, CE, BSMI, VCCI, RCM, UKCA, KC, JATE
Environmental Safety	RoHS compliant, WEEE, REACH
NDAA / TAA Compliance	Yes
Package Contents	1 x BC500 main unit 1 x Installation guide 1 x RJ-45 connector cap cover 1 x Screw pack	1 x TC500 main unit 1 x Installation guide 1 x RJ-45 connector cap cover 1 x Screw pack
Warranty	3 years
US Availability	May 10, 2023
US MSRP	$219
Optical
Lens	2.8 mm (110° H, 56° V, 132° D LDC ON)
Aperture	F1.8
Night vision	30 meters
Shutter speed	1/16000s~1/30s
DORI	D: 60m, O: 24m, R: 12m, I: 6m
Video
Max. Streaming Resolution	5 MP (2880×1620) @ 30 FPS
Sub Streaming Capability	1920×1080 @ 15 FPS or 1280×720 @ 30 FPS
Video Compression	H.264, H.265
Image Settings	Brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, white balance, High Dynamic Range (HDR), 3D/2D noise reduction, exposure control, 50/60 Hz flicker reduction, day/night mode, overlay, privacy mask
Video Orientation	Rotation (0°, 90°, 180°, 270°) Flip Mirror
Event Analytics (available with Synology DVA Series video recorders)	People & Vehicle Detection (including Crowd Detection and Loitering Detection), Intrusion Detection, Motion Detection, Tampering Detection, Audio Detection
Instant Search	People, Vehicle, Motion
SD Card Event Recording	Disconnection from NAS People & Vehicle Detection Intrusion Detection Motion Detection Audio Detection Tampering Detection

A camera designed for the Synology Surveillance Station

At a glance, the BC500 is somewhat of a standard IP cam. It has a local web user interface for simple management, including viewing live images and other common tasks such as firmware updates.

But to take advantage of it fully, you must have a Synology NAS server—or better yet, a Synology DVA unit, such as the DVA1622—as its network video recorder (NVR) via the free Surveillance Station app.

So in many ways, the BC500 is a niche IP cam design for Synology’s ecosystem. There’s no reason to buy it unless you’re going to use it with the company’s NAS server or NVR unit.

I used my DS1821+ for the testing, and the BC500 made things much easier. (You’ll get the same experience with any other server running DSM 7.1 or later since the cam requires Surveillance Station 9.1.)

As I mentioned in the app’s review, with a third-party generic IP cam, the setup portion can be involved. You’d first need to initialize a generic camera with the network and then link it to the app. (After adding a license when you use three or more cams.)

In the case of the BC500, the app detects the cam, and users can perform the hardware initialization and ongoing maintenance directly from the app without prepping the cam separately in advance. The whole process took me just a couple of minutes with a few clicks. (Not including the time to mount the camp, run a long network cable, and other tedious but necessary tasks of getting any PoE device ready.)

Afterward, the Synology cam has dozens of settings unavailable in third-party cameras, as shown in the table above and the screenshot below.

Examples of useful features include the ability to customize people and vehicle detections based on various parameters such as crowd size, loitering pattern, vehicle motion/occupancy, etc. Other extra helpful settings also exist for recording, viewing, and event detection. Some of them I didn’t know existed.

Most importantly, most of these settings are well-designed, with practical default values—they are useful before you need to set up the parameters one by one manually.

It’s worth noting, though, that not all features of the BC500 are available to NAS servers. For example, some useful analytics—such as people/vehicle counting, license plate reader, and facial recognition—require Synology’s DVA series.

But it’s safe to say most homes and small businesses won’t need more than what they can get from the cam using a standard Synology NAS server.

Synology BC500: Detail photos

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Synology BC500: Excellent performance

I used the BC500 for over a week before publishing this review, and it proved to be a reliable cam for a serious home security system. The video and sound qualities are excellent, too.

In the short motion-activated video below, you’ll note the details in the picture quality and how the camera picked up the sound of folks unloading wood slaps across the street, almost 200 feet (60 meters) away.

The cam detected the car from over 100 feet away and added extra seconds before it appeared, which is a common and customizable feature of the Surveillance Station app.

For this footage, I set the cam’s motion detection sensitivity level at 50% and didn’t use sound detection for the recording. By the way, I cut the video some ten seconds shorter at the end per the driver’s request.

The BC500 is a security camera—you don’t get it to film a movie. Still, its picture and sound quality are good enough for some candid family memories. They are easily the best among the 5 MP cams I’ve used.

Other functions of the cam worked well, too. It never missed any motions in my testing, and the night vision was also excellent. Again, there are deep settings for these functions.

Flexible, reliable, yet rigid Edge Recording

I also tried out the Edge Recording feature, which allows the BC500 to record to a mini SD card based on certain events, and it worked as intended.

By default, the cam records to the card when it’s disconnected from the NAS server. The idea is that it’ll transfer the footage to the server when reconnected. And that worked in my trial.

But you can also make the cam record to the miniSD card and the NAS server simultaneously based on standard parameters, such as motion detection/audio and so on.

In the latter case, there’s no way to view the Edge Recording footage directly without taking the miniSD card out and plugging it into a computer, which can be a hassle if you mount the cam in a hard-to-reach place. It would be nice if there was a way to access the card via the network.

Contrary to the specs table above, the cam’s miniSD slot supports cards larger than 128GB. I tried a 400GB SanDisk card, and it worked with no issues. A larger card might work, too.

Overall, while far from perfect, it’s safe to say the BC500 is one of the best, if not the best, static security cameras I’ve used.

But considering the cost, that was within my expectations.

Conclusion

With an included camera license, which otherwise goes for almost $60 a pop, the Synology BC500 is still painfully expensive. It’s a simple IP camera that costs over $200.

But it’s the first security camera that can give you all Synology’s Surveillance Station offers. And if you are into the intricate details of a security system or want to take advantage of all the advanced settings, that novelty might be enough to make it worth the cost.

Considering that each Synology NAS server includes two camera licenses, it doesn’t make financial sense to get the BC500 as your first or second cam. But as the third or fourth one, it’s a sensible buy, and there’s a chance you’ll appreciate its convenience and features enough that you wish you had decided to build the entire system with it—only one way to find out.