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WHERE RHOMBUS LOCKS IN

Open language, closed ecosystem.

A one-way drawbridge

Rhombus Relay bridges an existing camera in over ONVIF or RTSP, so the marketing is honest about openness, and the AI does run on those cameras. Nothing bridges out. Every camera you add after the first job is a Rhombus camera, and ten years of refresh cycles are decided the day the first purchase order is signed.

A price sheet that has since come down

Credit where it is due: Rhombus published a full list-price PDF, which almost nobody in cloud video does, and held it through the Verkada, Avigilon Alta and Brivo mid-2026 hike window. That PDF now redirects to a quote form, and the last archived copy is April 2025, so the figures on this page are that copy. What the licence buys is the thing IPVM files alongside Verkada and Meraki as "Hostage as a Service". Sensors and access doors bill separately on top.

Playback strains before the camera count looks big

A district IT lead running about 400 cameras posted on r/k12sysadmin that "our playback stability has been really bad with Rhombus", while adding that the cameras themselves were fine and that they had been the largest Rhombus customer at install. Their fix was buying Apple TVs to run the playback app, which they called hardly a solution. A second admin found a run-of-the-mill desktop ran out of road above twelve live HD cameras.

Search that wants the exact device name

The G2 reviews are mostly glowing, so the dissent is worth reading. One reviewer: the "search feature needs a lot of work, as it is near useless unless what you type exactly matches text in the device name. The so-called AI Search does nothing better." Another names the model rather than the software: per-camera annual licensing "adds complexity and recurring costs compared to a straightforward, flat-fee model".

AT A GLANCE

Rhombus and TetherX, question by question

The 9 questions an integrator asks on a site walk, answered for both platforms.

Question Rhombus TetherX
Do I need a recorder on site? Displaced. Rhombus cameras record to on-camera storage and the Rhombus cloud. Rhombus Relay bridges an existing ONVIF or RTSP camera in, but an existing NVR or DVR has no place in the design. TetherX provides recording, viewing, search and monitoring through one system and one app. TetherBox records locally, with optional TetherX cloud recording, so no existing recorder or third-party cloud video service is required. It can also work alongside either where needed.
Which devices you can connect Rhombus-branded cameras, or third-party RTSP and ONVIF cameras through a Relay Core N100 - $1,999 for the 2TB box, ten cameras each, plus the same console licence per camera. Firmware for those cameras stays your job; Rhombus updates only its own. 1,000+ integrations across 17,000+ device models, plus ONVIF and RTSP sources. Check model-specific recording, analytics and control support.
What your operators see on one timeline Cameras, environmental and vape sensors, access control and alarms all sit in the Rhombus Console. A genuinely unified stack, provided every part of it is Rhombus. Video, access control, intruder and automation. One operator, one timeline, one dashboard across all four.
What you can still do when the internet drops Cameras keep recording to their own card and resync afterwards. One documented catch: lose the power and the internet together, and if the power comes back first the cameras sit in a non-recording state until the link returns. The workaround Rhombus gives is your own NTP server on site. Recording, doors, alarms and automations keep running on the TetherBox, and recordings catch up with the cloud when the link returns, even after weeks offline. On the site network, the offline interface shows live view and the recordings stored on the box, and footage already in TetherX Cloud stays available remotely.
What gets sent over my internet connection? Rhombus publishes 10-30kbps per camera during regular operation - metadata, thumbnails and events go up constantly, full-resolution clips on demand. Thumbnails, metadata and events, plus the clips an operator opens. Any camera your integrator sets to record to the cloud uploads on top of that; the rest record to the TetherBox alone, so a thin line still records every camera.
Where the AI runs On-camera edge AI, and the same models on third-party cameras behind a Relay Core, with a Professional licence for standard analytics or Enterprise for face and plate. ChatGPT-powered "Insights" search added in 2025. Included TetherBox AI runs on the edge, and supported camera and third-party analytics feed the same timeline. Native video, appearance/PPE and counting run on compatible NVIDIA GPU/Jetson or Hailo compute, including Raspberry Pi AI HAT; audio runs locally on the CPU. Each module needs supported models, configuration and a capacity check. Additional modules and retention can cost extra. Optional paid Calipsa cloud verification is also available, and natural language footage search interprets requests in the cloud.
What you actually pay for Camera hardware plus an annual per-camera licence, $149/year Professional or $199/year Enterprise, $599 for an R600 multi-sensor, with separate annual fees for sensors and access doors. Retention past the on-camera card is a cloud-storage licence on top, $120/year per camera for 30 days rising to $1,440 for a year. An annual platform subscription by channel count, from £100/site/year. TetherBox AI is included; additional modules and retention can cost extra. Cloud recording is optional; specialist analytics and professional monitoring are quoted separately.
Where your recordings are stored Two regions, US and EU, and an organisation lives in exactly one of them. Offices in London, Sydney and Calgary do not come with a local region: an Australian or Canadian customer stores in America or Europe. Choose local and cloud retention per camera: mostly local, mostly cloud, or a mix. TetherBox provides on-site recording. Cloud recording is optional per camera, in a UK, EU, US, Canadian, Indian or Australian region the customer picks.
What you keep if you stop paying The cameras stop working. IPVM groups Rhombus with Verkada and Meraki in its "Hostage as a Service" bucket - a lapsed licence takes the camera with it. The TetherBox keeps a local interface for live view and recent footage with no internet and no subscription, so the site is never dark.

The Rhombus column is built from 9 public sources, listed at the foot of this page.

RHOMBUS vs TETHERX

K-12-polished closed ecosystem vs open multi-vertical.

Both channel-friendly multi-system cloud platforms. The honest read on where each one wins and where each one costs you something.

Rhombus

Strengths

Polished single-vendor stack - cameras, vape sensors, access control and alarms designed together

On-camera edge AI and ChatGPT-powered "Insights" search

Held its list prices through the 2026 vendor price-hike window

Trade-offs

Camera lock-in - the console licence is per camera whether it is a Rhombus camera or a third-party one behind a Relay

Annual per-camera licence (around $149-199/yr) on top of hardware - cameras stop working if it lapses

TetherX

Strengths

Open to 1,000+ integrations + any ONVIF device with full features - cameras already on site stay

Cloud recording optional per camera - local-only, cloud-only or both, all in one platform

Each site records to its own TetherBox, so growth adds boxes instead of loading one server

Trade-offs

You are a school and you want vape sensors, a lockdown workflow and cameras in one off-the-shelf console. Rhombus is the simpler buy.

MORE THAN A VMS

Run your control room. Or connect the ARC you already use.

TetherX supplies operator queues, verification, escalation, recorded outcomes and performance reporting within its cloud platform. Work the alarms in TetherX, or forward them into a supported monitoring platform.

First-party TetherX integration connects to Intelligent Monitoring Solutions (IMS) through Patriot, with alarm images and confirmed alarm delivery. IMS lists 800+ bureaus and two A1/R1A centres. Explore TetherX control-room workflows · IMS provider information

Other security platforms also provide operator alarm handling and monitoring integrations. Compare the supplied workflow, equipment support, licence and monitoring contract for your proposal.

AI and recording terms: TetherBox AI is included in the platform subscription. Additional modules and data retention may cost extra. Cloud recording is optional; specialist services and professional monitoring are separately scoped. See current AI coverage.

WHICH ONE FITS

Pick the one your site points at

Find the column that describes the job in front of you.

Choose Rhombus if

  • You are fitting out a school and want vape sensors, lockdown workflow, access control and cameras as one packaged console, from one vendor, with one support number
  • The site has no cameras worth keeping, so buying the camera and the platform together costs you nothing in stranded hardware
  • The estate is under a thousand cameras and unlikely to grow past it
  • The customer is comfortable storing in an American or a European region, which is the choice Rhombus offers

Choose TetherX if

  • The customer already runs cameras, recorders or door controllers worth keeping, and replacing them is not in the budget
  • The site needs video, access control and intruder answered by one operator on one timeline, across mixed vendors
  • You want cloud recording on some cameras and local-only on the rest, decided camera by camera rather than for the whole site
  • The footage has to stay in the UK, Australia, Canada or India, and Rhombus offers a US region or an EU one
  • You are running hundreds of sites and want each one recording locally rather than reporting into a single server
RUN THIS TEST ON EVERY SHORTLIST

Give every vendor the same tasks

Use representative cameras and a realistic incident, and ask the people who will run the system to do the work themselves.

  1. Find the footage of a realistic incident by place and time.
  2. Follow the person or vehicle across several cameras.
  3. Bookmark the moment and share a clip, then check the recipient can open it.
  4. Add a user who should see only their own sites.
  5. Check system health across every site from one screen.
  6. Pull the network cable. Note what keeps recording, what you can still watch on site, and what catches up when the link returns.
  7. Test one integration you rely on, such as an alarm panel, door or sensor. A video feed of another system on screen is not the same as the data behind it: check its events arrive on the timeline, where you can search them and act on them.

Start with the cameras you have. Send us your camera list, through your installer or distributor if you have one, and we'll tell you which models are supported, which features each keeps, and whether anything needs replacing.

See these tasks in a TetherX walkthrough, then run them at one of your sites with a 30-day trial through an installer partner.

Plan your evaluation with us Start a 30-day trial
FAQ

Questions before you switch from Rhombus

The product is polished and strong in K-12, healthcare, multi-site retail and self-storage, and the company history below covers who owns it. Buyers leave for one reason: they want the next ten years of camera purchases to stay their own decision.

The second reason arrives later, on the renewal. Every camera carries a console licence whether it is a Rhombus camera or a third-party one bridged through Relay, so the estate that grows also grows the annual bill. The at-a-glance table above sets out what that costs on each side.

Rhombus documents exactly two production regions, US and EU, and an organisation lives in one of them - its users, devices and video all follow. A customer in Australia or Canada with a residency requirement therefore picks an American region or a European one.

TetherX records to the TetherBox at site by default, and cloud recording is optional per camera into a UK, EU, US, Canadian, Indian or Australian region the customer picks. The choice is made per site, so one group can keep Sydney footage in Australia and London footage in the UK without running two platforms.

The at-a-glance table covers the licence. The part it does not carry is the hardware you buy first. Rhombus published its own price sheet until recently. The last archived copy, dated April 2025, lists the R400 4K varifocal dome at $1,299 with 512GB or $1,799 with 1TB. The R500 bullet runs $1,499 and $1,999, the R600 multi-sensor $4,099.

The card size is the retention: $1,299 buys 30 days on that R400 and $1,799 buys 60, decided at purchase. Going past the card is a separate cloud-storage licence, $120 a year per camera for 30 days, rising to $1,440 for a full year.

On the TetherX side there is no camera to buy, because the cameras on site already count. You pay the platform subscription by channel count through the professional channel. Native TetherBox AI is included without a separate monthly AI charge; optional cloud recording and specialist analytics such as Calipsa are quoted separately. Across the typical 1-200 camera range that lands well below an equivalent hardware-plus-licence stack, because nothing recurs per camera on the platform itself.

Vape and smoke detection in Rhombus runs on their proprietary E50 and E15 environmental sensors, paired with their cameras, lockdown workflow and alarms in one console. That bundled K-12 stack is a genuine strength and the buyer-fit block above says so plainly.

TetherX gets you there differently: the TetherBox takes the vape sensor, the door controllers and the cameras as separate purchases on one timeline, so a school can fit sensors from whoever makes the best one this year and change that decision in five years without touching the cameras.

Where it runs, and what it is billed as. Rhombus shipped ChatGPT-powered "Insights" search in 2025, and IPVM tested it that November and found it a useful tool rather than magic. The detection itself sits on the camera, or on a Relay Core for a third-party camera, and the tier decides what you get: standard analytics on a Professional licence, face and plate on Enterprise, per camera, every year.

TetherX AI video and audio detection run on suitable TetherBox hardware across supported camera brands. Natural language search interprets a footage request in the cloud, previews the filters and lets you adjust dates before searching your permitted sites. The table above lists the available analytics.

Yes. Each site records to its own TetherBox and reports into one organisation, so growth adds boxes rather than loading a single server. An operator sees every site on one dashboard, with the per-site timelines underneath. That is the architecture, not a roadmap item.

A school with four buildings and a chain with four hundred stores run the same way. On the Rhombus side, the ceiling described above is the thing to size against before you commit a district or a chain.

Yes. 30 days free trial through an integrator partner, TetherBox included, full platform access. Extensions on request.
COMPANY HISTORY

Rhombus: independent, channel-led, increasingly Honeywell-tethered

Rhombus Systems was founded in Sacramento, California in 2016. CEO Garrett Larsson. Venture-backed, approximately $84M total funding including a US$45M Series C led by NightDragon on 30 July 2024. Still independent.

The product is the same closed-ecosystem, per-camera-licence, cloud-managed model as Verkada - cameras + sensors + access control + alarms + analytics, all managed in the Rhombus Console. The differentiator is that Rhombus sells through partners rather than around them. Same IPVM "Hostage as a Service" critique applies; just delivered with less direct-sales friction.

Two notable channel events: 27 February 2025 - Rhombus acquired Dashdive, a cloud-cost-management startup. 26 March 2026 - Rhombus signed a reseller / integration deal with Honeywell. Still independent, but increasingly channel-tethered to Honeywell.

Offices sit in Sacramento, Charlotte, London, Sydney, Calgary and Taipei, so a European or Australian buyer reaches people in their own hours. The cloud does not follow the map: the developer documentation lists two production regions, US and EU, with an organisation and all its video in exactly one.

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Across the partner network

TetherX partners hold the accreditations security-procurement buyers and insurers filter on. Coverage varies by partner.

NSI 9 ISO 9001 6 SSAIB 5 SafeContractor 5 BAFE 4 CHAS 4 ConstructionLine 4 Cyber Essentials 3 NICEIC 2 ISO 14001 2

Counts reflect partners currently in the TetherX directory holding each accreditation.

References (9 public sources)
  1. Rhombus price sheet, April 2025 (archived copy)
  2. Rhombus cameras FAQ (upload bandwidth)
  3. Rhombus support: recording during a network disconnection
  4. Rhombus developer docs: API regions and data residency
  5. Rhombus: third-party camera integration through Relay
  6. r/k12sysadmin: playback at about 400 cameras
  7. r/k12sysadmin: districts running Rhombus
  8. G2 reviews (search and licensing verbatim)
  9. Rhombus Systems on LinkedIn

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[1] About this comparison. Information about other vendors is drawn from their public product pages, datasheets, integrator forums (Reddit, vendor user groups), public CVE databases (NVD, CISA), publicly-listed LinkedIn company pages (headcount, headquarters, founding year, leadership transitions and corporate ownership signals) and customer conversations - accurate to the best of our knowledge as of Q3 2026. Pricing, features, security posture and policies change. A vendor may have shipped a fix, dropped a price, added a region or changed an architecture since this page was last reviewed.

If you believe anything here is inaccurate or out of date, please contact us and we will review and correct it. Trademarks and product names belong to their respective owners and are referenced here for identification only.

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