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• ERA5 describes moderate-intensity rainfall, but fails for hourly/daily precipitation. • ERA5-HRES outperforms ERA5-Land in detecting rainfall magnitude and rainfall events. • ERA5 performs best in coastal cities and mountainous vegetation areas during the wet and dry season, respectively. • ERA5 is insufficient in reproducing precipitation in areas with high urbanization level. Precipitation is an important component of the global water cycle. A comprehensive understanding of precipitation characteristics, especially that in urban areas, is essential for practical applications in hydrology. ERA5, a state-of-the-art reanalysis product with wide temporal coverage as well as fine spatial and temporal resolution, has greater potential to reproduce precipitation than many other products. However, how ERA5 precipitation performs has not been well investigated in urban areas. Therefore, we evaluate and compare the ability of two ERA5 products, ERA5-Land and ERA5-HRES, in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) using observations from over 3000 rain gauges in a high-density network during 2018. The results show that ERA5 products generally characterize moderate-intensity rain. Due to the different causes of seasonal precipitation as well as the combined influence of coastal effects and topography, the best performance of ERA5 products is found in the southern coastal plains during the wet season and in the northern mountainous vegetation areas during the dry season. Meanwhile, it is challenging for ERA5 products to model precipitation in areas with higher urbanization levels. We also find that ERA5-Land data with finer spatial resolution fails to deliver any preferable results than ERA5-HRES. ERA5 products needs further improvement in the GBA for providing accurate precipitation patterns. This paper gives a detailed insight into the performance of ERA5 products, which offers a valuable reference for its probable applicability in the coastal urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]