While you may have installed outdoor security cameras for the safety of your house and family, you'll quickly realize that many of them are more often employed to capture moments of life happening than, say, someone stealing your Amazon delivery. It's great to get a heads-up that your mail carrier has swung by, but outdoor cams can do a lot more: capture your pets at play, let you check on your home during storms, and double-check to see that you rolled your car windows up.
Whether indoors or out, cameras that you can adjust via the app to focus on what you want are just superior. This SoloCam is the one that remains installed all over my yard. It can rotate almost 360 degrees, and then tilt up and down. I get a lot of use out of the dual lenses—one is macro, and one is micro. I use the macro for a sweeping overview, and then adjust the micro to home in. The micro lens is good enough I can actually focus on individual plants in my yard while out of town, just to see how they're progressing. The higher you mount these cameras, the better your view. While there is a wired version of the camera that is equally fantastic, and comes with floodlights, I've been blown away at how this camera easily stays powered up just from the solar panel, even in the dark PNW. camera with no wifi
There's a lot to like about the Blink cameras: First and foremost, they're cheap. You can buy a bunch without breaking the bank, and they routinely go on deep discount during holidays. They also install lightning-fast, and they're operated by battery. The Blink app is easy to figure out, and I like that with the simple addition of the Sync module, you can skip a subscription for storing clips. That said, these are pretty simple devices. You position the camera, and then if something happens just outside the range of the view, you won't see it, and every single time you change out the batteries, you'll need to position it again. That said, clips are easy to share, more so since Blink announced Blink moments, and the app experience is simple to use.
The latest Vosker camera looks like a serious security camera; you're not going to miss it. But it's meant for locations that wifi can't reach—meaning that it's ideal as a trail cam, gate cam or just the remote areas of your yard. The 1080p resolution looks great as it comes across in 15-second clips through the app, but keep in mind that when relying on 4G, you'll be paying for that data. The field of view is 90 degrees, which means it's directional—you're getting a specific slice of the field of view.
With wifi jammers becoming a bigger issue with home robberies, the solution is using a local network. That said, not all security cameras will work over LAN; many require wifi. An easy solution is using cameras that employ power over ethernet (PoE). But what I really love about this camera is the PTZ (pan/tilt/zoom), which means you can use the app to zoom around the property, 360 degrees, all the way up and down, and then zoom in 5x. You can connect it to multiple different forms of media, from a slot for an onboard storage card to connecting it to a local hard drive—so you skip subscription fees. I like how the design allows this camera to stand proud of the house or the wall that the camera is mounted on.
There are two things that make this camera a real game-changer. First, this is a continuous recording camera, which is something we're seeing more of. Rather than clips, you can watch, well, everything. That's a huge connectivity and battery draw, so you usually see it in wired cameras. The Atlas PT Ultra is a battery-operated camera, so this is quite the feat, accomplished by a massive battery, aided by a solar panel.
The second is that this is a PTZ (pan/tilt/zoom, my favorite kind of security camera and the only kind you should consider, in my opinion) and Reolink's first with ColorX (night vision with color). A particular feature I found intriguing was the "pre-recording," which attempts to solve the issue many experience with clips of never seeing the beginning of an event. Pre-recording, when it senses motion or activity, goes back and pulls the 10 seconds of recording before the activity and attaches it to the clip, although in lower resolution. Still, it's helpful for context. I still have gripes about the Reolink app, which leaves something to be desired in how you can view clips and live video (it's awkward and could use a makeover). But it's serviceable—and in terms of security, Reolink is considered one of the best.
Sometimes, simple is better. Like the Blink cameras, the Tapo Magnetic Camera is easy to install and then position. While I vastly prefer PTZ (pan/tilt/zoom) cameras, the range of vision on this particular camera (150 degrees) wasn't bad. The camera has on-board spotlights to help illuminate whatever activity the camera finds, and helps make the video quite crisp. The Tapo also has a number of free features that come without a subscription: I really liked the "intelligent alerts," as they were less frequent than other camera notifications. The Tapo integrates with voice assistants to allow for voice control, but I admit, I didn't often find much use for the feature. As easy as it was to install—it's a simple magnetic base, and then the camera "sticks" to it in any position you want due to the magnet—it means that it's also quite easy to steal unless it is quite high up (making it hard for you to reach it). It would be very easy to knock off the base with a pole or other garden tool, for instance. The Tapo app has similar issues to the Reolink app in that it's awkward to view your clips and video. Overall, though, given the price, the resolution, and the feature set, it's not a bad buy if you're trying to get into a security system inexpensively.
While some cameras work better than others, the real truth is that the best camera is likely going to be the one that fits your capabilities and needs. Some yards are large enough that a 4G camera that doesn't require wifi is going to be the most likely to work. If you have the connections in your home to use cameras with PoE (power over internet) you can set up a local network instead of using wifi, which might be more secure. The first step is to divide your yard into sections, and try to ascertain which kind of camera (wall mount, pan and tilt, doorbell) will fit that area best. Ideally, you stay within one brand for all your cameras, and when possible, employ local storage so you don't need to pay for a subscription.
Amanda writes about smart home technology and gardening.
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