After having a YUI camera that near on useless these Tapo cameras are a blessing. No hassle with great picture quality for what is expected from a reasonable priced camera.

I purchased this camera to add to my ever-growing collection of Tapo, or for that matter my wider collection of Smart Devices. First thing I want to say is that this is an impressive little camera considering the price (when not raised to later be dropped for a deal). The picture Quality is very good when viewed on a phone with it set to 2k, it remains good when viewed on a 1080p TV screen (via Firestick) or device with similar screen resolution. There is a slot for a Micro SD card which removes the need for it to be connected to a hub, set up in the Tapo app and subsequently with Alexa to view on Alexa enabled devices is straight forward. I have used a 128GB Micro SD Card and this seems to be more than adequate, as numerous recordings have not used large amounts of space. Especially as the recordings can be set on a loop or individual recordings can be downloaded and the SD card formatted if needed, and even set with recordings to loop it’s possible to see how much space is used and free. While on the subject of space usage, its worth mentioning the motion/people sensors in this camera are very sensitive even at the low setting and can occasionally trigger even when you can’t see why.If your intention is to use this as an indoor camera to monitor inside your home, I think you will probably be satisfied with this Camera, and it comes with a decent length power adapter cable. However, my intention was to use it as an indoor camera facing out from my window, and here I found a couple of issues. The first was that the mount for this camera involves the positioning of a couple of screws to slot the base onto, the problem with this is that I could not position the screws in a way that made possible to slot the base into the position I wanted. I overcame this issue with a 3M adhesive pad (surprisingly not include, as most smart devices come with Screws and 3M Adhesive Pads, which is why I have some, but they can be purchased easily).The Second issue for me is the Night Vision which appears to only be black and white, not in colour. It also presented another issue for me, in that when the camera is set to Night Vision or Auto, and facing out of a window the view from the camera at night is of the reflection of the built-in lights on the window, rendering night vision useless. However, if you set the camera to Day Vision permanently, street lights or ambient light at night will be sufficient in most cases to monitor what is happening in front of the camera (and not the reflection in the window) in colour, but obviously not as sharp or clear as in day light. It’s worth noting that while Day Vision works at night, the more light the better, it will not work if there is no light.In summary this really is a reasonably priced good quality little security camera that will work well when used to monitor your home, pets, etc., from another location. The issues I have had are because I’m using an indoor camera to monitor outside, which is not the intended use for this camera. That said it still does what I want it to do, albeit with a work around or two on my part.

What a super little camera, its small, its really easy to use (no subscription required just a memory disk), its even good visual at night without any lighting other than street lights (I point it out my window from inside), it looks fine, sound is good but I don’t use the sound now, I was trying to capture the regular poop gifter on my front garden, it did the job (a neighbours dog was one culprit and after careful words has now ceased, a local tom cat was the other gifter no available for any words, but I shall not have cat mint on my front garden next year as it brings all the boys to the yard). I’ve left it up to provide additional security for my car, as we have had a lot of thefts lately nearby. £20 what a bargain and quite fun to watch sometimes too.

Easy set up process within the Tapo ecosystem. Great quality and good night vision. Perfect for what it is and accompany features through the app.

Security Made Affordable
Gotta love TP-Link security cameras. They are affordable, feature rich and do the job perfectly. Whether it is this one or others in the camera product range, they just seem to work very very well.The downside is the cost of connecting to their cloud service (if you want to take that up) – it starts to get a bit pricey. You can always host you’re own NVR and switch these to ONVIF. But I like the ecosystem and it definitely has a wife approval factor ticked!