TP-Link 𝗧𝗮𝗽𝗼 Wireless Outdoor Security Camera, 1080P, Up to 180 Days of Battery Life, Free Person Detection, SD/Cloud Storage, Spotlight Color Night Vision, No Hub Needed, Works w/Alexa, Tapo C402

I’m extremely impressed with this Tapo MagCam 4K Solar camera. The 4K image quality is very sharp in both daytime and night conditions. Detection has been accurate for person/vehicle events, and notifications come through reliably without being overly annoying, even while on the basic free plan. Battery life has been excellent, and with the solar panel it stays topped up and feels truly set-and-forget once installed. Setup was straightforward, the app is easy to use. I also connected it to the H500 Home base and it works incredibly well. Overall, this is a high-quality outdoor camera with strong performance, great battery/solar charging, and clear video. Highly recommended and is worth the money!

Nice camera. Easy setup as I am already using the app for a wired camera previously installed. Picks up my wi fi outside, through the trees 50 yards from the house no trouble. Clear recordings and battery has stayed at 100% for going on 4 days with no sunshine. In -10 to 35 degree temps. So far working great. We'll reassess in 6 months or so. I am definitely planning on buying a few more in the near future.

It is very easy to install. It panel is very effective, the battery is always at 100. The camera videos are very clear. It is a good buy and I recommend it to anyone looking for an affordable security camera.

I own 6 of these solar cameras. They are the best affordable cameras that I’ve ever purchased. The solar is perfect for places with no electricity and the charge lasts a very long time. The quality of the camera is great, I can see a lot of details on my recordings. I use these primarily for my farm animals: chickens, goats, pigs. I’m able to keep an eye on them and I can count on the camera keeping its WiFi stability. Great camera all in all.

Why did you pick this product vs others?: I really loved this camera so much I bought 2 of them and their doorbell for my house. The doorbell has been working flawlessly. The first camera IN installed with the solar panel worked fine until the first rain storm where it went offline and I could not get to it for a couple months as it monitors a vacation home. Once down there I was able to get the camera down, plug it in and after a couple chances it finally rebooted. Now the camera is is all fogged up and will not clear out. I reached out to Tapo support and after several AI generated emails from Tapo asking me about the solar panel I was able to get some traction with support where they told me I had to go through the RMA process of which they asked all the same questions that support did. I did put up my second camera in the same spot and it is working fine and I love the fact that it is solar powered. I would give the camera a higher review as I understand sometimes things break, but their support process was very painful to work with. Would I recommend this camera to everyone? Yes I would and I may buy more of them for my main house as well as back yards as I love the solar option... but I am very weary of dealing with TapoSupport again. Ease of setup: The set up was very easy to do and their instructions make it seem like it is harder than it really is. Recording capability: you can either use their paid cloud storage or I bought Micro SD cards from Amazon and just use those to record and save Storage capacity: The 512 microSD cards are great and cheaper than subscribing to their cloud storage View angle: I love the fact that I have it on top of my 12 foot shed and I can see clearly down the side of the house and a nice wide angle to the bakc of the house and driveways. I love the AI feature where i can exclude animals from detection as we have a lot of wildlife in the area, mainly deer, fox, and other small creatures... but can also set the detection zone of where I want it to alert to motion or people.

Update after a week of use: Still going strong. The person detect and vehicle detect trigger recording reliably about 95% of the time. More good news - the Android app runs on a laptop PC through Bluestacks so you can use a Windows PC to control and view the camera. One odd thing was that the recorded videos disappeared briefly when viewing with a PC but later returned. They always showed up on an android phone so they were always there. Finally, the solar charging feature and some of the other advanced battery use monitoring features turned out to be beta versions that appear but don't work yet. All in all, still a great camera. Hardware: The camera is sensitive and the image sharp. The method for sealing the solar panel cable to the camera is just a rubber boot which looks like one day it will leak. The camera can illuminate night scenes with IR for a B&W picture or with white light for a color picture. Incredibly, all of the mounting hardware is high quality stainless steel which is quite unusual for such a product. The App: A little quirky but very much full featured. By quirky I mean, for example, having the delete option for video clips located under the category "downloads" which makes no sense. By full featured I mean that it offers a lot of useful tools such as an amazing battery monitor that includes current state as well as graphical displays of battery usage by day and solar charging by day. Another useful feature lets you define the areas of the scene to which the detection (recording) algorithm will apply. You can also set the time of day window during which recording can occur. It can be set to only record if people or vehicles are detected. Most of the features are local and do not require any kind of monthly fee. Only had it running for a couple of days but so far it looks like a great product for the money.

I’m a senior woman and I had this Tapo cam mounted under my eaves and set up in no time. It’s the perfect solution for being able to have a security cam where I can’t have a hardwired one, and it works just as well as my Ring and SimpliSafe cams that are hardwired. The picture quality is clear, voice is clear, it’s easy to use the app, and it connects easily to my WiFi (thanks to my TP Link Deco system which gave me coverage where I had none (or poor) where I needed to mount this camera). **BATTERY LIFE** - I installed this camera 4+ months ago and the battery is at 73% now, so I can easily believe the claim of a 6-month battery life. Where I have it there isn’t an extraordinary amount of activity like there is with my doorbell camera that goes off two dozen times a day, but it does pick up motion at least 5 or 6 times a day, so I’m really happy with the battery life. I bought a solar panel for it, but haven’t installed it yet because the battery life has been so good. I put an SD card in it, but I haven’t checked it so I can’t say much about that. You can easily set areas to detect or not detect motion, and that feature works really well. I have 3 Ring cams and a SimpliSafe doorbell camera, and this inexpensive Tapo battery cam works as well as they do. ALL of them occasionally drop their connection (so far they all reconnect on their own), so I can’t take a star away for connectivity when practically every device I have has the same random, occasional issue. We’ve had heavy rains, snow/freezing temps and I’ve had no issues at all. It is under an eave, so I can’t say how it functions when fully exposed to the elements. The light is good. It won’t light up your entire yard, but it is bright and lights up the area around it sufficiently, imo. I’d actually give it 4.5 stars if I could because it isn’t “perfect”, but I haven’t found a device that functions “5-star perfect” 100% of the time. What is “perfect” is the battery life and being able to easily mount this camera practically anywhere. I initially had trouble connecting to the camera from my phone, and the app would repeatedly say that the camera was “offline”. I was about to return it, and then I realized my phone had to be on my home WiFi to connect to it. I never used to keep my WiFi on, on my phone, but now I do and I have no problems connecting to the camera. That’s the only difference I can see between this camera and my Ring cameras. My WiFi doesn’t have to be on to connect to them, and I think there’s a setting I haven’t figured out to remedy this. I haven’t seen any other complaints about this issue, so I suspect it's ‘user error’ on my part. ***Before you mount it (or any other WiFi device) I strongly recommend getting the TP-Link ‘WiFi Toolkit’ app on your phone. It allows you to walk around your house or property and see how good or bad your WiFi signal is at a particular location. This will save you a lot of time and headache when mounting or installing a device, especially one that is hardwired that you can’t check until you’ve gone through the trouble of installing it. Very handy app. Anyway, I highly recommend this Tapo battery cam. It’s easy to install, works well, has a great picture and sound, the light is good, it doesn’t send random alerts, and it’s definitely the right price.

We purchased this camera to monitor our driveway after our car was stolen. We live in an older house with now outdoor outlets and wanted something that didn’t require wiring. The camera charges it’s built in battery using the included solar panel. It seems to always have a full battery and connects to our network by WiFi. The video quality is decent both day and night. And it has an alarm that can be set if anyone enters an area set by the user. You can pay for cloud storage or use a micro SD card in the camera (must purchase separately). I have just used the SD card option so there are no ongoing costs. Occasionally I stop receiving notifications, but restarting the camera fixes the issue.