TP-Link Tapo Outdoor 2K Wireless Security Camera TC85 KIT(4-PACK) - White

OverallSimple, well-built, versatile, and a great picture. I've been on the market for "starlight" security cameras for a short while. When I noticed these, I knew I had to take them for a spin. While I have no real hands-on experience with any, I've evaluated many options out there in the market through images, videos, documentation, and reviews. My initial impression of the Tapo cams in-action was slightly negative, but after fiddling with them for several days, my opinion of them has changed to make this a positive experience. There is still a slight nag occasionally, but this might be more to the nature of WiFi/cloud based cameras than issues with the product. More on these points below.DesignThis was one key area in which I was most impressed. The cameras ... MoreOverallSimple, well-built, versatile, and a great picture. I've been on the market for "starlight" security cameras for a short while. When I noticed these, I knew I had to take them for a spin. While I have no real hands-on experience with any, I've evaluated many options out there in the market through images, videos, documentation, and reviews. My initial impression of the Tapo cams in-action was slightly negative, but after fiddling with them for several days, my opinion of them has changed to make this a positive experience. There is still a slight nag occasionally, but this might be more to the nature of WiFi/cloud based cameras than issues with the product. More on these points below.DesignThis was one key area in which I was most impressed. The cameras themselves (TC85) have a sturdy shell. While this doesn't appear to be any type of metal, the camera has a good weight to it, mostly from the components it houses and the rechargeable battery. The base of the camera has what appears to be a 1/4" thread to seat onto its included mount. The mount adds a locking nut to tighten and secure the camera when in position. An area of interest here, the base has a slight magnetic pull to it. This led me to believe the same model is boxed with other product lines.The mount gives the camera a 180° vertical orientation and a 360° horizontal angle of adjustment. The mount comes pre-assembeled with the mount for the entire solar/camera mount but can be separated to mount both units individually.The solar panel mount has the same adjustability but is fixed to the larger mount. It seats by sliding into a groove and locking in place. The solar panel has a noticeably more flimsy design/build compared to the camera.How these two units connect to each other is... a bit odd, to say the least. The solar panel has a type C USB cable of about 6" coming out of its back. While the camera has a covered micro USB port protected by a silicon flap, it requires an adaptor between both units. The USB type C cable ends in a 90° plug, this would be perfect if the camera could just hook up directly. The adaptor uses a straight connector, this makes your installation slightly more troublesome if it leaves your camera very close to a surface. This reinforces the idea that both of these units may be sold with other oroduct lines, and it is cheaper to include an adaptor than a new mold or chassis alteration to use the same conector type.The face of the camera houses all your visual sensory components, from a wide angle lens, motion sensor, a pair of LEDs each housing an IR and light LED. There's an additional, smaller LED, for operation status and a mic along the front. On the underside, a pair of silicon flaps for power input, microSD, power button, and a speaker grill.SetupThese cameras are some of the simplest devices to setup, in my case, everything was practically automatic. After grabbing the Tapo app and logging in, tap the "+" sign in the upper corner and select "outdoor camera" followed by your model. Tapo prompts that you should change to a "Tapo##_####" wifi name, but in my case, the phone switched automatically. If you haven't used the app before, you'll get a window asking for your WiFi information. My only hangup during setup was unrelated to Tapo. If you have any type of VPN active during setup, turn it off before beginning. In my case, establishing a connection initially failed with an error, going through the ritual a second time, and after disabling the VPN, the camera paired in minutes and was streaming to my phone.PerformanceThe cameras look very clear during the day, every detail is easily distinguishable. The wide angle lens lets you see a vast area of your property. I'd like to say the auto settings that they come configured in should work in almost any environment, but the app does give some customization options.Night time view is clear, but any minor reflective object such as a windshield or taillights of a car, causes enough glare when the IR light is on. There's no orientation setting, however, the instructions clearly call for not installing it in a different orientation, as the motion sensor may not work correctly. The detection modes let you choose the type of objects and if you want notifications for them. From human, vehicle, pet, and generalized motion detection. They include a deterrent function, which the app simply calls "alarm". It allows for an audible noise to play when an object comes into view, a strobe light like effect, or a combination of the two. Zones where you want each notification to trigger can also be customized for every tag. Viewing the live feed adds a setting to identify every object on screen with a visible square box around anything it could potentially detect. Using IR mode adds a depth of view setting. It allows selecting a nearby or distant field of view. This setting seems to adjust the strength of the IR lights and enhancing your camera's depth of view in larger environments. While I cannot speak for a situation for moving out of its wifi environment, if it becomes disconnected from the internet, the cameras will still record detections and write them to memory locally. Obviously, this wouldn't upload anything to the cloud if you choose a hybrid recording scheme.ConsThere is a color mode and IR mode that can be triggered at will from within settings. Color mode is impressive and makes things look very bright in dark areas but it permanently enables the lights. IR mode is exactly the same and neither allow disabling of the lights like typical cameras do. Motion detection has often mislabeled notification types. The instructions call for placing cameras at about a 15⁰ angle and not facing the direction of travel. If your camera were looking at your lawn with street objects visible. A parked car on the street might trigger a vehicle motion notification even when the trigger was human or generalized motion. In the event of a network outage, your ISP dropped the ball or any other reason you have no internet but have a wifi signal, your camera will record events, but there will be zero communication with the camera. There is no network based streaming protocol, and everything happening on the camera relays across a Tapo server and back to your phone.ConclusionWhile this looks great, feels fairly well-built, and offers powerful features, there are still a few minor quirks to hopefully get ironed out. The night vision is fairly good for its price, with an impressive daytime image quality. In typical scenarios, motion detection will also be great to precise.This is worth 4-stars.

We have been using the same security cameras for several years now and either they’ve ran their course and life span or there’s been something off with them lately. Therefore, after weighing our options, we decided to delve back into the security camera market to see what the competition looked like and perhaps that would solve our problems. That’s when I came across the new TP-Link TAPO solar powered security camera kit. Having used TP-Link products before in the past including smart devices, light switches, routers, etc. I knew they were a reputable company you can trust and will be around for a while in comparison to some of those other knock off brands you’ve never heard of where you would be lucky to find customer support in the event something were to go wrong ... MoreWe have been using the same security cameras for several years now and either they’ve ran their course and life span or there’s been something off with them lately. Therefore, after weighing our options, we decided to delve back into the security camera market to see what the competition looked like and perhaps that would solve our problems. That’s when I came across the new TP-Link TAPO solar powered security camera kit. Having used TP-Link products before in the past including smart devices, light switches, routers, etc. I knew they were a reputable company you can trust and will be around for a while in comparison to some of those other knock off brands you’ve never heard of where you would be lucky to find customer support in the event something were to go wrong with your product(s).The cameras, solar panels and mounting hardware was very easy to install with little to no reliance on the instructions. Once you fully charge the cameras via the provided USB cable, download the Tapo application, you are ready to sync the cameras to your account and begin the installation process. The syncing process did not take very long and each camera had an update that needed to be installed. The smart device application walks you through the process using simple, easy to understand, instructions providing you pictures and video as well. It even ensures you are mounting the hardware in a good place to ensure everything you want is in view. The mounting hardware provided allows for installation of the cameras and solar panels on one bracket and the option to use the provided long USB cables to mount the solar panels in a separate area in the event the area you want to view is not in the sunlight for power and charging. The whole installation process for all three cameras and solar panels took less than an hour, not including the initial charge time for the cameras.Within the application, you can live view video and/or recordings. Speaking of the video, you’ll be amazed at the quality of the cameras which offer 2K QHD video. The cameras and software are also able to identify and differentiate between people, animals and vehicles and has color infrared night vision. They have a 150 degree super-wide field of view and you are able to set up activity zones through the app to target or ignore certain areas (think a waving tree or flag that may constantly think there is movement detected you don’t want to worry about). Another benefit to this security camera kit is the lack of a “hub” that you need to plug into your existing modem/router as they simply run directly through your existing WiFi and to the smart phone/device app. The cameras and solar panels are IP66 weatherproof so no need to worry when it rains or snows.One thing we were looking for when shopping for security cameras was the wireless ability to install them without running wires all over your home or office. Our previous security cameras had solar panels as a power source however they would still die within days even though our house has full sun most of the day. The rechargeable battery in each camera is 10000mAh (almost twice the capacity than the high-end laptop I’m currently using) which makes the battery life relatively long when going between charges or at night when the solar panels aren’t able to charge them; I’m talking days on end because I tried it both ways and was surprised to see the battery percentage barely move even when there’s high traffic and they are constantly recording. I was surprised to see the cameras charging in daylight even when the solar panels were not getting full sun. According to the specs, the cameras can last up to 300 days on a single charge and the solar panels can keep the battery fully charged with just 45 minutes of daily sunlight.The smart device application is also very easy to use and understand, is very responsive with little to no delay and has plenty of options including to set alarms if a camera senses motion, use them as two-way audio, adjust the video quality, frame rate, turn on/off night vision infrared mode, etc. During the initial set up, you have the option to sign up for a free 30-day trial of their monitoring/recording which allows you to view/cloud store up to 30 days of events anywhere from the application. However, if you’re not a fan of paying subscription fees, each camera also has local storage where you can insert your own micro-SD cards (which are not included) which could run out of storage relatively fast considering the quality of the video these take.Overall, we have been impressed thus far with our new Tapo security camera kit and will probably eventually expand this system to replace the remainder of our previous system in due time. I would recommend this security camera kit over our previous manufacturer to anyone in the market for a user-friendly, high-quality security camera kit at a reasonable price.

TP-Link's Tapo sub-brand (and it's Kasa predecessor) have been making solid DIY home automation and security devices for a number of years now and this 3 camera kit is a great addition to their lineup. It's really everything you need to monitor the outside of a small to medium sized property - with no hassle of wiring or building a special network.In the box you get 3 cameras, 3 solar panels and all the mounting kits, batteries, etc. that you need to get going. Each camera can be mounted on it's own (you can use them without the solar kits if you want, but you'll have to take them down to charge them about 2x a year or so depending on how much you use things like live view/motion detection) or either near or combined with the solar panels (the mounts allow for ... MoreTP-Link's Tapo sub-brand (and it's Kasa predecessor) have been making solid DIY home automation and security devices for a number of years now and this 3 camera kit is a great addition to their lineup. It's really everything you need to monitor the outside of a small to medium sized property - with no hassle of wiring or building a special network.In the box you get 3 cameras, 3 solar panels and all the mounting kits, batteries, etc. that you need to get going. Each camera can be mounted on it's own (you can use them without the solar kits if you want, but you'll have to take them down to charge them about 2x a year or so depending on how much you use things like live view/motion detection) or either near or combined with the solar panels (the mounts allow for options - if you want to mount the camera in one place and the solar panel nearby but in a better position to catch sun, you can do that, or you can put the panel directly above the camera for a more streamlined setup). The mounts are solid and seem durable and the solar panels easily produce enough power to keep the batteries topped up (oddly, the solar panels have a USB-C output but the cameras take micro USB input, so the kit comes with USB-C female to microUSB male adapters in short or longer lengths - odd but effective).The cameras connect via wifi, so between the batteries/solar kit and wifi connection, you can put them anywhere you get a wifi signal. Pairing the camera to your network and adding it in the Tapo app is a breeze, but note that you'll likely want to do this BEFORE mounting the camera as it's easier when you have full physical access to the camera. You'll also want to full charge the cameras from a power outlet before mounting them, even if you're using the solar panels, just to give it some buffer charge.Once paired and in place, the cameras have a super sharp picture, day or night (with the built-in spot lights) - it's easy to check in on whatever you have the cameras watching. They do have a pretty wide field of view, which is nice, but they don't move on their own (I.e., they don't have motors inside to pan/tilt, they have to be moved manually), so consider that when placing them/during install. Using the app, you can set up motion detection, exclusion zones, notifications, people / pet / vehicle alerts and more - it's pretty straightforward to use and there are a lot of options. Given the solid build quality here and the attention to detail in waterproofing the connections, these cameras should last a good long time in use. They're a bit bigger than you would expect to accommodate the large batteries, but find the right place for them was still quick / easy. The cameras can also accommodate a micro SD card for onboard video recording if you like.So if you're in the market for a DIY home video monitoring system for the outside of your house and don't want to deal with running wiring or a complicated DVR, these Tapo cameras are a great option and should be on your list to check out. Give them a try today!