Customer Ratings & Reviews

TSpectacular product that has integrated well with my doorbell from TP link. Highly recommend !

I love it because you can use it with your phone when you want.

Great picture day or night. Solar portion keeps battery power charged at 100%

I highly recommend to everyone buy it.Very good quality video and fast sensor

Cameras are great, don’t have to climb up on anything to charge them, the sun does it all, love that,

Love these cameras clear quality & free app to see happening 24/7

The camera quality and build is very good. Setup was easy. Only issue is that the motion detection is fairly poor in the night. This defeats the purpose of having a security camera that gives lack of notification of any events in the dark.

Camaras work great good quality! Will recommend to buy.

highly recommended a good buy good quality easy to install.

Love our cameras. They are solar and we can look at three parts of our house on our phone.

Solid quality camera and solar panels. Theyve survived 11 inches of snow with no effort on my part. Skip the cloud subscription and put in microsd cards. What a great deal for 3 cameras and solar panels

Overall Simple, 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. Design This 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. Setup These 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. Performance The 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. Cons There 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. Conclusion While 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.

Excellent quality at an incredible price, just what I needed.

To briefly sum it up, I really like these cameras, and I love the overall package/system. I have used and tested a few options out there, and I think this is hands down my favorite. Yes, it will depend on your specific situation, but I think these will work for just about anyone. Install is typically the “worst” part of getting a camera system and being able to use it. There is always a little bit of pain. That said, they give you everything (i mean everything) you need, and I absolutely love the inclusion of the solar panels. Beyond that, the connection cables from the panels to the cameras are a nice length and that gave me a little more flexibility in my placement (and made it a little bit easier). I just think the solar panels set this system apart from some I have used in the past. I like the set it and forget it (mostly) approach. After that little bit of pain, but really a rather easy install, I am hoping I won’t have too much upkeep going forward. Without batteries to worry about, as well as the wireless nature of the system, I think I should be good. Perhaps some occasional panel cleaning, and I will have to see how the sun moves throughout the seasons, but I am pleased. Time will tell. All in all, zero complaints here. The cameras give detailed, crisp, and clear images. Color. Day. Night. I feel I am covered in all scenarios. They also have a nice wide field of view. Again, coverage. Beyond the picture, the cameras come with some really nice features. Alerts (accurate). Detection. Notifications (very quick). Two-way audio. Deterrence features with sound AND light alarms (both customizable). A lot of systems do come with most of these things, but the implementation and execution here is very well done. Everything has simply worked for me so far, without issue. Really, other than a couple of random alarms when I didn’t see anything, nothing. A few tweaks to my settings and it has been perfect since. Just having the ability to speak, deter, and monitor things, and knowing it will work (even with power loss), gives me a nice peace of mind. As for the build, well, we will have to see how everything holds up. Clearly this is a rather important concern with this type of product. I can’t know, but everything feels well-built, and “good in the hand.” The cams have a solid IP rating, the panels appear in line, and all of the mounting hardware (including plates, anchors, screw caps, and waterproof seals seem of good quality. I think these will be fine for some time, and from what I have seen, I have no concerns. All of that said, for how much I like the cameras, the solar panels, etc… one thing that should not be discounted is the software side. Gladly, I am happy here as well. As much as I feel the solar panels were a differentiator for me, this may be just as much of one for me as well. The app is solid and easy to navigate. It works well, but perhaps it needs a bit more polish. However, I think everywhere else, this system is fantastic. It has broad compatibility (Amazon, Google, Apple…), doesn’t need a hub, is easy to set up, has a really nice feature set, AND so much of it can be used without a subscription plan. You get Live View, Instant Notifications, Two-Way Audio, Activity Zones, Local Storage (you’ll need a SD card), and Motion Detection without it. Further, AI Detection and Privacy Zones are available with a firmware update. With the plan, you can add 30-day Video Clip History, Rich Notifications with Snapshots, and Smart Sort. Currently, I am happy without the plan, but given that the cost is quite reasonable ($3.49/month or $3499 for the year), I will probably give it a test to see if like (or feel I need) them. Ultimately, I like these cameras, and I think this is a great system. The hardware is well-built, and everything just works. Well. Easy install. Low upkeep (fingers crossed). Great software setup. For all that you get, I think there is real value here and so far I could not be happier.

Cameras work well. However the cable connection is complex with multiple adarpters. The camera cable is mini USB while the other connector is USB-C. The charging cables do not work

No 24 hour recording options. What is the point of a powered device and local memory card if you can only record events? Half of which this camera doesn't recognize. I have more clips of branches in the wind then people walking in my yard.

Bought it for my father in law and he loves it. He’s not super tech savvy but he was able to figure out the app after I helped configure them.

Great cameras for the price! Only problem is that two out of the 4 cameras had disconnected have to manually reset them.

Gave this equipment to my grandson for burthday and fathers day gift.

Awesome security system. Very reliable and always notifies of any activity.