TP-Link Tapo 2K QHD Outdoor Pan/Tilt Wi-Fi Security Camera, 360° View, Motion Tracking, Color Night Vision, Free Person/Vehicle/Motion Detection, Cloud & SD Card Storage, 24/7 Recording, Tapo C520WS…

This will be my 4th these cameras. I’ve been very pleased with their quality and performance. Install is easy enough but the challenging part for me has been the need to install power at most of my locations. It’s been worth the effort as the combination of cameras provides great coverage. The resolution is very good, even when selecting lower resolution options. This camera sees well in the dark and the detection modes afire effective. I use a 128gb chip for storage and it holds months of events. The app interface works well for notifications and camera selection and control. I am sold on this camera and brand and will

delivers excellent image quality for its price, with sharp 2K/QHD resolution and reliable night vision. Setup is quick through the Tapo app, and the motion detection works accurately without too many false alerts. The pan/tilt models offer great coverage, and overall build quality feels solid. A great value option for home security.”

I’ll be writing this on all the Tapo cameras I’ve recently purchased. (4x C110, 2x C210, 2x C520WS) These are flawless, amazing, and so far ahead of Wyze it’s not even funny. They are massively affordable, truly need no subscription, have fantastic features in their app, can record locally to an SD card; everything you would want. Coming from Wyze (see more below), I didn’t know that cameras were supposed to act like this. I assumed, at Wyze prices, that I was getting what I paid for. But when I finally had enough constant stress and spent the money to change to Tapo… my life has been changed. Seriously, I probably added years to my life not being so stressed out all the time because my cameras never, ever worked right. These do, and I cannot say it enough times… if you’re currently using Wyze then get one of these. Use it for a week side-by-side and tell me what you think. Super light, have a few of mine mounted with ‘hard plastic velcro’ (3M Dual Lock). Setup is fast and easy, and works right away. Don’t have to do it over and over again (Wyze). Clarity is superb - 1440p quality. Night vision is phenomenal. Don’t really care about ‘color’ night vision - but my outdoor ones do have it. And one of the best parts is Tapo is part of TP-Link. What does that mean? TP-Link has been around for a very long time, and they specialize in networking equipment, LoL. So yeah, if you want a reliable camera on your network, who better to trust than a networking company. TLDR: Don’t waste your time on any other brand. Buy these. I promise you won’t regret it. About Wyze: If you’re like me and never wanted to spend thousands on home monitoring and security, then you may have stumbled upon Wyze cameras. At first, they were amazing - very affordable with no subscription necessary. And they worked. Over time, that changed drastically as they ventured into making everything else on the planet instead of focusing on their roots (cameras). They funded that stuff by changing to a subscription policy. And in their haste had multiple security breaches and problems such as other people viewing cameras that aren’t theirs. This is of course while the software and hardware has become so incredibly bad that they’re unusable. I mean, they actually do not function 92% of the time. Whether it’s freezing, not connecting, stuttering so bad that it looks like a PowerPoint presentation, app for closing, etc.

First I want to get the biggest negative of this camera out of the way: THE AC ADAPTER! This camera takes 12V/1A of power (not 5V/2A as listed on the Amazon page as of this date) and it comes with a wall wart adapter. This isn't bad for an indoor camera, but for an outdoor camera this is a terrible decision because it does not fit inside weatherproof wall boxes if the socket is vertical (outlet is horizontal). They could have made a higher quality adapter that was more compact and could fit inside them, or they could have made the adapter able to rotate 90°, but they didn't. Now, to the cameras themselves. Installation is decently easy, drill 4 holes according to the template and screw in the detachable base, then attach the camera to the base with two small screws. I wish there were a small clip or other retaining mechanism because the camera does wobble -slightly- when you move it, but it doesn't in practice. Connection to the Tapo app is easy since it can detect and connect to the camera via Bluetooth, no having to connect to its own Wi-Fi and then swap over, and since the Tapo app saves your Wi-Fi credentials it's basically one tap to set it up. Signal reception is also quite good. Through multiple interior walls and exterior brick wall it's connected to my router (Ubiquiti Dream Router 7) at 2.4ghz at -60dbm. The quality of the video is excellent, it is 4K after all, and faces can clearly be made out by photos at at least 30 feet, things like license plates and larger objects farther. At night it's about the same. I haven't turned on the AI Face Recognition so I can't attest to that. Person tracking generally works well, but if they get to the side and then jump back it will fool the camera and it'll stick there, something that should be fixed in firmware. There also seems to not be an option to suppress notifications for a certain time like there is with Kasa cameras, so turning privacy mode on when you're, say, mowing the yard is essential. Voice communication has about a 3-4 second lag time, pretty typical for IP cameras, but the quality is good enough for clear back and forth communication even with middling cell reception. Overall I have nothing terrible to say about these cameras. The AC adapter is extremely annoying, and the attached ethernet plug is pretty meaningless for home users, but if you're looking to upgrade from older cameras to something that's newer, or migrating from Kasa to Tapo, it'd be difficult not to recommend these.

Solar panel keeps the battery charged, even though it will pick up cars from the street. Fantastic video quality and easy to set up. Love it!

Easy to install and is working as advertised. I will continue to purchase additional cameras as I really like these. The 4K makes a BIG difference. The spotlight feature was better than expected. Has a lot of programmable features like image labeling, notification of certain triggers (vehicle, pet, person, etc.). Wish the camera supported PoE but this is easy to add via external device (Amazon ASIN B07L7QK5N3). The mount is something to be desired and not that easy when mounting to a single gang j-box. I purchase blank wall plates and drill holes for the camera cables. The PTZ is wide range, accept I wish it would tilt more in the upward direction. Here is a picture of this camera mounted on the eve of a 2nd story home. It will not look above the roof tops.

I bought eight of these cameras back in July 2024 so I’ve had them about that long. It’s been a little over a year and had a problem where my camera at the end of the driveway stopped working. The light wasn’t on when I went out there, the plug worked that it plugged into, but the camera itself wouldn’t work so I took a plug off one of the other cameras that are identical to this one to see if maybe it was just a faulty plug plugged it in and it worked so I left that plug-in and figured I’d buy another plug for the one that I replaced it with two days later Camera goes off-line. I go back outside unplug it plug it back in I don’t see any lights on the camera then I hear sizzling and see smoke. Turns out that there’s probably a short in the camera that is shorting out the plug which is causing a fire hazard. In all the cameras are great. I’ve had no problems with any of the other ones whatsoever. The problem that I have is with the Customer Service as with most products these days. I literally called these people talk to them on the phone. Explain the problem said listen, plugged it in it turned my outlet black from so I had to have my electrician come out and replaced the outlet and I told him I would send him pictures of the Insurance purchase plan that I purchased for 2 to 3 years that I would send him copies of the purchases of the Camera and the dates and everything which I did, they have enough stones to email me back, asking me if I could please send a video clip of plugging the plug back into the wall and letting them here at sizzle so they could process a return. I have never in my life ever heard of anybody asking somebody to try to plug a plug that is already faulty and a fire hazard back into their wall that has already turned the outlet black from smoking. He reads this and then sends me back another email asking for the same thing do not count on anything with this Customer Service or at least that’s what I’ve experienced and literally over a camera that’s around $70. ::: UPDATE::: I just got off an email with Support from tapo and basically they won’t cover it even though it was bought a little over a year ago they say their limited warranty. So thankfully I purchased the extra insurance on it through Amazon which I usually do for any electronics or important stuff worth it. I actually bought around 10 or more of these in different models as I liked the cameras very much when I got them and I wanted to put together my own surveillance system instead of buying a complete package with DVR so I decided to do was use a microSD card the highest gig I could get for it and put it on loop recording on top of that I also downloaded the blue Iris program online which is $60 and you get to add unlimited devices $30. You can add up to one or two. The good thing about blue Iris is you can access your cameras from anywhere outside of your house and it is very reliable works with most surveillance cameras and you can actually run a physical DVR as well if you would like so I figure it for spending roughly $49 a camera in some cases $25 for the nun 2K ones that it would be worth it and when I got them, I was pleasantly surprised on how good they were and how good the quality seemed. Although I cannot stand in the companies, customer support and ignorance at this point in time where I am still baffled that they would ask a customer to plug in a faulty wire that they know is faulty and smoking so they can hear and see the sound and smoke, knowing that you were gonna take a risk of burning yourself or possibly catching the outlet on fire that you already told them the outlet is black on the outside from the smoke and charring. The camera in the front which surprised me on how good it was and why I bought more when I had a major wind and ice storm. I had a huge top section of a tree snap in half and fall, right where I usually walk my dogs and the Camera literally picked it up. You can hear a crack crack. There was no motion in the cameras view whatsoever to trigger it, maybe the sound did all of a sudden, two seconds later after hearing the crack crack, you see the huge top portion of the tree fall directly in front of the camera, which was amazing and on these cameras, literally it triggers the camera before you even see the animal or a person or a vehicle come in the frame literally two seconds before it appears which is amazing to me that it can detect it before hand. This is one of the reasons I decided to buy more and like I said this is one camera out of many but my grip is the customer support so the cameras are really really well built. I would purchase them, but I would definitely purchase the insurance plan with them as well and if I were you if you have something go wrong with the cameras, just tell him it went down it broke you don’t know what’s wrong because once you start getting into talking with them, they’re gonna do everything they can to try to get you down to where they won’t cover it so best thing is let them figure it Out ship them the Camera have them refund your money and let it be done. Sorry for the long book, I just wanted to get my thoughts out there and hope to save you guys some headaches or help you out I would definitely if I were you check out like I said the blue Iris program I make no money off of it. I have no affiliation with it whatsoever. I just think it’s a good program to use if you do not have a physical DVR or even if you do and want to go that way because you could basically buy eight cameras for about $400 quality cameras the 4K ones in here that are about $49 even the 1080 P ones are good and then you add the blue Iris program on top for $60. You’re looking at a complete package full surveillance system for under $600 well a little above with microSD cards if you decide to use those as well and like I said, even with the microSD cards, you can get a small gig and just put it on a loop recording and not have to worry about it anymore. Hope this helped.

I have a few of the TAPO 2K cameras and the resolution on this is much improved. I live in the Pacific Northwest where we gets lots of rain and cloudy days. With the solar panel charging in these conditions, I have never seen the battery less than 99%. Although, the 4K resolution is a huge improvement over the 2K versions, I do think that 8K or higher is required for face or license plate identification. I use this to monitor the long driveway to my house and upper deck attached to the 2nd story of the house. I'm alerted every time there's a delivery or when a visitor arrives. I also use this when I'm away to visually monitor the weather conditions at the house. My only gripe, the unit has the ability to pan such that I can see the ground directly underneath the camera however doesn't have sufficient vertical range to see the horizon. It's always looking down and should be mounted high to ensure you're getting proper coverage for security. Mine is mounted 12 feet above the ground but doesn't see the horizon and is not high enough for good coverage of the deck. I am going to design and 3D print a plate that will raise its viewing angle hopefully yielding what I want the camera to do.