A boom in wireless security cameras is inspiring a movement in DIY home surveillance. Follow our buying guide and read our reviews to find the best option for you.
Whether you rent or own, you want the best security camera system for keeping an eye on your home while you’re gone. That used to entail signing on with a professional—and pricey—security service like ADT. But a boom in consumer-level smart-home tech is putting indoor and outdoor home surveillance into our own hands.
These close cousins of webcams require minimal installation and offer flexible setups and a range of security features. Indeed, the offerings vary widely by camera, and deciding what to buy gets more daunting as this category grows ever more crowded. But whether you’re looking for an easy way to check on your kids and pets, or a full-service sentinel to monitor for intruders, we’ll help find the right product for your needs.
Updated December 27 to add our review of the RCA WiFi Camera Security System. You’ll be availing yourself of this security camera’s motorized pan/tilt feature frequently, because its static field of view is a narrow 55 degrees, and it offers resolution of just 720p. It’s not a bad camera, it’s just not one of the better ones. As such, it doesn’t displace any of our current top picks.
Correction: This story incorrectly described how Ring’s new features operate. The story has been updated.
The Arlo Pro was already a great security camera. The second-generation model is even stronger, adding even higher resolution and better motion detection to its long list of features that already includes the flexibility of operating on either AC or battery power (and there’s an optional solar panel that enables the camera to operate completely free of wires).
The Ooma Butterfleye certainly doesn’t look like the typical home security camera, and that departure from convention extends to its feature set, too. It can operate on a back-up battery should you experience a power failure, and it can record video to onboard storage should your broadband connection fail. In other words, it will continue to capture forensic evidence in the most adverse conditions.
The Nest Cam IQ Outdoor is the most sophisticated outdoor home security camera on the market. Equipped with a 4K image sensor, high dynamic range, and person detection, this camera zooms in on humans in its field of view and will follow that person around the room, capturing their face in great detail.
Redesigned for 2018, Ring’s Stick Up Cam can be deployed indoors or out. It’s not as sophisticated as the Nest Cam Outdoor, but its low price tag means you can almost set up two cameras for the price of one Nest. It’s particularly good choice for homeowners operating a Ring Alarm home security system.
There’s a lot to like about the Maximus Camera Floodlight, starting with its camera’s crisp, clear 1080p video. Its dual articulating LED floodlights cover a very wide area, and you can dim them via its app if you want mood lighting on your deck or patio for a party.
Other features that differentiate the Maximus from its better-known competitor—the Ring Floodlight Cam—include pre-recorded messages that can be triggered by the camera’s motion detector (causing the intruder to instinctively look up at the camera) and a subscription service that’s actually optional: You can look back only two hours and you’re limited to three downloads per month if you don’t subscribe, where Ring gives you only real-time viewing and no downloads if you don’t pay.
The Ring Spotlight Cam is a great choice for folks who don’t want to replace their existing outdoor lighting with a camera/light combo. You don’t need to deal with bare electrical wires, you just plug it into a nearby outdoor socket. And if you don’t have one of those, you can buy a battery-operated model and trickle-charge it with a solar panel.
Xiaomi’s Mi Home Security Camera isn’t quite as cheap as our previous pick in this category—the $20 Wyze Cam V2 —but Xiaomi’s Mi Home Security Camera is an even better value at $40.
Most home security cameras perform the same basic functions—they detect an event, record the event, and send you an alert—but they don’t all perform them the same way.
