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Capture a lot more than your mail carrier's latest visit.
Amanda Blum
Our Top 4 Picks
Sweeping overviews of the yardEufy Solar Solocam S340
$159.99at Amazon
$159.99at Amazon
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Your first security cameraBlink Outdoor 4
$59.99at Amazon
$59.99at Amazon
Locations without wifiVosker VKX 4G Camera
$249.99at Amazon
$249.99at Amazon
When you want to use a local networkREOLINK 4K UHD PoE
$249.99at Amazon
$249.99at Amazon
While you may have installed outdoor security cameras for the safety of your house and family, you'll quickly realize that many of them are more often employed to capture moments of life happening than, say, someone stealing your Amazon delivery. It's great to get a heads-up that your mail carrier has swung by, but outdoor cams can do a lot more: capture your pets at play, let you check on your home during storms, and double-check to see that you rolled your car windows up.
Table of Contents
My Top Picks
Sweeping overviews of the yardEufy Solar Solocam S340
Whether indoors or out, cameras that you can adjust via the app to focus on what you want are just superior. This SoloCam is the one that remains installed all over my yard. It can rotate almost 360 degrees, and then tilt up and down. I get a lot of use out of the dual lenses—one is macro, and one is micro. I use the macro for a sweeping overview, and then adjust the micro to home in. The micro lens is good enough I can actually focus on individual plants in my yard while out of town, just to see how they're progressing. The higher you mount these cameras, the better your view. While there is a wired version of the camera that is equally fantastic, and comes with floodlights, I've been blown away at how this camera easily stays powered up just from the solar panel, even in the dark PNW.
- Eufy Home Base allows you to skip subscription fees
- 350 degree sweeping views via remote control on app
- Dual lenses offer spectacular macro and micro view
- Reliably quick to bring clips up
- Not easy to install
- Camera is occasionally too sensitive to something in the focal view, notifying too often
- Can't be used with local network, requires wifi
- 3K resolution
- Solar Powered
- 360 degree field of view
- Local storage
Get It Now
Your first security cameraBlink Outdoor 4
There's a lot to like about the Blink cameras: First and foremost, they're cheap. You can buy a bunch without breaking the bank, and they routinely go on deep discount during holidays. They also install lightning-fast, and they're operated by battery. The Blink app is easy to figure out, and I like that with the simple addition of the Sync module, you can skip a subscription for storing clips. That said, these are pretty simple devices. You position the camera, and then if something happens just outside the range of the view, you won't see it, and every single time you change out the batteries, you'll need to position it again. That said, clips are easy to share, more so since Blink announced Blink moments, and the app experience is simple to use.
- Inexpensive
- Easy to install
- Easy to share clips
- App is simple to use
- Batteries can drain quickly with use
- Cameras only come in black and are easy to spot
- Have to reposition camera easy time you change batteries
- 1080p resolution
- Powered by 2 AA batteries
- Works with Alexa
- Two-way audio
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Locations without wifiVosker VKX 4G Camera
The latest Vosker camera looks like a serious security camera; you're not going to miss it. But it's meant for locations that wifi can't reach—meaning that it's ideal as a trail cam, gate cam or just the remote areas of your yard. The 1080p resolution looks great as it comes across in 15-second clips through the app, but keep in mind that when relying on 4G, you'll be paying for that data. The field of view is 90 degrees, which means it's directional—you're getting a specific slice of the field of view.
- Doesn't need wifi
- Easily mounted to trees and remote areas
- Fast to bring up clips
- Only 90 degrees of vision
- 4G costs can run up
- 4G-LTE connection
- Solar panel promises six months of power
- 1080p resolution
- 100-ft motion detection
Get It Now
When you want to use a local networkREOLINK 4K UHD PoE
With wifi jammers becoming a bigger issue with home robberies, the solution is using a local network. That said, not all security cameras will work over LAN; many require wifi. An easy solution is using cameras that employ power over ethernet (PoE). But what I really love about this camera is the PTZ (pan/tilt/zoom), which means you can use the app to zoom around the property, 360 degrees, all the way up and down, and then zoom in 5x. You can connect it to multiple different forms of media, from a slot for an onboard storage card to connecting it to a local hard drive—so you skip subscription fees. I like how the design allows this camera to stand proud of the house or the wall that the camera is mounted on.
- Particularly solid construction
- PoE means ability to use local network over wifi
- You do need PoE where you want cameras
- Pricey
- Larger than similar cameras
- 360 degree pan and 90 degree tilt
- PoE
- Night color vision
- 4k UHD resolution
- 5x zoom
Get It Now
While some cameras work better than others, the real truth is that the best camera is likely going to be the one that fits your capabilities and needs. Some yards are large enough that a 4G camera that doesn't require wifi is going to be the most likely to work. If you have the connections in your home to use cameras with PoE (power over internet) you can set up a local network instead of using wifi, which might be more secure. The first step is to divide your yard into sections, and try to ascertain which kind of camera (wall mount, pan and tilt, doorbell) will fit that area best. Ideally, you stay within one brand for all your cameras, and when possible, employ local storage so you don't need to pay for a subscription.
