Tapo C125 Indoor Camera with Physical Privacy Shutter, 2K QHD Security Camera, No Monthly Fee, AI Detection, Pet & Baby Camera, CCTV, 2-Way Talk, 140° Wide FOV, Night Colour Vision, Magnetic Mounting

Amazing budget Camera
Used this camera as a dog cam in the utility room. Had it for 5 years now. Bought it for £40 which I would say is a good price looks to be £20 most of the time now. Absolute bargain, best thing is no subscription.Helped us look back when one of our dogs had a seizure to see what happened before hand. Top product

Understand the Limitations
Its a good camera with excellent night vision but there are problems. As an external security camera you will be limited to where you can site it, and this might not be where you would prefer, due to the need of a strong wifi signal. I couldn’t place it in my preferred position and in order to get adequate wifi had to compromise, and this also involved a longer power lead. The longer power lead then showed a voltage drop from the supplied power adapter, and although the instructions state to only use the supplied lead, I had to use a more robust power supply, and also a 230v extension lead to minimise the length of the lead from camera to power supply.I have considered an external wired wifi booster but that is an additional security issue.A great internal camera, and good external camera if you can get good wifi and power to the position you require. If either the wifi or power is inadequate the camera performance will either be compromised or not work at all.

Amazing IP Camera features for it’s price with excellent software support.
I have used this for a couple of weeks now.An IP Camera has so much potential for remote security and this particular model covers almost all the bases an average user like me would need. But it is all dependant on how good the software is. Thankfully, the Tapo software which can be installed on a tablet or smartphone, is pretty great with just a few user interface flaws. But feature-wise you can do almost anything remotely. Obviously, you can watch your footage live. But what I love is that you can also pinch and zoom, pan swipe while zoomed in, take an instant snapshot or record what you are seeing straight onto your smartphone/tablet….WHILE the the camera is ALSO doing a 24/7 continuous recording onto its local SD card (it doesnt come with one, you buy this yourself).The camera can be set to record continuously onto SD card or only when motion is detected or on a set schedule. I only tested continuous recording.I bought a 64GB class 10 card which i found that the camera stored almost 8 days of continous recording in 1080p before it cycled over the oldest recording. You can playback footage at any specific time and anything of particular interest, can be recorded directly to your tablet/smartphone….but the caveat to that is that you record your playback segment in real time. You can speed up playback by 2x, 4x, 8x etc but if you record that, you are recording that playback at that same speed. If you want to save several hours or several days of recording, then recording that playback to your tablet/smartphone is clearly impractical, so you have to take the SD card out of the camera and copy off the footage to your computer. But for me, recording short sequences off playback sequences was sufficient for me.If your wifi or 4G reception is poor, the software has a low and high quality stream setting. In good wifi reception, the high quality streaming is excellent, fluid motion and good 1080p resolution. when signal drops, the motion jutters in high quality mode but set it to lower quality, the motion is fluid again but at the sacrifice of some detail. BUT be reassured that the actual recording on camera’s SD card is always at highest quality with smooth motion because of course streaming doesn’t affect local recording.The clarity of video is exceptional. I had been using analogue security camera in the past and this just blows it out of the water. Night vision is terrific too and it switches automatically on detecting low light. However, I find that when more light arrives, the camera is very slow to switch back to “day mode”. Now, I use this camera to keep watch on my front and back yards, and street lights just keeps the area a bit lit, so I tried force “day mode” all the time. Turns out “Day mode” in low light is brilliant, as the night footage shows up as if it was daylight and this is probably because there is a large sensor in the camera, I suspect or camera is using a higher ISO. No need for night vision mode. Night vision mode is really only needed for litterally dark rooms. So my tip for using this in low light is force “Day Mode” permanently but for dark rooms with no light at all, use Night vision mode.If you have several cameras, The Tapo software can show all simultaneously or switch to any.Another brilliant feature is its connectivity to Amazon Firestick and Chromecast. Or Alexa and Google Home. I used my Firestick, and all I have to say is “show me Front Yard” and in just a few seconds I can view what’s going on my front yard on my TV.But we are not limited to just using Tapo software. This is also compatible with mainstream IP security software and the Tapo (Dlink) website is very informative. You can also live stream on VLC player on your PC…however, this involves typing your camera password and username into the streaming address which somehow doesnt feel secure. But I tried it and it really works. So Tapo’s potential is even more flexible if used with othetr security software such as IP CAM etc.Widefield view.130 degree is a very wide coverage. It’s not aspherical so It does have spherical aberration (ie warped at the sides) but not so much as you would find on fish eye lenses. This is not a photographic lens anyway so shouldn’t be a big deal.In fact, I forgot to mention that the camera can be set to pan left and right continuously but the wide angle is sufficient enough for me to keep it still.Appearance:This is NOT a conspicuous device with stark black and white contrast, so if you have white wall, the black camera will standout, and if you have a dark wall, the white external body will stand out. So this camera is obvious and serves as a “hey I am watching you, mate” warning. But I love it’s THX118 scifi aesthetic (or if you an Apple product fan, this fits right in too).Sound and Mic:I am sorry I have not tested this ability as it’s not a feature I am after but when I do, I will update. However, the mic can be turned off for privacy and I do actually use that. On my previous analogue camera, I had to block the mic with blu tack so this ability to remotely turn off is most welcome.Pan and Tilt: Manually remote panning and tilting on a tablet is very useful but I think the Tapo software makes this a little awkward with its joypad overlay. Its quite cumbersome to use but it is effective nevertheless.There isn’t much more for me to say other than this is a tremendous value, feature rich IP Camera for £25 (at time of purchase) and will be purchasing more to replace my other analogue cameras.

Great product
A great security camera that offers many different benefits and is very simple to use. The camera can take a S.D card upto 128gb for local storage or after a initial 30 day trial there’s an option for cloud storage. There’s is as one would expect many different operating functions, from 24hr continuous recording to schedule recording; baby, broken glass, people and motion notifications.

in the description it says that the camera has “color night vision” I don’t see such an option anywhere in the settings. The manufacturer himself does not provide such information, so how is it?

Gute Qualität