When it comes to choosing a camera to watch over your home remotely, you’re spoilt for choice nowadays. In fact, there are increasingly two big categories to choose between - after all, many home security cameras are indoor cameras. If you’re looking for an outdoors camera, though, with the hardiness to stand up to adverse weather, there are numerous options too.
If you’re wanting to keep an eye on the area in front of your home, perhaps to check up on an alleyway or something similar, or have a camera focusing on your garden and your back door, then you’re in luck. Here’s our guide to the best outdoor cameras around today.
Nest Cam IQ Outdoor
A great security system that’s easy to use.
The Nest Cam IQ Outdoor is for outdoor use only, sitting alongside the Nest Cam IQ which is designed for indoor use. There is also the older Nest Cam Outdoor to consider if you want a cheaper alternative from Nest for outdoor use.
The Nest Cam IQ Outdoor is IP66 rated and capable of resisting temperatures from -40°C to 45°C. This is a wired camera that needs power from inside your home, but it offers secure wiring options directly through the backplate to avoid exposing the wires.
It records continuously at 1080p resolution day or night and will send notifications if it detects movement, sound, someone talking or people. A large and powerful two-way communication system allows you to talk to visitors or scare off intruders, and there is a Supersight zoom feature that will track and follow people as they approach your home.
Without a Nest Aware subscription, you’ll be able to see activity from the last three hours and get alerts for motion and person detection. With the subscription, you’ll get up to 30 days footage, as well as other benefits including the ability to download important footage, more intelligent alerts, familiar face detection and other features such as activity zones and clips.
Ring is perhaps best known for its video doorbells but the company also offers an outdoor smart camera that includes powerful floodlights, a loud alarm and an ultrawide angle motion detection system.
The Ring Floodlight Cam is capable of differentiating between objects and people with a passive infrared sensor system that’s clever enough to detect objects, cars and animals within the vicinity. It also allows you to adjust these settings to your own needs. Like other cameras on this list, the Ring Floodlight Cam also includes intelligent motion zone settings and the ability to record 1080p video day and night.
Access to recorded footage requires a monthly subscription at a small additional cost but with floodlights, an alarm system and two-way audio, this camera is a brilliant option for those looking for a deterrent based smart home camera.
The Netatmo Smart Outdoor Camera with Siren is a security camera and light in the same device, recording 1080p video day and night and capable of detecting people, cars and animals up to a good distance.
The LED floodlight can be switched on manually or set to switch on when it detects a person, animal, car or all three.
This camera also sports some nifty features like a built-in 105dB siren designed to scare off unwanted guests., The lack of monthly subscription costs may appeal to many, with local storage or direct uploads to your FTP or Dropbox account available if you need them.
Also available in a corded version, the 1080p Ring Spotlight Cam Battery is really very easy to install with a mounting base and included tools. Like Ring’s series of doorbells, it’ll give you customisable motion zones, two-way communication and there’s a siren, too. One concern is that removing the battery is easily done - therefore disabling the camera.
As with all Ring devices, you need the Ring Protect plan to get the most from it, which isn’t too bad if you only have one device, but gets quite expensive when you have more than one Ring protecting your home.
The Arlo Pro slots in above the standard Arlo cam, but below the Ultra. There’s an included base station that connects to your router, offering a siren as well as the option to use local storage. 2K video is crisp and gorgeous, so it’s got great quality on that front.
It offers motion and audio detection, (two-way audio) as well as black-and-white night vision. The big boon over the standard Arlo Cam is that it uses rechargeable batteries - it can also be connected to mains power should you wish.
As with any Arlo device, you will need to subscribe to one of the plans to get the most out of it - especially if you’ll be away for more than a week at a time.
The Arlo Ultra sits at the top of the Arlo range and it’s a pricey bit of kit, especially as it requires a specific SmartHub rather than working with the same hub other Arlo cameras work with. That said, the Arlo Ultra offers 4K HDR video recording and a 180-degree field of view, making the video the other Arlo cameras capture look poor in terms of comparison.
The Arlo Ultra comes with one year of the Arlo Premier Smart Plan included, after which you will need to sign up to one of the plans to get the most out of your Ultra camera. If you can justify the cost, the Arlo Ultra will really deliver in terms of the quality of footage you will be able to capture outside your home.
The Canary Flex is weatherproof and it can be used indoors or outdoors, recording 1080p video day or night. It can be plugged into the mains, or used wire-free and recharged.
The Flex features a 360-degree magnetic swivel base that is mounted to a flat surface, while the camera snaps into place on the base and can twist in any direction you want. Like others on this list, there are a range of other accessories available too.
There is no extra hub to connect to your router, it features a built-in speaker and microphone and it comes in black and white options. Canary offers 24 hours of video viewing without a subscription after which you pay a flat rate a month or year for 30 days history.
How to choose an outdoor camera
There are lots of considerations when purchasing an outdoor security camera for your home. Naturally one of these is features - do you need a siren to deter people? Would it be helpful to have a floodlight to light up your garden when you’re out there? Do you want peace of mind that comes from storing footage locally? Keep these things in mind when looking to buy.
Many of the cameras use cloud storage as standard which might be off-putting if you’re nervous about security, while others promise local storage options instead.
Subscription costs
One big factor is the subscription costs. Many smart home cameras require you to pay a monthly subscription for unlimited access to your footage. This is important if you’re away from home and need access to footage from hours or days before an event, should the worst happen.
These costs can soon add up and some also apply on a per-camera basis. So if you add multiple cameras to your home it’ll get more expensive.
There’s usually a free plan with limited access to some footage on several camera options. While others don’t even require a subscription at all. So what you pay initially is the only outlay and that may well be preferable.
Convenient features
Installation and setup
External smart home cameras can present a problem in terms of installation. If you don’t have an external power socket then you might have to drill a large hole into your external walls to get power to a camera. There are alternatives, the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery model, for example, has a replaceable battery so you don’t need to worry about power cables, but then you’ll have to keep an eye on battery life and put up with the hassle of having to change them when they’re running low.
