👁️🗨️ Watch every angle, day or night — security that’s always a step ahead!
The TP-Link Tapo C500 is a wired outdoor security camera delivering 1080p Full HD video with 360° pan and 130° tilt for full coverage. It features AI-driven person detection and motion tracking, night vision up to 98 feet, two-way audio with customizable alarms, and flexible storage options including microSD and cloud. Compatible with Alexa and Google Home, it balances advanced security with user privacy via a physical lens block.
A**R
This thing is amazing for the price!
This has exceeded my expectations! I got this item to keep an eye on my dogs when they go outside to the dog door during the day. I was just expecting something to view them on the porch going out the door. The motion tracking Works fantastic how about the quality is better than I expected for the price. It pretty much follows my dogs out the door and the whole time they're in the yard until they go back in the house. From home, and go back and monitor every time they went outside, or I can just watch that whenever I want to check on them. I also have their indoor cameras, but this is much nicer. For my purposes, this meet and exceeds my expectations in every way. Some takeaways you may want to know, you're going to hear the motor on the camera, this model is only 15 frames per second, but I'm not shooting professional video here. Just want to make sure my dogs are okay and motor their activity. You can pay more to get a higher end model that can ignore pets and cars, but I don't want that. What this offers is exactly what I want.
K**R
Fantastic for the Money
I’ve had these cameras for a long time now and realized even though I’m very impressed with them, I never wrote a review. I think for the money, they are the best cameras you could buy. They are simple to set up and install. They will accept micro sd cards for storing video so you do not require a service or a monthly fee. I chose these because they will track movement. So I can see my dogs or my child wherever they go in my back yard. I set up two: one on one side of the back door and one on the other. The only stipulation is they require an outlet to plug them in. But I have a pool in back so I have outlets in several places for plugging in the pool robot and entertainment devices. I can view both cameras via an app on my phone or my Alexa Show device. The image quality is good and with both I can see my entire back yard. I highly recommend these cameras to anyone looking for some simple home security or just the security of being able to keep an eye on your pets or children in your yard.
H**M
IMPRESSIVE!
I bought a b-team outdoor camera 2-3 years ago and it was out of the box junk. It was more about selling me a subscription than about performing. The C150W is the opposite. It is very responsive and loaded with features through the app. The picture quality is worth $34 and the app will record an entire event, not just 5 seconds. The subscription looks fair enough price wise, but you really don’t need it if you put in a good sized card.The app is very well designed and simple to use.My question is; how will this camera stand up to the test of time?At this point, I am a very satisfied customer.
D**Y
Great Cameras - Awesome App
I have been in the market for a decent camera for quite some time. Years even. Finally, it appears I found one that deliversI tried many many brands of cameras. The vast majority of them being other cheaper off- brand cameras. Most of them didn’t work right out of the box to failing just under a year of use. Most apps were clunky at best.Enter Tapo cameras. Easy to set up. Great app features. The Tapo app is extremely easy to understand and is thoughtfully designed. Tp-link actually manufactures the Tapo products. And TP-Link has been a very reputable brand over the years.The cameras themselves are good. Good clarity and great night time vision. I appreciate the ability to insert a physical micro sd card for video storage. You aren’t forced into some cloud service for that ability (although it is available if you want it). And yes, you can access all of the sd card footage from the app.There are only a couple of quibbles I have with these. If power goes out, the cameras do need to be manually adjusted back to their “home” position once power is restored. It would be infinitely helpful if there was an actual “home position” setting to commit the cameras to. So they will go back to this position in the event of a power outage. It’s annoying because all of your settings pretty much rely on this home position to function as desiredThe other quibble is if the WiFi ever changes the cameras have to be removed from your app and re-added to change what WiFi they are connected to. There really should be a WiFi change option in the app to handle this easily.Other than those two things I really appreciate how well these work. The motion tracking option isn’t bad (it’s not great though often moving too slow to keep up with the target). But it does move fast enough to keep the target within the field of view longer than a stationary camera would.The alarm function is nifty too. Set on a schedule (I have mine set at night) it will produce any number of variables like flashing lights and alert sirens if it detects people in the area. Good little feature to have to scare away someone if they think they just set off an alarm. Alternatively you can upload your own sound clip if you want verbal feedback towards your intended target.All in all these are great cameras. Now to see how they function in the long term.EDIT: After writing this review, I found in the app that you can set up to 3 different views for each camera as sort of a "pre-set". So, this makes it slightly less combersome to move the cameras back to the home position should they need to be manually moved back after a power outage.Also it's noteworthy to mention that shadows will set these cameras off no matter what the sensitivity settings are set to. So, on windy days the cameras are all over the place trying to chase the shadows. Also, this prevents them from returning back to the "home" position. Speaking of how they move, they are super clunky in their movements. Making motion tracking difficult for them to keep up with anything moving slower than a slow walk. I think the tracking should be sped up for this. Also, motion tracking does not work if motion is turned off. So if you just want it to track "people" it can't. Seems like an easy thing to implement if you want to void shadow tracking and only want people to be tracked.EDIT2: Just thought I would update my review to include more information after having the cameras for a bit now. I have now turned motion tracking off. The reason being is that, as time goes on they get worse at moving to track anything. They also randomly get stuck in the field of view when tracking something and then start erroneously tracking everything all over the place after that. Never returning to the home position. So, what you get is eventually the camera will drift so far away from home position you will often get the camera just looking at the ground or up in the air somewhere until you manually re-adjust them back yourself. I knocked off a star for this as it's a feature that seems to be more of a gimmick than a real useful function. I really do home they can update the firmware and app to make this feature more useful in the future.
B**S
good camera at low price.
First outdoor Tapo, I have two indoor units. Easy to install, Android app is mostly easy to use and reliable both on my smart phone and tablet. An interface to a web browser would be nice but its not a critical requirement. Camera was very easy to mount. The instruction are decent and the downloadable manual even better. The camera just works, is inexpensive and seems to be well supported. T_Link is a brand of network gear that I have used successfully over the years. I have used other brands and installed many for friends and family. None are better at this or even double the price point.
L**.
Not good with spiders or foggy nights
Easy fast set up. Good quality material and functionality. Camera quality decent. One unexpected issue we have are spiders seem to love building webs over the camera lens every night. Many many hours of web building can be viewed all night and foggy nights are an issue as well. Night vision is good enough as long as no spiders start working or fog rolls in. Otherwise enjoy many hours of nothing but blurry spiders and heavy sand storm looking images.
Trustpilot
3 days ago
2 weeks ago