MagCam 2K+ - 2026 Wirecutter Best Outdoor Security Camera & PCMag Editors' Choice, Wireless Battery Power, Magnetic Mount, Subscription-Free SD Storage or optional Cloud, Person/Vehicle Detection

When it comes to ease of installation, this is without a doubt, the best camera that I have encountered. With the magnetic mount, just find an old steel fence post, snap it on and you're done. The app leads you through the set-up process and you are good to go. Operation is flawless and the A.I. really can distinguish between a cobweb moving in the wind and genuine items of interest. Motion sensor response is nearly free of the latency that plagued earlier generations of of similar products. (I'm looking at you Company Z.) I started with one unit but was so impressed that I now have 7 of them and expect to add more. One less than stellar feature involves the SD card local storage option. I have found that retrieving video from the SD card to be so slow and unreliable that it forced me to opt into the cloud storage data hostage scheme. I am not real keen on this $113 per year ransom but if you want the camera to work properly, you really have no other choice. Also please bear in mind that the SD card purchase will cost you nearly as much as the camera. For my applications, battery life is more like 90 days rather that the advertised 300 days. Your battery life may vary with the camera activation so more traffic means shorter battery life. Great job by TAPO giving us a truly wireless WiFi camera that will go anywhere and stick to anything!

We love every single one of our Tapo cameras! This one in particular is on our front porch. I charged it when I first got it in, and have only had to charge it one time since. It was on 31% when I pulled it down to charge it, and it took less than two hours to get to 100%. The view from the app is very clear, day or night. The overall size of the camera once installed is sleek and not extremely noticeable. Most of the time people don’t look up and miss it completely. Downloading and accessing the app is super easy. Installing the camera is just as easy. The included 2 way talk and nighttime spot light features are just an added benefit for an already great camera. Overall, for the functionality and quality this camera is 100% worth every penny I spent!

I picked up this MagCam to cover my driveway and appreciate how simple it was to mount. The magnetic base is strong enough that the camera doesn’t shift even during heavy rain and wind. I was able to adjust the angle easily without removing the base, which makes fine-tuning the view much easier. Video quality is very clean in 2K, especially during daylight. At night, the infrared is still good enough to identify people and vehicles. Notifications are accurate without constant false triggers; the person/vehicle detection filters are noticeably smarter than older cameras I’ve used. Battery life is solid. After a couple of weeks with moderate motion events per day, I still had plenty of charge left. A quick recharge brings it right back to full. The only minor issue I had was syncing it to WiFi on the first attempt, but restarting the app instantly fixed it. Overall, this is a well-designed outdoor camera with great clarity and a very user-friendly magnetic mount.

The Tapo C400 camera is an excellent choice for outdoor security. Its wireless setup is very simple, the 1080P quality looks perfect both day and night thanks to color night vision, and the person detection works quickly and accurately. The long battery life and the option to store footage on an SD card or in the cloud make it very practical. It's also fully compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant. Overall, a reliable, complete camera with excellent value for money.

Its good, fantastic video quality, easy setup and all the configurations are great, you can set to detect people during specific hours and also activate the alarm with schedule, the only thing bad is that battery does not last as advertised, it barely last 90 days

If this had slightly better swivel mobility, this would be like the best security camera in the world. Amazing camera. The magnetic base is so frickin helpful and easy to place. It literally never dies, you can use it all the time, these are some nuclear batteries or something. It runs off black magic and dark matter and can see in the dark. Helped me spy on my annoying neighbors and acquire evidence for a court case. Thank you, Tapo. I now already own 3 different types of your cameras! You just have ‘em all set up sitting there right beside each other in the app, you can slide or swap between cameras and set your orders you want to swap through them in. You can set line-crossing detections and even pick specific areas of the cameras view to detect different events like vehicle, person or MOTION. You can set alarm and time preferences and there’s a siren and a light you can turn on or off. So much stuff. So easy. Incredible. I am not easily impressed but this does it. Thank you for a quality product in a rough world, Tapo. You’re changing LIVES. and SAVING LIVES…

We have used another brand for years, but got these about 4 months ago. We haven’t had to recharge yet. They were super easy to set up and put the sd card in. We can easily use the app and it was easy to download. That’s important to us because we are not as good as the younger generation at that kind of stuff. The pictures are good quality. They have a nice wide view that I think are better than expected. This is better than our old ones that had a subscription and love savings.

Battery powered cameras are severely limited. I knew this going in. It was cheap, it was easy to put up, it works well. It definitely lags around 3-4s from reality due to the WiFi-only connection. It’s not possible to record these to an NVR since they only record when they detect something or your battery would die quickly. By far the biggest problem with every battery powered camera is that every recording inevitably starts with the subject well into the frame (in the best case scenario). A wired camera will record all the time, keeping 5-10s of footage in its memory. Then if it detects something, it can save that past 10s of video data so you can see the entire event. This one does seem to work better than the Reolink Argus 2/3 I had, where the entire recording would be the back of the subject leaving the frame. I feel like this wakes up quicker. But a fast moving person or animal could still easily run thru without being captured, if they knew it was there. Mine is high up with a broad view which reduces that issue but seems to cause a different one. The app warned me today “my battery is draining too fast”. I just have this up in my back yard and there have been a few people walking around back there. I guess I’m supposed to point it at the ground rather than out across a wide area? Reviewing the footage, there aren’t any false positives at all so I don’t really want to dial down the sensitivity. my options seem to be either reduce the coverage or ignore the warning and charge it more often. Neither seems ideal. The battery life is still at 98% tho and it’s been up and recording for 3 1/2 days. That’s pretty great. Hopefully it lasts at least a few years before the battery starts failing. Obviously a battery powered camera is ultimately a disposable item since the battery will degrade and it can’t be replaced. not that it would be especially difficult technically, but finding an exact match would be tough. Any change whatsoever (chemistry, amps, volts, etc) could render it dangerous to charge. Dont really want to risk a lithium fire inside for a $45 camera. I really like the Tapo camera’s “AI” (probably not) detection. It is really configurable and works well. However, it works better and has more functionality on the wired cameras AND they’re cheaper. Also the app keeps warning me that using the detection features uses a lot of battery. The magnetic grip is strong! It comes with a plate to mount it but I just stuck it to my garage (metal). Seems sturdy enough. If not moved I’ll use the plate, and the cameras attachment to that thing feels strong enough to withstand a hurricane. Super powerful magnet there, that’s really nice. However, I don’t see any mechanism to keep someone from pulling it down and taking it with them. Nothing you can really do either way, but some locking mechanism might be nice. If you want to get a camera, do everything in your power to wire them. POE works best. My most important cameras are POE and that’s all I’d use for anything critical. But if you MUST have a battery powered camera, this is the best one I’ve used! Just be aware of the considerable drawbacks with any battery security camera. You’re trading ease of installation for greatly reduced reliability, functionality, and ultimately you have to put in more work later to take it down and charge it, etc.