Hey, it is me, The Before You Buy Guy.
Today I'm taking a look at the C200 Home Security Camera from TP-Link.
I have been testing out all the features of this device
to see what you might want to know before you purchase this item.
In this video, I'm going to show you what the footage looks like from this camera during the day, and at night.
I'm going to try to provide you with as much information as I can to help you make a more informed decision
whether this is the right camera for you. Let's get started.
So Tapo's C200 security camera will include the following things in the box.
1 Tapo camera. 1 DC power adapter.
1 Quick Start Guide
mounting screws, mounting template and a camera base.
Setup for this camera is fairly easy. First of all, we'll take the camera out of the box.
Install the Tapo App on your mobile phone and then follow the on-screen instructions in order to set up your camera.
I found the setup was fairly quick and easy and the Tapo App is really quite functional.
It works well; I didn't find any glitches or problems with the app. It's good that it has a lot of positive reviews on the Google Play Store.
So it's a 1080p hand tilt camera
And this camera supports night vision up to 30 feet. This camera supports a micro SD card,
but to get to the card slot is not as easy as you might think.
You actually have to tilt the camera up like this and here, hidden away,
you'll see two things; the slot for the memory card and you'll also see the factory reset button.
So if you buy one of these secondhand and you're trying to work out how to factory reset the camera,
here's the button that you'll need just here, hiding at the bottom.
So you can mount this camera on the wall or the roof if you choose.
It's good that the mounting bracket is included with this camera.
When you first plug in the camera,
it does this weird thing where it's calibrating its position.
It turns itself around, it looks up and down just getting a view of its surroundings.
After that you can link the camera to your Wi-Fi,
and then anytime you need to you can access the camera.
So this camera does work with Google Assistant... sort of.
I had a bit of trouble connecting this to my Google Home App at the beginning
and before I could get it working. I had to update the camera's firmware in order to actually link it to my Google Home App.
So if you want this to work with the Google Home, try updating the firmware because it worked for me.
So with the Google Home integration, you can't actually go into the Google Home App and view this camera.
Using the Google device, you can connect this camera to other Google screens in your home,
like a TV with a Chromecast plugged in,
So it does work, but really it's a bit of a gimmick 9 times out of 10.
When you want to check the camera you'll probably just do it on your phone anyway.
There is no cloud storage with this camera.
Which means if you want to have a long-term storage and look at past footage, you'll need to insert a memory card.
Up to 128 gig of storage is supported in the memory card slot.
It is a bit of a disadvantage not having the option to use cloud storage if you want to,
but the benefit of that is you don't have to pay for cloud storage.
So there's definitely pros and cons. My main concern with the fact that it doesn't have cloud storage and just an SD card,
is if a burglar comes into your house and steals your camera,
What are you going to do? It's gone.
You've got no footage and your house has been burgled.
Your house can be broken into they could take everything and it wouldn't matter.
I guess if you had the camera mounted up somewhere high or put it in a secret spot,
hopefully the burglar wouldn't notice and would just ignore it.
So if a burglar comes along and switches off your mains power or cuts your power wires,
this camera is not going to work either.
Unlike some other smart cameras that do run on batteries or at least have a backup battery,
the only way to power this camera is with the power cable that comes with the device.
I think it would be awkward if you wanted to mount this on the roof or somewhere up high,
especially if you don't have a mains power outlet near where you want to install the device.
It really would be quite unsightly to have a cable dangling down from your roof.
If I wanted to mount a security camera, I probably would pick a different camera.
One feature of the camera that I did like was the motion detection.
And you can switch this on and off in the app and you'll get a notification to your phone
regardless of where you are, that there's motion that's been detected where the camera is set up.
This could be really convenient if there was an intruder in your house and you weren't home.
If a burglar breaks into your house and you get a notification about a motion alert in your living room,
straight away you can start recording on your phone,
you can get some images of the burglar before they actually steal your camera.
If you're lucky you can also take still images in the app.
Unfortunately with the motion detection, I couldn't find in the app any way to tune the motion detection so that it doesn't pick up pets for example.
Which is a bit of a problem for me since I have a dog.
I found the motion detection was really effective,
and when I had it on, I was getting notifications all day long about my dog walking in and out of the lounge room.
I'd even get notifications if there was a bird outside. So the motion detection is very sensitive on this camera.
It is great to check on the status of your house using the app when you're not home.
As long as you're connected to the internet,
you'll be able to dial in, have a look at your camera and see if everything's as it should be.
This could be really good as a camera to keep an eye on children while they're being watched by somebody else,
or to keep an eye on a pet when you're not at home.
Another feature of the device that I like is the ability to reposition the lens.
The pan / tilt on this camera works really well and you can pan all the way around to face backwards.
If you had this camera set up in the center of a large space, you could really if you wanted to,
move the camera to look at any spot in that larger room.
You can choose in the app to manually enable or disable night mode.
Or you can set it on auto so the camera will detect when it's dark and turn on the night mode for you.
You can zoom in by pinching on the screen here and it's got a decent zoom.
Any sound that's happening in the room where the camera is,
you can hear that through the mobile app, but the sound quality is not great.
This camera also has a speaker which means it has two way talk.
You can push a button here on the app and actually talk to somebody who's in your lounge room while you're not there.
Now this worked okay, but the sound is very distorted and certainly not high quality.
I could understand what the other person was saying when they were talking to me through the camera app,
but it was very muffled.
There's two different ways to use the two-way talk.
You can push this push to talk button here,
and when you're holding it down anything that you say will be broadcasted through the speaker.
Or, you can push this phone call button here
which means you don't have to hold the button down and everything that you say will go to the speaker.
So there's two different ways to do it. It's essentially the same thing.
This little camera does have an alarm which you can set to go off when motion is detected.
I think the picture looks okay.
It's not the highest quality that I've seen;
it is 1080p, so it's better than some other security cameras that film in 720 or less.
Now, let's have a look at that exact same shot. But this time in night mode.
I really wanted to get an accurate representation of the night vision of this camera.
So when I film this, it was pitch black.
But I was not that impressed with the quality of the image.
I hope that footage gives you a bit of an idea of the image quality for this camera.
The main positives for this camera is it's really easy to set up and it shoots in 1080p and it's cheap.
This was about 60 Australian dollars to buy, which is really cheap for a 1080p camera.
Let alone a camera that comes with pan and tilt as well the app for this camera works really well.
I think TP-Link could improve this camera by having optional cloud integration.
Also, maybe they could include a backup battery so that you could power the device
even if there was a blackout or someone switches off your power.
This camera could benefit from a longer cable so that you could plug it in and mount it in more places.
Of course, I'd love to see a higher resolution than 1080p,
but I think that would really be a stretch at this price point.
All of these improvements that TP could make would increase the price of the camera.
It's probably not that fair for me to hold a lot of these against them.
If you want lots of cameras around your house I'm not sure this is the best camera either because it does require a power cable to plug in.
If you have lots of these cameras around, you need a lot of different power outlets to plug them all in.
if you're looking for a cheap and convenient, yet effective camera to keep an eye on children or pets,
this could actually be a great option for you.
That about wraps up my review of the TP-Link C200 home security camera.
I hope you got some value from today's video.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and check out some of my other videos just here.
I'll see you next time.