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"i cannot see any reason to buy are more expensive camera and i'm happy to recommend this product"

"the construction doesn't feel very rugged but it's survived the recent heavy rain without any problems"

"i bought it to check out what is happening in my garden whilst im not around and it has captured various activity birds cats hedgehogs neighbours footballs etc etc"

"a standard size sd would be better"

"update: campark has offered to supply a replacement item for a new and full review"

"you can't use windoze media player to view the videos it replays them at the wrong speed and freezes half way through but vlc works fine"

"i strapped mine to my garden fence and so far its held up well given the wind rain and snow we have had lately"

"it is lightweight which makes me nervous"

"i also have something digging holes in my lawn and daughters play area so looking forward to seeing what that is"

"i have only used it for a short time so i'm unable at the moment to comment on battery life"

"you can't use windoze media player to view the videos it replays them at the wrong speed and freezes half way through but vlc works fine"

"i've set recording length to 60 seconds but for some reason it freezes at 48 seconds and won't record any more picture afterwards only sound"

"i was able to identify that guess what "

"the camera was set at the default lag or delay of 30 seconds after triggering a sensor and captured nothing the first night"

"i am not a photographer but spent some time scanning through the various cameras and settled on this one as it had the functions i wanted and looked sturdy"

"i was not happy with this product and returned it last week to a hermes drop off"

"it can hold 8 aa batteries although only needs 4 to run i imagine the other 4 will give more longevity"

"if i have a faulty camera that eats batteries i will amend my review but for now i am looking for an alternative"

"if i have a faulty camera that eats batteries i will amend my review but for now i am looking for an alternative"

"we new we had hedgehogs in own garden so we put food out for them all the food was some time gone and some not so we wanted the camera to see who was eating the food and it worked we saw hedgehogs and a fox which was a surprise magpies also eat some early in the morning"

"good options for photos video – started with 3 photos plus 2 mins of video but have now changed to 1 photo and 1 mins of video when triggered"

"with the still images it seemed that often the birds were too fast and the pictures were empty many times"

"i've set recording length to 60 seconds but for some reason it freezes at 48 seconds and won't record any more picture afterwards only sound"

"it fell off one of my trees yesterday but withstood the fall no problem extremely durable and the camouflage also blends in well with it’s surroundings and nature"

"set it up for stills not video"

"i returned the product as a result and as we had issues dropping it off and or having it collected due to no fault of our own amazon decided to refund us and let us keep it"

"it came swiftly and was packaged well"

"it also works as a secretive form of security for my garden which i like he idea of"

"we now know we have at least 2 cats visiting during the night that we didn't know about"

"i have set it to take photos only and will monitor the battery use to see how long it lasts in this mode but it wasn't what i expected"

"the screen inside is also really helpful for rewatching short clips but i would recommend moving them over to a computer to get the full quality and detail"

"this makes a big difference when it comes to getting the pictures or missing them"

"so that evening i put food out again but placed the food in another dish inside the hutch and again the next morning the food was gone and the dish again which puzzled me greatly"

"getting footage from the camera on to my laptop is simply a case of taking out the sd card and plugging it into the card reader on my laptop and i have had no playback issues thus far"

"1 extension if you need more length and these are no more expensive than usb cables"

"so the multiple view is a complete waste of time"

"poor nightvision the ir nightvision is not great!"

"completely waste of money"

"very disappointed"

"this is really annoying as without live streaming you cant keep recording nor is there snapshots or motion"

"have tried everything and every range of sim card yet there is a huge problem"

"crap camera and very noisy!"

"stay away dreadful product"

"here are my other cons glitchy app auto switches from hq to lq no way to stop it notifies with no apparent trigger detection is also over sensitive delays in notifications sometimes hours get 20 notifications from whole day in one go sound is terrible reboots required regular tech support is poor it admittedly is an amazing concept and if a little more effort was made could have been fantastic"

"the instructions are pretty poor i suggest you need to look at this problem personally i would not buy the two together camera is fine on it's own"

"tried hitting the "retry" button and it repeatedly failed far too quickly for it to have even attempted a substantive check"

"whilst the hardware produced by such firms may be ok i always have concerns about the robustness of their software and privacy issues"

"the other niggle was the sd card issue mentioned above"

"it’s almost misleading as during the night it only shows what is directly in front of the camera"

"if notifications are on be prepared to get bombarded but at a delayed rate"

"here are my other cons glitchy app auto switches from hq to lq no way to stop it notifies with no apparent trigger detection is also over sensitive delays in notifications sometimes hours get 20 notifications from whole day in one go sound is terrible reboots required regular tech support is poor it admittedly is an amazing concept and if a little more effort was made could have been fantastic"

"only issue i have is power cord should be white"

"that way the device or memory cards being stolen will not mean the loss of footage"

"crap camera and very noisy!"

"i do not want to have to flag the exact location of the camera as i believe that represents a security issue if the server is compromised"

"i have turned these to the lowest settings which work well but get the odd false alarm"

"the play back is very laggy and not easy to view back recorded footage very time consuming"

"reboot time is fixed at 3am"

"iv had cheap cameras in the past which have concerned me for security reasons"

"it is ok but it won't except the memory card i have tried 2 different cards and i just get an error message saying there is a problem with the card the cards both work in my tablet"

"the camera can be left on auto day night mode or forced permanently into day or night mode"

"then another issue was the camera telling me that the memory card had a problem which turned out to mean it needed formatting first but i found an option in the software that means the camera can do this for you"

"still not operational and now too late as location is shut down due to virus outbreak"

"not sure if this is a coding issue or me being dim"

"the only bit which is let down would be the microphone listening to what's going on through the phone app is almost unintelligible you have to be very close to the camera to understand what someone is saying"

"i dropped the camera from approx 5’ onto concrete snapped one of the bracket lugs but camera itself not damaged and working fine"

"there have been no real issues maintaining a connection and any connectivity problems are solved by exiting the program and opening again this only happens when i switch wifi signals on my phone now and then"

"dont use the auto restart it can randomly completely screw up the setup when it goes wrong and it will use the manual option in the app"

"awesome little camera you are pretty limited and stuck within the tapo app but i’m sure updates will come ie there is no patrol mode just virtual and horizontal scan"

"again it "could only be controlled locally" and the check screen failed instantly on every retry"

"this rubbish is going back cant beleive this cr** is tp link branded"

"utterly useless"

"to prevent it or help it if it got stolen again i bought this lil camera"

"the box says the unit is a c200 but the app says a kc110 kc115 it is utter junk and i would not engage with tapo or tp link again"

"further in addition to remote access using the tp link camera ios or android app you can also stream live views to any alexa device that has a screen and similar kit from google"

"many false alarms"

"now have no picture assistance useless"

"the picture is fine not any better than the cheap chinese no brand its replacing"

"the main problem is when you try to view more than 1 camera you select a 4 camera window or swipe left it only shows 1 at a time"

"wasted my money with this it works on 2"

"it has two rtsp feeds one 1080p hd and another lesser quality"

"this cause problems at night due to the reflection off the night vision lights"

"i bought this camera after spent hours viewing other people feedbacks"

"it looses connection and freezes even with the app !"

"poor sound"

"don’t know if that’s the app or 4g or wifi connection issues"

"may not be ideal as purely security camera unless well hidden"

"this is outrageous advice which would have all sorts of privacy implications which i am not prepared to contemplate"

"good points small cheap records to micro sd card app lets you watch remotely app does seem to work can review saved footage at up to 8x speed bad points motion detection is essentially useless it doesn't detect me walking down our drive but does detect random cars outside of the detection zone"

"another problem to add to the long list"

"this review is likely more about failings with the tapo app and or any underlying apis rather than the device itself which in itself "seemed" functional however since both need to operate seamlessly to effectively utilise the latter the problems described within render the camera virtually unusable"

"the power cable is nice and long i have the camera mounted upside down at the top of the window the image can be flipped and the cable runs across the top of the window and all the way to the floor"

"i'm using this with a 32gb sdhc card to record video so no ongoing cloud payments"

"i can see how this can be immensely valuable to people with animals that needs to be left on their own or with babies whose parents would like to interact with them without physically disturbing them!"

"i had purchased this to monitor outside through a window however this does not work"

"i'm still learning with this little fella but whatni did find easier for me is to put it on the 'motion detection' setting for recording as opposed to continuous recording then i don't have to through hours of footage"

"some of the app features can not be used as the camera firmware is not supported which would seem a shame"

"forcing permanent day mode avoids this although it also keeps the camera in lower sensitivity colour recording mode so although better than night mode it still isn't ideal"

"no way to set duration for clips recorded after each trigger it carries on recording way too long"

"but having issues with the mic 🎤 and speaker 🔈 quality isn’t great"

"would have returned for refund but missed the return window"

"paid £25 and is good for that but made in china it’s ok for that price and all works great app is really easy to use shame it does not have a zoom just on the screen can go in more but then comes a mess mic speaker are poor a good starter camera"

"since it was purchased as a baby monitor to use via echo show the picture wasnt bright enough"

"don’t waste your money"

"good points small cheap records to micro sd card app lets you watch remotely app does seem to work can review saved footage at up to 8x speed bad points motion detection is essentially useless it doesn't detect me walking down our drive but does detect random cars outside of the detection zone"

"the troubleshooting is lacking instructions"

"after initiation the update the camera turned off and stopped working"

"4ghz wifi as camera and phone have to be on the same wifi for installation the camera is not 5ghz compatible"

"i can't do much with an item that's got the wrong plug"

"i have a 64gb memory card installed and the biggest benefit from recording video so far has been seeing how many cats use my garden as a thoroughfare"

"camera video stream can be viewed through a google nest hub limited view time only although any other configuration or playback of recordings must be done through the app"

"has anyone else has this problem?"

"motion detection at default level is erratic sometimes no detection even though you walk straight in front of the camera and other times detection with no obvious movement and often delayed"

"after that i’ve tried to reconnect the camera and got all kinds of errors possible it didn’t blink at all then it blinked but the app didn’t see the camera after few times resetting and powering off the app saw the camera but was unable to connect to wifi stating something is wrong with it i have other products by tapo and none of them ever complained about my wifi "

"update: it was just one of the cameras causing the issue"

"in the app it constantly shows the camera as offline or says no internet even though i could stream podcasts radio"

"waste of money !"

"motion detection at default level is erratic sometimes no detection even though you walk straight in front of the camera and other times detection with no obvious movement and often delayed"

"activity zone adjustment is a gimmick not functional if it sees it it will get recorded basically"

"privacy mode stops the camera recording video and sound"

"if however you have access points and or extenders then it might be a nightmare it will connect to your main router but not to extenders or access points in order to do that you have to disable ap on those devices and the enable it after you have set up the camera"

"i was off down the pub while he slaved away rigging this gadget up"

"having tried it i can see most facial characteristics well enough to be able to make people out in low light situations"

"doesn’t record on auto detect but does detect and sound sounder so fault in unit"

"during daylight this is a fabulous bit of kit but at night it is not much good"

"bad points when logging into the ios app after set up ios tries to use a new suggested password rather than the one already set up and saved in keychain"

"they tried it a couple of months later and it didn’t work and was unable to return as this was outside the return window"

"dose anyone how to keep it recording without the app being opened"

"cannot be beaten in price vs performance"

"zoom not too clever seems to distort the picture"

"i’m very disappointed in tapo!"

"after that i’ve tried to reconnect the camera and got all kinds of errors possible it didn’t blink at all then it blinked but the app didn’t see the camera after few times resetting and powering off the app saw the camera but was unable to connect to wifi stating something is wrong with it i have other products by tapo and none of them ever complained about my wifi "

"the skill app whilst easy to set up is full of bugs the latest one is that even if you turn off notifications it notifies you of every event"

"" this is incorrect privacy mode does not physically close the lens"

"like all similar products can't see through double glazing at night due to infared reflecting off the surface"

"unless our flat is somehow haunted without our knowing these alerts must be bogus"

"there is a strange lens flare possibly because the ir light is too close to the lens and light reflects directly back into the camera"

"i'm going to try one more configuration then if issues still exist i'll be returning both cameras as not fit for purpose"

"a well made camera with clear visuals however the screw down mounting plate is near impossible to disengage so make sure it is correctly aligned before fixing"

"this makes it evidentially useless as a security camera"

"the speaker is reasonably loud for when you want to two way call or alarm however the design choice to put it at the rear of the camera has obvious sound issues"

"the loop function allows it to record continuously so you don't need to worry about having to clear old files or change sd card when full"

"a well made camera with clear visuals however the screw down mounting plate is near impossible to disengage so make sure it is correctly aligned before fixing"

"for shooting through windows at night turn of the auto mode and set it day only this switches the night vision leds off but you will outdoor lighting to compensate"

"in summary i can recommend the tp cameras however please ensure you allow enough time beforehand for ample set up and troubleshooting to avoid future issues"

"i have been on their web site but it doesn't even show me which way round to put the sd card into the slot in the camera"

"much better than i was expecting it to be as i bought it as a visual deterrent due to its size but i’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quality of images captured"

"this is after the latest update that seems to have fixed a few other issues but without a permanent live view i can't give it more than one star as a baby monitor"

"" this is incorrect privacy mode does not physically close the lens"

"easy set up and i'm rubbish with instructions"

"item was faulty sound and mic didn't work"

"i wouldn’t recommend"

"after reducing the motion detection sensitivity to its lowest level and reducing the field of view used to detect motion the alerts are now less frequent but still occur for no apparent reason"

"getting into the "more" section works once every three tries and when there sometimes it fails to show you live feed so have to go out and back in again"

"forcing permanent day mode avoids this although it also keeps the camera in lower sensitivity colour recording mode so although better than night mode it still isn't ideal"

"once can even take a still photo if one wanted"

"i recently had the catalytic converters stolen off my prius and was very p*****off about it!"

"firstly can i say that i am surprised by some negative comments given the price of this camera and what it packs"

"only two minor issues 1"

"i do not want to have to flag the exact location of the camera as i believe that represents a security issue if the server is compromised"

"also when i try and retrieve the recording it shows a small picture icon of the recording but when i try and open it to watch it it opens a black screen with a play button which doesn't do anything"

"if i have one niggle is that if you're using this as a security camera the plug is so easy to undo maybe they should come up with some sort of screw connection with maybe an allen key to tighten so it cannot be easily pulled out apart from this the quality is good but it's a shame you cannot use it with with echo dots without having a fire tv it will be nice just to ask the dot to show the camera and to choose what device you wanted to show on i"

"i bought this camera to replace a baby kimcam and now that i've the tp link tapo i'm going to miss my old camera"

"secondly the live feed is not continuous on your phone evry few minutes it keeps asking permission if you want to continue absolutely horendous device no such issue with yi cameras"

"after that it seems to lose the connection or something went wrong again and i’ve got red light on the app says the camera is offline and the camera doesn’t reset or tries to do anything"

"most other cameras have standardized on micro usb for power but this has its own transformer and connector which i find an inconvenience"

"do not buy the sd suggested as they are defunct and not even the correct format for the camera"

"i note from other reviews that others had similar problems with the 128gb"

"if you intend to get a cheap camera that supports pan and tilt for your home to monitor things you will not go wrong with the tapo c200"

"5 allowing the app every permission still no luck"

"lead is not long enough for something like this you would want it up high or in a corner horrible black lead hanging down"

"it would be a 5 star from me if the recorded audio is better i find the audio very poor at a few feet away you cannot make out what i was saying"

"i appreciate that this is the budget end of tp link's range of cameras but even so i was not impressed with the picture quality when compared to similar priced cameras the camera was also jerky and noisy when rotating"

"streaming to google hub is almost impossible as it looses connection or freezes"

"in my kitchen i had a pest control plug attached which had a red light permanently on"

"the only way to record footage is to store it locally on an sd card which is not included"

"can't really recommend as a security camera as no cloud storage meaning a burglar could simply steal the camera and there would be no record"

"within a fornight had to send one back as it failed"

"but i'd rather have too sensitive than not enough"

"for most people i don't know if this would be a problem but it's worth bearing in mind that using something like zoneminder shinobi ispy etc"

"i ended up having to forcibly disconnect my phone from the wifi while the camera was trying to connect"

"when i reinstalled it as an “existing configuration” it failed every time at the end with a black pop up that reads “the network is unstable"

"no sd worked and you keep hearing the same sentence 'there is a problem with the sd card' and failed to format"

"however night vision is not great"

"i'm very impressed at the quality for such a low price"

"as expected the ir lights in night mode are no good as they bounce off the window blocking any image but day mode and some outdoor flood lights connected to a photocell fix my night viewing issue"

"however speaking through the app to the camera sounds a lot better"

"my only quibble is that it notifies you of every little movement"

"won't connect to alexa!"

"i wanted to stream it to a desktop pc & expected that to be a little difficult but if you download the free ispy software it's hardly a problem since the camera is compatible with rtsp & onvif"

"image quality is very good but sound is poor & garbled speech generally unintelligible"

"also able to access from 3rd party ip cam software but without camera positioning"

"the camera could not retain memory positions"

"i have put a memory card in it so there are no subscriptions either"

"from the app on your phone if you are away from home"

"however using the free software ispy i have imported the lower quality feeds for motion detection lower quality feeds have less weird video glitches if your camera has poor wifi connection and then i clone it so i have 2 smaller feeds one detecting the front yard another to detect the road"

"very cheap at £24"

"technically this is false"

"the audio recording sounds a bit poor"

"the other issue was that the camera appeared not to be recording clips on detecting motion"

"i would advise to ignore a 128gb and use a 32gb which gives a massive 4 5 24hour recording"

"this item may be sophisticated but when it fails the support instructions are misleading and the help desk are incompetent and do not know the product"

"lastly a few times the camera has been offline the app said it was powered of but i checked the plug and the wifi which had no issues and i had to restart the camera which in theory isn't great when if suddenly something happened or if i didn't check i wouldn't have known"

"the replacement is just a poor"

"at night turn off i fared less and use outdoor pir lights or as i do street lights!"

"the reason i give 1 star is because after 1 month of use the camera started rebooting by itself without any option activated to do so and its very annoying during the night when it does that allmoste eveey hour"

"the problem with this is if you wanted to quickly view all cameras you can't"

"the image looks cloudy and unfocused"

"it was hard choosing because some offer subscriptions or are quite expensive"

"full pan tilt zoom in 1080 hd for £25 tech is so good and cheap these days took me 2 mins to set it up and its great for wildlife watching as in here on the bird feeder or with night vision to see nocturnal ones later brill"

"no preview image of what triggered the cam could have been a cars headlight fox or an uninvited visitor fly tipping by your fence"

"also of forcing you to use an sd you can't even format the old sd you have forcing you to spend a large amount of money to try various brands of which at least with luck one will working"

"most cameras have a ring of at least 6 ir led's surrounding the lens this one only has a line of 4 relatively small leds which don't really give much illumination!"

"thankfully nothing ever did but i goes to show ensure you set up these cameras properly and maybe test them for a week in advance to iron out any kinks"

"i had bought this to use as a baby monitor but found in some houses we visited the wifi didn't stretch to the room and hence didn't work"

"so i bought 2 of these one for my dogs cage upstairs and the cage downstairs because my dog has had a major surgery where i need to see him tplo where he broke a ligament and these cameras have worked the charm they record when he is moving and when it hears sound and the night vision is brilliant i'm"

"if you plan on using it to monitor for an event like a take away delivery dont plan on doing it on an echo show or spot or firestick as it cuts off after about 5 mins its fine on the app though so again its down to low quality skill software"

"for the price it's not going to be beaten"

"the features of the camera are wonderful i wasn’t expecting much but now i have ended up buying a 2nd device"

"the only bit which is let down would be the microphone listening to what's going on through the phone app is almost unintelligible you have to be very close to the camera to understand what someone is saying"

"lastly a few times the camera has been offline the app said it was powered of but i checked the plug and the wifi which had no issues and i had to restart the camera which in theory isn't great when if suddenly something happened or if i didn't check i wouldn't have known"

"i have 2 and have both linked so i only need to swipe the picture on my phone to see the other camera"

"activity zones could be better but i will play with these a bit more before giving up completely"

"there is no option that your wifi is fine not the option that the camera is wrong"

"it is ok but it won't except the memory card i have tried 2 different cards and i just get an error message saying there is a problem with the card the cards both work in my tablet"

"when i reinstalled it as an “existing configuration” it failed every time at the end with a black pop up that reads “the network is unstable"

"however this also consistently failed after attempting to assign a location to the re added device as did every retry"

"also doesn’t connect to amazon echo dot 5 as stated"

"the app "feels" buggy unstable and immature certainly compared to it's kasa counterpart and in my humble opinion tp link would be better served by consolidating control of kasa and tapo products into their more mature kasa app and api and focusing on the kasa brand"

"it’s by far the worst i’ve seen it is so bad that it might as well not have the function"

"after that i’ve tried to reconnect the camera and got all kinds of errors possible it didn’t blink at all then it blinked but the app didn’t see the camera after few times resetting and powering off the app saw the camera but was unable to connect to wifi stating something is wrong with it i have other products by tapo and none of them ever complained about my wifi "

"and again the device eventually disappeared from the tapo app devices screen leaving me with no recourse but to reset re add it over and over again"

"as soon a it’s more than 6foot from the rooter it pretty much stops working we’ve a full mesh network with boosters and it’s terrible on this"

"i am trying to send it back but amazon only grants returns for a month before it makes you jump through hoops"

"can't really recommend as a security camera as no cloud storage meaning a burglar could simply steal the camera and there would be no record"

"i had problems setting up as could connect to camera as in guide but then kept failing part way through setup then i realised the following"

"that requires port forwarding on the router and this camera doesn't support that"

"even with the sd card installed the camera has a disgusting option that delete the entire motion notification log from the previous day"

"understand that as a security camera there can be a few issues with offline storage as the sd card can just be taken out of the camera can be smashed to bits along with the sd card but as this isn't the main reason for my purchase this doesn't bother me"

"there have been no real issues maintaining a connection and any connectivity problems are solved by exiting the program and opening again this only happens when i switch wifi signals on my phone now and then"

"would be alright for maybe 3 4 metres but anything more is terrible"

"if that's ok for you then really there's little to complain about"

"when motion detection is activated it makes a alarm noise to warn anyone that it is recording"

"so at the end you are stuck wasting a good hour each day going through clips recorded at various playback speeds to see what triggered the cam"

"i like that the sd card is hidden and not easily accessible if you don't know where to look for it"

"all the cheap other ones have issues with the software they use"

"playback for review is difficult as it captures so"

"poor show errors are confusing and contradictory"

"accessing recordings is good compared to others where i could never load recordings "

"i wanted to stream it to a desktop pc & expected that to be a little difficult but if you download the free ispy software it's hardly a problem since the camera is compatible with rtsp & onvif"

"this item may be sophisticated but when it fails the support instructions are misleading and the help desk are incompetent and do not know the product"

"both trigger separate high quality feeds to record and i make it so that if anyone steps on the front of our property the software beeps"

"the software tapo is very handy"

"this is not a first time to buy an indoor camera hopefully don’t broken after a year"

"not sure what i am going to do now?"

"for the price you really can't go wrong"

"however using the free software ispy i have imported the lower quality feeds for motion detection lower quality feeds have less weird video glitches if your camera has poor wifi connection and then i clone it so i have 2 smaller feeds one detecting the front yard another to detect the road"

"when i reinstalled it as an “existing configuration” it failed every time at the end with a black pop up that reads “the network is unstable"

"unfortunately the onvif profile it support doesn't not support ptz or rather pt since this camera has no zoom"

"pan and tilt work well no zoom capability"