What's the Best Outdoor Camera?

Silas Phillips
2026-04-10T13:00:06-07:00

We could make you read this entire breakdown just to find out who takes the crown, but we're not really into burying the lede.

If you're just looking for the short answer: the best outdoor security camera is the Wyze Solar Cam Pan. For under 80 bucks, you get endless solar power, 2K color night vision, 360° coverage, and massive local storage without a single monthly subscription fee.

But if you’re the kind of person who likes to see exactly how the math shakes out—and maybe enjoys a little light roasting of overpriced legacy tech—grab your coffee. Let's get into the bracket.

What’s the Best Outdoor Security Camera?

To ask “What is the best outdoor security camera?” is really just to ask, “What is the best security camera?” That’s because, these days, “outdoor” is where all the real home security tech lives. The question is fascinating for what it says about home security in general, and how much has changed in only a few years.

Wyze launched the very first, market-disrupting, twenty-dollar Wyze Cam in 2017. Amazon launched a camera on the same day—the Cloud Cam—that cost $120. Both were indoor cameras.

That’s right. A hundred-dollar price differential between two cameras that could both be murdered by a sprinkler. That’s where the entire market was not even ten years ago. Having to deal with weather, lack of power, darkness, and distance was unthinkable.

Things have changed. Today you can shoot 4K video from a tree branch with night vision in vivid color and keep doing it through a snowstorm. When we made our first outdoor camera, we got genuinely geeked up about the fact that it could broadcast footage from inside a running dishwasher. That's nothing. Today there are cameras on the south side of a hundred dollars that could broadcast from inside your fish tank.

In fact, real, rugged outdoor weatherproofing in home security has become so affordable that many “indoor” cameras today are just outdoor cameras someone decided to use in the living room. The real difference now is not that you should expect to pay a lot more for an outdoor cam, but that you should expect to pay a lot less for an indoor. If not, someone is trying to take advantage of you.

But we digress.

Yes, the question of outdoor cams is a wonderful opportunity to appreciate how far the tech has come, but it also has an insanely wide field to choose from. We’ve got stationary cams, pan cams, solar cams, battery cams, floodlight cams, doorbell cams, wireless cams that work with solar, and so on. Outdoor cams have incredibly diverse applications and if we’re not careful here, we’re gonna end up with a bracket so complicated, long, and varied it’ll make March Madness look like a Cub Scout Pinewood Derby.

We’re going to make two decisions right up front to help us. First, we’ll leave out floodlight cams and doorbell cams. Those are two specific use cases that deserve their own, separate discussion. Second, we’re not going to make special categories for battery versus solar or pan versus fixed. We’re just going to throw all the remaining contenders in the lineup together. Things like solar panels or pan-and-tilt capabilities will just be optional extras that give some cameras advantages as we choose the true Outdoor Grand Champion.

Now let’s find out who it is.

The Criteria

Outdoor cameras have a specific set of demands that indoor cameras never have to think about.

Weather: Non-negotiable. IP65 is the floor. That's enough to handle rain, dust, snow, and whatever your climate has in mind. Cameras that don't clear that bar don't belong in this conversation.

Resolution: This goes without saying. The question of what resolution is acceptable is a moving target that changes as the technology improves. As of the writing of this article, the minimum you should accept is 2K. Anything less is lagging behind current industry standards.

Night Vision: Much of what happens outside that you actually care about happens after dark. True color night vision—the kind that uses ambient light and doesn’t require a spotlight—should really be considered the standard. We’ve moved past black-and-white infrared. It’s time to stop treating color night vision as a cool upgrade and start treating it like an expectation.

Power: This is where outdoor cameras get interesting. Since we're outside, where sunlight is generally present, we're treating solar as the preference. A camera that runs on sunlight indefinitely is simply more convenient than one that needs a battery swap every few months. But we do want to acknowledge that in certain, sun-deprived cases—heavily shaded yards, north-facing walls—battery is the fallback choice.

Storage: As always, we return here to our broken-record soapbox of choice. Do not let companies bully you! Your footage needs to live somewhere you control. A camera that pushes everything to the cloud and offers no local alternative is holding your recordings hostage. We want microSD local storage, no subscription required, with generous capacity, and without having to buy some proprietary custom add-on.

Field of View: There are two ways to handle a wide outdoor area: a fixed camera with a wide field of view, or a pan-and-tilt camera that rotates and tracks. Both are valid. We'll note the difference as we go.

That's the scorecard. Let's see how they do.

The Cameras

Camera | Price | Resolution | Power Source | Solar Included | Pan/Tilt | Color Night Vision | Local Storage | IP Rating | Siren
Ring Spotlight Cam Pro | $200.00 | 1080p | Battery | No | No | Yes | No (Subscription Only) | "Weather Resistant" | Yes
Blink Outdoor 2K+ | $100.00 | 2K | Battery (AA) | No | No | Yes | Requires Hub + USB Drive | IP65 | No
Arlo Essential 2K | $99.99 | 2K | Battery | No | No | Yes | Requires $100 Hub | IP65 | Yes
Tapo C520WS | $59.99 | 2K | Wired Plug-in | No | Yes | Yes | Up to 512GB microSD | IP66 | Yes
Reolink Argus 4 Pro | $189.99 | 4K | Battery / Solar | Yes | No (180° Fixed) | Yes | Up to 512GB microSD | IP66 | Yes
Eufy SoloCam S340 | $140.00 | 3K + 2K | Battery / Solar | Yes | Yes | Yes | 8GB Soldered | IP65 | Yes
Wyze Solar Cam Pan | $79.98 | 2K | Battery / Solar | Yes | Yes | Yes | Up to 512GB microSD | IP65 | Yes

We’ll work through the field, starting with the easy dismissals.

Ring first, and this will be brief. The Ring Spotlight Cam Pro is the most expensive base camera on the chart: $200. It doesn’t have the best picture, doesn’t have the best power, doesn’t have the best anything, but whatever. It looks like a camera. Unfortunately it doesn’t really act like a camera. You see, cameras record footage. Ring doesn’t. Ring will never save a frame of footage without a Ring subscription. Ever. Ring will let you watch live what’s happening at this moment. Anything else will cost you extra. And again, the mediocre camera already costs extra. It’s crazy. It’s insulting. It’s stupid. Let’s move on.

Blink gets a quick dismissal, too. To be fair, they recently dragged themselves out of the 1080p dark ages with the new Blink Outdoor 2K+, which adds color night vision and sits right at the $100 mark. But here's the catch: they still make you climb a ladder to swap out AA batteries, and while they include their "Sync Module Core" hub in the box, that hub has zero built-in storage and no ability to add storage to it. You still have to go buy a separate USB flash drive or MicroSD, as well as purchase a Sync Module 2 or Sync Module XR to enable local recording at all. Thanks, but we prefer cameras that actually store footage right on the device. Moving on.

Maybe we should give Blink’s spot at the big kids’ table to Tapo. Sure, their cameras have been called “clunky.” And sure, they’ve been credibly accused of spying for the Chinese Communist Party. And sure they’re currently in court and under federal investigation. But at least they know what specs a modern outdoor camera is supposed to have. Low prices, too. That’s probably where the “clunky” comes in. Moving on.

Next is good old Arlo. Arlo always looks solid on the surface and here is no different. Arlo's Essential 2K is a solid camera at a decent price. But as always, if you want local storage, you must add $100 to any Arlo price tag. What other companies will do with a $15 microSD card, Arlo will only do if you buy their proprietary, hundred-dollar SmartHub. Or buy a subscription. Either way, same old story on storage: “Give us more money!” Moving on.

Now for the cameras that earned their spots at the table.

Reolink Argus 4 Pro. Reolink gets serious attention from outdoor camera reviewers, and it's not hard to understand. This camera shoots genuine 4K via a dual-lens system that brings two feeds into a 180° panoramic view. It can cover an entire front yard or driveway without a blind spot. It delivers true color night vision footage without requiring a spotlight, and it stores locally on microSD up to 512GB, no subscription required. It’s also IP66 rated and doesn’t make you pay extra for a solar panel (included in the box). Great features. Great camera.

Also, great big price: $189.99.

But again, at least it earns the right to a premium price with its premium features. Let’s all just pause for a moment here to sneer dismissively at the utter hubris of Ring, charging ten dollars more than Reolink for such a massively inferior camera.

Eufy SoloCam S340, at $140, would be considered the other premium-camera-with-a-premium-pricetag option here. It also uses a dual-lens system (3K wide-angle with 2K telephoto), but instead of Reolink’s wide angle, it employs (our preference) a 360° pan-and-tilt, with AI auto-tracking. So the camera can move and swivel and catch a nicer shot, and the onboard AI can track the action as it happens. Add to that free person and vehicle detection, and solar built right into the unit, and that’s a nice camera. On paper it looks like it might be the sweet spot.

The storage situation is the catch. The S340 claims local storage. But the way they do it is a little shady. They give you 8GB of fixed, onboard memory, soldered in, and non-expandable without a HomeBase hub (at an additional $150). Come on, guys. Eight gigs?! In an age where you can get 64GB options out of a dollar-store bin at the checkout, 8 gigs of storage is insulting. And shooting at 3K and 2K it will very quickly be gone.

Eufy is playing games here, trying to be in the “We Give Local Storage” club without actually providing meaningful local storage. This is yet another scheme to get you to buy a big, expensive, proprietary hub. There’s no cloud option here. Nice little camera, but that’s just a little too gamey for our taste. Moving on.

And then there’s Wyze.

Wyze Solar Cam Pan. Built-in solar. 2K resolution with true color night vision that doesn't need a spotlight. But it has a spotlight anyway. And it has the big one: local microSD storage up to 512GB. No subscription required. No hub required. It’s also got the same 360° pan-and-tilt with AI motion tracking as Eufy. IP65 rated. Two-way audio. Siren.

This thing has it all. And for how much?

$79.98

That’s the least expensive camera on this chart by $60, with more expandable local storage than any other camera here. It runs on sunlight indefinitely. It is, by nearly every standard that matters to a homeowner, the best camera in this lineup.

The Bottom Line

The outdoor camera field has two kinds of companies. There are brands that let you buy their camera and then want more money before they'll do anything useful, and brands that give you what you paid for out of the box. Ring, Blink, and Arlo are unapologetically in the first camp. Eufy straddles the fence in a way we find deceptive. Reolink and Wyze are the only cameras genuinely in the second group.

But then comes price.

Wyze built a camera that does everything the best cameras on this chart do—solar power, local storage, color night vision, AI tracking, solid weather rating, pan-and-tilt coverage—but at a price that makes this one a no-brainer.

The Outdoor Grand Champion is an easy call: Wyze Solar Cam Pan.

FAQ

What actually makes an outdoor camera "good" these days? It isn't 2017 anymore. We've moved past the days of paying $200 for a camera that gets murdered by a stray sprinkler. Today, your baseline expectations should be:

IP65 Weather Resistance: It needs to survive rain, snow, and whatever weather anomaly your state is currently inventing.

2K Resolution: 1080p is officially a fossil. If you can't read a license plate or identify a face, what are we even doing here?

True Color Night Vision: Because the things you actually care about catching usually happen after dark.

Do I really need to pay a monthly subscription to save my videos? Only if you enjoy letting companies hold your footage hostage. Brands like Ring won't let you save a single frame without swiping your credit card every month. We prefer the "buy it once and actually own it" model. Cameras like the Wyze Solar Cam Pan let you pop in a massive 512GB microSD card for continuous, 24/7 local recording. Zero subscriptions required.

Why should I care about solar power if I can just use batteries? Because balancing on a rickety ladder over your driveway in the middle of November to swap out AA batteries is a terrible way to spend a Saturday. A built-in solar panel provides continuous, endless power with just a little bit of sunlight. Mount it once, let the sun do the heavy lifting, and keep your feet firmly on the ground.

Fixed lens or Pan-and-Tilt? Staring straight ahead is for amateurs. A fixed lens is fine for a narrow walkway, but if you want to monitor a driveway or a whole yard, a pan-and-tilt motor is a game-changer. Edge AI actively tracks motion, so when a delivery driver (or a porch pirate) walks up, the camera physically rotates to follow them. Zero blind spots.

Okay, so what is the actual best outdoor camera right now? We're obviously a little biased, but the math doesn't lie. The Wyze Solar Cam Pan takes the crown. For under $80, you get 360° tracking, crystal-clear 2K Color Night Vision, integrated solar power, and massive local storage without a single monthly fee. It's the ultimate, set-it-and-forget-it perimeter defense.