The Best Camera to Keep an Eye on Your Cat

Garrett Bogar
2026-04-17T13:00:05-07:00

Your cat is currently doing something weird behind your back. Compare the best pan-tilt cameras to find the perfect mix of AI tracking and local storage for your feline friends.

More

Best Camera to Keep an Eye on Your Cat

Quick answer, the Wyze Cam Pan v3 is the best choice for tracking your cat’s shenanigans without breaking the bank.

In 1935, Erwin Schrodinger proposed a thought experiment involving a cat in a box. The cat, he argued, existed in a state of simultaneous life and death until someone opened the box and looked. He meant it as a commentary on quantum mechanics, but if you own a cat, you already understand Schrodinger’s thought experiment as a way of life.

The cat is both fine and not fine.

The plant is both intact and tipped over.

The blinds are in an unknowable state.

The question isn’t whether something is happening. Something is always happening. It’s whether you can actually see it.

Here’s the thing about monitoring a cat versus monitoring, say, a dog. A dog has haunts. He’s on the couch. He’s at the back door. He’s wherever the trash is. Much like a middle-aged man, you can point a camera at two, generously three, locations and catch 90% of his life.

Not a cat. The moment you believe you know where the cat is, she has already been somewhere else for twenty minutes. A fixed camera pointed at the couch catches your dog 80% of the time. It might catch your cat, on a slow day, 40%. And during the other 60%, “Is the cat alive or dead?” is the least of what’s possible.

We covered pet cameras in depth [here] and made the case that, for most pet owners, pan cams are probably your best bet. For cat owners, we’re going to dispense with the “probably.” It’s pan cam. Full stop.

Let’s talk about why. Then let’s decide which one.

Why Pan Cams

We should start by saying that we assume your cat is an indoor cat. If your cat is an outdoor cat, then this article should have been titled “The Best Camera to Watch My Cat Leave.” But even outdoors, at least the pan cam will follow her all the way to the edge of the yard.

Unlike a fixed camera, a pan cam rotates: scanning horizontally, tilting vertically, covering a whole room rather than just one corner. The best pan cams do this automatically. They notice the action and follow it as it occurs. Whether you log in with the app and scan around the room yourself, or log off and let the camera do it, a pan cam gives you maximum monitoring in any space and the ability to track and record whatever your cat is currently imposing on your houseplants.

Add in features like night vision and two-way audio and you begin to understand the enduring popularity of pan cams, year after year, for pet owners everywhere. (Though it should be noted that, in our experience, a cat’s response to two-way audio is to take personal offense at being spoken to by a machine.)

Let’s dive in and look at the contenders.

The Most Popular Pan Cams

We’re going to look at six cameras today: two from Wyze, one each from Ring, Arlo, and Blink, and one from an upstart, Tapo, that gets frequent mentions in this space for its cheap prices.

Let’s put them side by side.

Feature | Wyze Cam Pan V3 | Wyze Cam Pan V4 | Ring P/T Indoor | Arlo Essential P/T Indoor | Blink Mini P/T | Tapo C210
Resolution | HD (1920x1080) | 4K (3840x2160) | 1080p HD | 2k 2304 x 1296 | HD (1920x1080) | 2K (2304x1296)
Pan and Tilt | 360° Pan / 180° Tilt | 360° Pan / 180° Tilt | 360° Pan / 169° Tilt | 360° Pan / 180° Tilt | 350° Pan / 125° Tilt | 360° Pan / 114° Tilt
AI Auto Tracking | Yes | Yes | No (Manual Only) | Yes | No (Manual Only) | Yes
Night Vision | Color (Starlight Sensor) | Color (Starlight Sensor) | Color (Limited) | Color (Spotlight Required) | Infrared (B&W) | Infrared (B&W)
Local Storage | MicroSD Slot (Max 256GB) | MicroSD Slot (Max 512GB) | Requires Alarm Pro $249.99 + MicroSD Card + Ring Home Plan | Requires $100 Hub + MicroSD or USB drive | Via $35 Sync Module + USB drive | MicroSD Slot (Max 512GB)
Price | $39.98 | $59.98 | $59.99 | $49.99 | $39.99 | $22.99

Let’s start with Tapo, since it’s the one camera on this list that requires a quick word. Its prices are genuinely low and that’s why it shows up regularly in forum discussions. It also has clunky motion tracking (a real problem when your subject’s defining characteristic is unpredictability), its night vision is garbage, and it’s currently facing active litigation over allegations that its user data may be accessible to the Chinese Communist Party. We’ll leave it with you, but consider the possibility that the price tag might have a price tag of its own.

Ring and Blink both make pan cams, but neither has AI auto-tracking. Both are manual-only, which means you’re steering the camera yourself from the app. That’s fine when your cat is stationary, but the moment she’s on the move, Ring and Blink are just expensive ways to watch an empty couch.

Add to that the fact that Ring’s camera is essentially decorative without a subscription, and Blink requires you to buy extra hardware before it will store video locally, and neither one belongs anywhere near the top of this list.

Arlo has genuine AI auto-tracking and is a legitimately solid camera. But local storage requires a $100 SmartHub, and subscription costs run $7.99 to $17.99 a month after a free trial. That’s a substantial ongoing investment to solve a problem Wyze solves for considerably less.

Which brings us to Wyze. The Pan Cam v3 has AI auto-tracking, 360° coverage, local MicroSD storage right out of the box, and an optional subscription starting at $2.99 a month if you want cloud backup and features like, yes, pet detection, which tells you specifically when the cat is the thing that moved. All of this with crystal clear color night vision for that part of the 24-hour cycle your cat considers prime time. At $40, it’s not just more affordable than the competition. It’s the better camera.

And for those who want to step up, the Pan Cam v4 adds true, premium 4K Ultra HD resolution, plus an AI you can actually give instructions to. Tell it to prioritize the cat over everything else in the room, and it will. Nobody else is offering 4K in a pan cam. At $60, it’s still $20 less than what Ring charges for a 2K camera that won’t even follow the action.

The Bottom Line

Schrodinger’s insight was that observation collapses uncertainty. The blinds are intact or they aren’t. The Christmas tree is still up or it’s down. The cat is alive or dead. You just have to look. A pan cam that auto-tracks, stores footage, and sends you a notification that says “pet detected” isn’t a perfect solution to the fundamental mystery of cat ownership. But it is, genuinely, the closest thing available.

The answer to Schrodinger’s Cat, friends. Wyze has it for forty bucks.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much video fits on a 32GB MicroSD card?
About 2–3 days of continuous HD footage. If you only record when the camera sees a cat (event recording), it can last for weeks.

What happens if the Wi-Fi goes out?
For the Wyze Cam Pan V3 or V4, if you have a MicroSD card inside, the camera will keep recording to the card even without Wi-Fi. You just won't get the "Your cat is eating the fern" notification until the internet comes back.

Will my cat attack the camera if it moves?
It depends on the cat's personality. Most cats ignore the quiet motors, but some "spirited" felines might view a rotating camera as a challenge. If yours is a fighter, mount it high and out of reach.

What is the difference between "Motion Tracking" and "Motion Detection"?
Motion Detection just tells you something moved. Motion Tracking (found in pan-tilt models) actually physically moves the camera lens to follow the object as it moves across the room.

Do I need a subscription to see my cat?
It varies by brand. Wyze offers local storage via MicroSD without a monthly fee, while brands like Ring generally require a subscription to view any recorded clips at all.