Recommended Wireless Solar Cameras

The Reolink Altas cameras are also extremely impressive and continuous recording from a battery powered camera seemed impossible just a few years ago, but Reolink has pulled it off. Other than continuous recording, some other reasons you might choose the Reolink Altas series over the eufy S3 Pro is if you wanted to have a mix of wired and battery powered Reolink cameras that can all use the same app, if you want pan and tilt on your camera, if you’re planning on using your cameras with Home Assistant, or if you specifically want to use the desktop based Reolink app, which works great with both the standalone mode and the Home Hub. In addition to the continuous recording of the Altas in standalone mode it had excellent notification speed and good video quality, but I’m disappointed that it wasn’t able to work without the internet without being connected to the Home Hub. Overall, the performance and reliability in terms of live view and downloading footage was also much better when using the wired hub, not to mention the awesome Home Assistant integration that’s only available for battery cameras when connecting through the hub.

The eufy had the highest picture quality, and the fastest recording time other than the continuously recording Reolink Altas. It also has the option for rich notifications that are delivered relatively quickly, and the most user-friendly app that makes it simple to scrub through your footage. It supports person, vehicle, pet, and even familiar face detection without any monthly subscription and it records locally to the home base. This is the first eufy home base that I’ve ever tested that continues to work when blocked from the internet, which is a big step forward for the most privacy conscious people. The eufy’s main weakness was daytime footage where it would stop recording after 30 seconds even on optimal surveillance mode. Eufy does have a custom recording mode where you can set the clip length up to 120 seconds with a 5 second retrigger time, but the longer you set the clip length the lower resolution the file will be, so at 60 seconds you’re limited to 1440p and at 120 seconds you can only record 1080p. But if you’re having issues with recording entire events, at least there are options. The eufy was by far the most expensive coming in at $220 per camera if you buy the two-camera kit, but in this case the performance does justify the increased price.

The $40 TP-Link TAPO is genuinely decent. It had the 2nd fastest motion detection time, the 4th most footage recorded, the 4th fastest notifications, the 4th fastest view time, it has person detection with no monthly fee, and if you want you can even block it from the internet and view both the live view and your recorded footage completely locally. It’s also one of the smallest overall camera and solar packages and you have the option of using the solar panel on the built in mount or moving it away from the camera for more optimal placement. The TAPO’s only real weakness is its 1080p video quality which Is definitely usable but ranked at the bottom for daytime quality, still this is an excellent deal for $40, especially if you just need a single camera.