Best Outdoor Security Camera 2025: Tested and reviewed by our experts

The Eufy eufyCam S3 Pro does just about everything you could want from an outdoor security camera. Its long body houses an internal battery, but there’s a solar panel on top. Provided you can put the camera in sunlight, you can leave it without every having to charge it.

This camera connects to the Eufy Homebase S380, which provides both a stable wireless connection and offline storage. There’s only 16GB of storage onboard, but you can add a 2.5-inch hard disk or SSD if you’d like to increase the amount of storage.

Using the Homebase you also get local video processing, including people, animal and pet detection, plus facial recognition. That’s exceptionally powerful, particularly without an ongoing subscription cost.

Otherwise, the Eufy eufyCam S3 Pro is simple to set up, with activity zones, motion sensitivity and more in the app.

4K video is impressive to watch. During the day, the Eufy eufyCam S3 Pro shoots highly detailed footage that’s as good as you can get from a camera. At night, the camera can shoot full colour night vision using ambient light, although the footage gets a bit blurry; turn on the adaptive spotlight and you get highly detailed colour footage at night.

With no subscription fees, 4K video and an impressive array of object detection options, this is a near-perfect outdoor security camera.

One of the most important parts of a security camera is its image quality and we’ve found that the Arlo Pro 5 boasts some of the best we’ve seen even in low-light conditions.

The Pro 5 shoots 2K video and boasts an impressive 12-bit sensor which is a vast improvement from its predecessor and means the camera is able to capture a whopping 68 billion colours.

The 12-bit sensor especially makes a difference at night, both with and without the spotlight turned on. If the spotlight is a nuisance, say if the camera faces a window, then you can switch to black and white mode which uses the IR lights to enhance the night image quality.

The Pro 5 either works with an Arlo Base Station (which is sold separately) or with Wi-Fi. The latter works perfectly well depending on the quality of your router and where you put the camera in relation to it, so you may not need to invest in the Base Station.

To get the most out of the Arlo Pro 5 then you should subscribe to the Arlo Secure subscription service which allows for cloud video recording. For one camera, this subscription is £3.49 a month for up to 30 days of history, and £9.99 for unlimited cameras at the same address.

Arlo Secure also offers you smart notifications which let you choose whether you want to be notified about people, animals or vehicles. Depending on where your camera is, this can significantly reduce the number of unwanted alerts so it’s definitely a useful feature.

If you don’t like the idea of paying for a subscription then you may be better suited to the EufyCam S330 which has no monthly fees whatsoever.

The Pro 5 not only connects to the newly revamped Arlo app but it is also compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

Arlo promises that the Pro 5 battery life will last up to 30% longer than the Pro 4 model which means in theory it should last between three to four months without needing to recharge.

Ring has had a floodlight camera for a long time but the Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro is the best yet. This wired model is easier to instal than the previous one, and can be wall- or ceiling-mounted. It has two bright LED lamps that you can angle where you want them, and a PIR sensor to control them.

Cleverly, Ring lets you control the detection range for the PIR sensor, so the light won’t keep turning on as people or neighbours walk near your light.

At the heart of the camera is a security camera, which has the 3D Motion Technology from the company’s Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2. This uses radar to let you set a detection range. When used in combination with activity zones, it basically means that this camera won’t record motion when you don’t want it do.

Video quality is decent, with the floodlight meaning that the camera can record in colour at night, although it also has IR lights for black and white shooting as a backup.

As with other Ring cameras, you need to pay for a cloud subscription plan to store videos in the cloud. This is well priced, particularly if you have multiple Ring cameras and a Ring Alarm.

Whether it’s video quality or battery life, there are plenty of features that may sway your decision over which outdoor security camera to buy, but if you’re fed up of being bombarded with incessant notifications about detected movement then the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro should be your next buy.

The reason for this is that the Stick Up Cam Pro makes full use of Ring’s ingenious 3D Motion Detection. By using radar and a bit of manual mapping via the Ring app, the Stick Up Cam Pro can detect the distance of activity within its field of view and recognise if something is actually worth reporting.

Because of this technology, you’ll only get a notification when someone or something has come within the camera’s genuine field of interest, at which point you can dive into the live feed, initiative a two-way conversation or even set off the built-in siren.

As great as the technology is however, it doesn’t come cheap. Set at £159.99, the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro is definitely one of the pricier options on this list so if you’re tied to a budget then it probably isn’t the one for you.

What is handy is that the camera actually comes in two versions: wired and battery powered. This means that you can hook the camera up to your electrical system where possible, or have it run off of a battery if you want to place it further away from your home, like at the end of your garden.

The camera shoots footage in full HD 1080p resolution which is quite a step back from the 4K or even 2K options out there, but Ring has managed to make the most of this format with impressively bright footage, both in daytime and night-time recording. If you already have a Ring ecosystem in your home then the Ring Stick Up Pro Cam is an easy recommendation to add into the mix.

The Eufy SoloCam S340 camera is packed with features including a built-in solar panel that negates the need to manually charge the camera, no extra subscription fees and AI tracking built-in.

With a motorised pan and tilt, the SoloCam S340 boasts 360° horizontal and 70° vertical movement which works alongside the built-in AI tracking to ensure anything that triggers a notification will be automatically followed.

Its two cameras, one 3K wide-angle and one 2K telephoto, can each independently provide excellent quality video footage, with (perhaps unsurprisingly) the wide-angle lens offering the best detail of the two.

There is an option to record from both cameras simultaneously however in practice we found this resulted in a compressed and low quality video so it’s not worth bothering with.

Overall we found the SoloCam S340 captured bright, sharp and detailed images. At night you have the option to capture footage via either its IR LEDs in black and white or with colour night vision. There are pros and cons to both, with the former resulting in a softened image but can reach a further distance whereas the latter was more detailed.

Installing the SoloCam S340 is simple as the mount can either be screwed into a wall or the ceiling of an overhang. You then connect the camera directly to Wi-Fi or to a Eufy S380 HomeBase which is sold separately or as part of the Eufy S330 lineup.

If you do connect to a Eufy HomeBase then you’ll benefit from centralised storage and facial recognition too.

If the S340 is placed in direct sunlight then thanks to its onboard solar panel, its battery can remain topped up at all times. However this will depend entirely on where your camera is placed and how much sunlight it will receive.

When it comes to setting up the ideal home security system, wanting higher resolution video has usually required handing over a hefty fee for the privilege, but the Ring Outdoor Cam Plus finally brings the feature down to a more affordable level, making it an easy outdoor camera to recommend to most people.

With this particular camera, you get crisp 2K footage, which just offers so much more detail than the grainy security cameras of old – you can actually make out facial features with ease, so you’ll know right away whether or not you recognise someone who is on or around your property.

When the sun goes down, the Outdoor Cam Plus is able to switch to full colour night vision, so your home can remain secure 24 hours a day. Even if there’s some serious rain and wind, this Ring camera is fully weatherproof and ready to battle with the elements.

Depending on where you place the camera, you might want a wired connection, a solar charging system or even a battery-powered set-up, and thankfully, the Outdoor Cam Plus is capable of all three. This type of flexibility is quite rare when it comes to security cameras in general, but it means that Ring’s 2K camera can work around your needs, rather than requiring you to make extra considerations.

If you already have other Ring products in your home, then the Outdoor Cam Plus can be seamlessly added to your existing ecosystem. This is particularly helpful if you’re signed up to Ring’s subscription service, as you’ll have access to cloud storage for footage captured on the Outdoor Cam Plus.

When it comes to buying a battery powered security camera, there’s always the underlying understanding that if you don’t stay on top of swapping out the cell with a freshly charged one, then you’re going to have periods of downtime where nothing is captured whatsoever. Well, the Reolink Atlas does all that it can to make that concern a thing of the past.

Even though it is a battery powered camera, the Atlas utilises an included solar panel to ensure that it can run 24/7 without interruption. The massive 20,000mAh battery can store tons of power so that even if the clouds are getting in the way of that solar charging, the cell won’t die out before it’s able to replenish itself again.

Of course, by using a solar panel to keep itself topped up, you don’t have to worry about the Reolink Atlas having a noticeable impact on your energy bills (always a plus in this economy). What’s arguably even more impressive is that unlike a lot of outdoor security cameras nowadays, the Reolink Atlas doesn’t require any sort of additional subscription to unlock extra features, so you won’t be spending any more than what you part with in the initial purchase.

When it comes to the visual quality of the Atlas, the 2K resolution ensures that anything captured during the daytime has plenty of detail so if you do need to zoom in then you won’t be sacrificing a ton of clarity to do so. When the sun goes down the ColorX mode kicks into gear, doing an incredible job of fighting back against low-light settings that would otherwise thwart competing cameras.

Having Wi-Fi 6 compatibility also ensures that you can access footage quickly via the accompanying app, and it’s easy to set up too. Once it’s all installed, you have the option of toggling various modes such as motion-triggered footage, or continuous recording (helpful if you’re going away for the weekend).

What it may lack in complexity and features, the Blink Outdoor 4 makes up for in value and simplicity.

As with previous Blink cameras, the Blink Outdoor 4 runs from two Lithium AA batteries, which will last for up to two years, depending on how many times the camera is triggered. If you need more life, an expansion pack is available so that you can use four AA batteries.

The Blink app is straightforward but quite basic. For example, the activity zone option uses a grid rather than letting you draw a box on the image. It’s good to see person and vehicle detection via a good-value Blink subscription, which also adds cloud recording.

Although a Full HD video camera, the Blink Outdoor 4 defaults to 720p video to save on battery. As you might expect, image quality is good enough but you don’t get the same sharpness and clarity as with higher-resolution models. Daylight vision is better than night vision: full colour night vision is quite blurry, and IR footage quite soft.

However, you can tell what’s going on and if you just want simple monitoring, then you won’t find cameras better value than this one.