Best home security cameras 2024: Top picks and buying advice

These days, ome security cameras are easy to install, easy to use, and incredibly affordable. They let you to keep an eye on your home–inside and out–from wherever you have internet access. They record video in response to motion, so you can review anything you didn’t catch when it happened, and many can distinguish between people, pets, and even cars.

Close cousins of webcams, modern home security cameras require minimal installation and offer flexible setups and a range of security features, but deciding what to buy gets more daunting as this category grows ever more crowded–and sophisticated. Whether you’re looking to check on your kids and pets, or need a full-service sentinel with humans monitoring for intruders in real time, we’ll help find the right device for your needs.

Don’t miss TechHive’s most-recommended video doorbells; you’ll find them at the preceding link.

Updated November 4, 2024: We’ve added a link to our Baseus S1 Pro security camera review. The price tag for this camera seems high, but not when you take into account that it’s a bundle of two cameras and a base station that includes 16GB of local storage (expandable to 16TB with a user-provided/installed SSD).

Why you should trust us

TechHive’s editors and contributors have been testing home security cameras for many years, and we regularly evaluate the latest hardware, along with their accompanying mobile apps. We’ve checked out wired security cameras, battery-power cameras, outdoor cams, floodlight cams, pan-and-tilt cams, and more. You can trust us to guide you to the right home security camera for your needs.

Our top picks for home security cameras

What to look for when shopping for a home security camera

Most home security cameras perform the same basic functions—they detect an event, record the event, and send you an alert—but they don’t all perform them the same way. And some cameras have special features that go beyond those basics. Here are some common features you’ll encounter while shopping and why they’re important.

Alerts 

Home security cameras push notifications to your smartphone when they detect events. Without watching the live feed all day, this is the only way to keep tabs on your home in relative real time. Depending on the camera, it may send text alerts when it detects motion, sound, a face (known or unrecognized), or all three. Some can send alerts to multiple people, usually anyone else in the household using that product’s app; others will send emails in addition to text messages as a failsafe in the event you can’t access your mobile device.

Battery backup

Power outages happen, and clever burglars cut electricity before breaking into your home. When that happens, your camera goes dark and, if there’s a crime taking place, you lose all forensic evidence. For this reason, some cameras can also run for a short time on battery power. It’s a feature worth looking for. There are also some models that run on battery power full time; you can either swap batteries as they’re depleted, or plug the camera into an AC outlet and recharge its battery that way.

Environmental monitoring

This is the feature that sets all-in-one home monitors apart from strictly security cameras. Though the home “vitals” that these units track vary by model—we’ve seen everything from motion to luminosity included in home health profiles—three tend to be ubiquitous:

• Temperature monitors for spikes and dips in indoor temperature and alerts when it falls outside a range you define.
• Humidity tracks relative humidity inside your home. Humidity outside optimal levels—usually defined as between 30 and 50 percent—can contribute to problems such as static electricity, sinus irritation, and mold growth.
• Air quality tracks pollutants ranging from cooking odors to carbon monoxide. However, most monitors don’t identify the pollutant in their alerts, merely warning that the air quality is “abnormal.” Because of that, this feature should not be considered a substitute for potentially life-saving devices like smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

HomeKit Secure Video support

This is a subset of Apple’s smart-home initiative, and while you don’t necessarily need to be an avowed Apple user to benefit from HomeKit Secure Video’s privacy-enhancing features, you will need to sign up for an Apple iCloud account and have a HomePod, a HomePod mini, or an Apple TV 4K.

Where other types of security cameras send video to the cloud (often unencrypted), security cameras that support HomeKit Secure Video send thier video streams to one of those devices on your local network first. That device will process the video, performing tasks such as facial recognition and what have you, and then encrypting it before uploading it to your iCloud account. You can read more about HomeKit Secure Video on our sister site, Macworld.

Integrated spotlight

Like all cameras, home security cameras need adequate ambient light to capture clear images. While that is easy to come by during daylight hours, it’s in shorter supply as the sun goes down, often making it necessary to supplement with artificial ambient light. This can easily be accomplished with light fixtures inside your home and floodlights outdoors, but many cameras include an integrated spotlight that offers a few advantages.

Because the spotlight is built into the camera, it directly lights the scene the camera is viewing, enabling the clearest possible image capture. And integrated spotlights can be configured to be triggered by motion detection, so they only switch on when a possible intruder is in view, eliminating the need to keep your home or yard lit up all night. As a bonus, being suddenly caught in the white hot glare of a spotlight is often enough to scare an intruder away.

Local storage

Some cameras include memory-card slots in lieu of, or in addition to, cloud storage, so you can store video right on the device. It’s an attractive feature as it can eliminate the cost of monthly storage fees. The downside (if there isn’t a cloud backup) is that if crooks steal your camera, they take your forensic evidence with it.

Motion detection

Assuming you’re monitoring your home when it’s empty, motion detection is one of the most desirable features in a security camera. Built-in sensors pick up movement within the camera’s field of view and trigger video recording.

You’ll find an in-depth explanation of how motion detection works in this article.

Because these sensors can be sensitive to any movement—even a shift in lighting or leaves blowing outside a window—it’s important the camera system also offer the ability to narrow the range of detection, adjust the sensor’s sensitivity, or otherwise customize this feature to cut down on false alerts.

More and more security cameras now offer AI-powered motion detection that can identify people, pets, packages, and vehicles, allowing you to filter out such innocuous motion events as tree branches swaying in the wind or insects crawling across the camera lens. Such “advanced” motion-sensing functionality is often tied to a paid subscription plan, however.

Night vision

Most break-ins occur after dark, so this feature is nearly as important as motion detection. Technically, most home security cameras support infrared LED illumination, versus true night vision based on image intensification or thermal vision. Be that as it may, most cameras will switch to night vision automatically in low-light conditions, while others allow you to customize when and how it should be activated.

Increasingly, cameras are equipped with full-color night vision, which enables video footage to capture important information that IR night vision can’t such as the color of an intruder’s clothing or vehicle. These cameras use hypersensitive light sensors, such as Starlight image sensors, which can reproduce color images in dimly lit environments, some as low as 0.0005 Lux (for reference, 0 Lux indicates no ambient lighting). To increase battery efficiency, some models include both black-and-white and color night vision, defaulting to black-and-white in low light and switching to color only when motion is detected.

Pan/Tilt/Swivel

Most security cameras can be manually tilted and swiveled to focus on a certain viewing area, but this is a purely set-it-and-forget it feature. A true pan/tilt camera is equipped with a motor so that you can move its lens—or even follow a moving object if you’re watching a live feed—using its app or browser-based app. Some cameras can even track a person moving within their field of view.

Resolution

No amount of security video will help you if it’s blurry, jittery, or otherwise distorted. Look for a camera that offers the highest possible resolution. There was a time when 720p (often referred to as “high definition” or HD) resolution was the standard, but most newer cameras now support 1080p (often referred to as “full HD”). Some models provide even higher resoution (2K or 4K), but keep in mind that higher-res cameras use more internet and Wi-Fi bandwidth as well as battery life (where applicable). Many cameras also offer a software zoom feature (which is not the same thing as having a physical zoom lens).

Scheduling

Scheduling features allow you to tell the camera to turn on and off, detect motion, and/or send alerts at specified times. This is useful when you, say, only want to be notified when your kids get home from school or just want to monitor your home when you’re away. It also reduces the amount of false alerts. Cameras that support geofencing can do this based on the location of your smartphone, activating themselves when you leave home and turning themselves off to enhance privacy while you’re home.

Smart device integration

If you have a home full of smart devices, consider looking for a security camera or an all-in-one home monitor that includes a Z-Wave, Zigbee, or—eventually a Thread—radio that can connect them. Support for an automation service like IFTTT is also useful. This allows the camera or monitor to react to various scenarios, such as taking a picture when your Nest Protect detects smoke, or telling your Philips Hue smart bulb to turn on when unexpected sounds are detected.

Two-way audio

While the idea of a security camera implies eyes-on monitoring, the ability to also hear what’s going on gives you a more complete picture of what’s happening on the home front when you’re away. It can also alert you to something occurring out of the camera’s field of vision. This feature can also allow you to speak through the camera, a great tool for remotely commanding an unruly pet or startling an intruder in the act. On some very low-end models, you might need to plug in a powered speaker for this feature to work.

Viewing angle

The camera’s field of view determines how much it can see. As you’re probably monitoring a single room, you want a wide viewing angle. Most current cameras fall in the 130-degree range. These wide angles can sometimes cause image distortion at the edges in the form of a fisheye effect, particularly when used in smaller rooms, but it’s not like you’re going to use a security to capture snapshots for your photo album.

Frequently asked questions about home security cameras

Other notable security cameras we’ve tested

We’ve evaluated many other home security cameras. If none of our top picks check all the boxes for you, take a look at these other products. We’ve also listed some security cameras that you should avoid.

• Baseus N1 security camera system: You can start with two cameras and a base station and add indoor or outdoor cameras as you need, but its digital zoom feature introduced significant visual distortion. But it’s hard to argue with its low price, and it was going for even less on Amazon last we checked.
• Deep Sentinel DS2: Priced at $499, the Deep Sentinel DS2 security camera system is a significant investment, but it offers proactive threat deterrence you can’t get from many other DIY security camera, including live agents who monitor the camera feed in real time.
• Eufy Indoor Cam S350 This indoor pan/tilt camera iss outfitted with both wide-angle and telephoto lenses to deliver different views of the same scene simultaneously.
• Noorio T110: This pan-and-tilt camera provides a raft of security features and makes them easy to operate with a smartly designed app. It’s low price should only increase its appeal to new and seasoned security camera users.
• Reolink Argus 4 Pro: Do you need to keep an eye on a big parcel of property? This camera’s dual lenses deliver an ultra-wide 180-degree field of view without suffering from fish-eye distortion.
• Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam: This is your least-expensive option in pan/tilt cameras for those in the Ring ecosystem; unfortunately, it’s just not an ambitious effort from one of our favorite home security brands.
• Swann MaxRanger4K Solar Security System: MaxRange is a good name for his two-camera home security system. The cameras a 900MHz frequency band (Wi-Fi HaLow) to communicate with the included hub, endowing them with incredibly long range: up to 2,000 feet.
• SwitchBot Pan/Tilt Cam Plus 3K: If at first you don’t succeed and all that, but this is the fourth iteration of this camera, and we’re still not impressed.
• Wyze Cam Floodlight v2: Wyze has upgraded its entry-level floodlight camera with better resolution, stronger lights, and a lower price tag.

And don’t miss our comparison of all the major security camera subscription plans.