Best wireless outdoor security camera in 2025 for your home and garden | Stuff

Your dog might hear something outside before you do, but barking doesn’t always tell you what’s going on. If you want a clearer way to keep an eye on things, it’s worth giving your dog a break and setting up one of the best outdoor security cameras.

Unlike basic CCTV, the best wireless cameras can spot, record and react to movement around your home. They stream clear video straight to your phone and save clips online so you can check them later.

Some are even smart enough to tell the difference between a cat and a real intruder – and can scare them off with a light or even fake barking. That’s a bit more useful than your dog’s random howling.

Whether you want something simple or packed with features, there’s a camera below that’ll help you keep your home safe.

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Quick list: What’s the best wireless outdoor security camera?

The best wireless outdoor security camera you can buy today:

1. Arlo Pro 5

Arlo’s ever-growing clan of security cameras now includes the upgraded Pro 5 – a smarter, sharper sibling to the Pro 4. It captures 2K HDR footage through a 160° lens, with improved low-light performance and colour night vision that helps pick out faces, licence plates or suspicious goings-on after dark. The built-in spotlight and 12x digital zoom are still present and correct, giving you a clearer view of who’s lurking around.

It connects directly to your Wi-Fi (no hub required) and mounts magnetically for easy installation. It plays nice with Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit. But as with other Arlo cams, the real brains are locked behind the Arlo Secure subscription – from $2.99 / £2.79 per month for a single camera. Without it, you’re stuck with live view and basic alerts.

The subscription adds 30-day cloud storage, rich notifications, object detection and activity zones. Still want local storage? Like the Pro 4, the Pro 5 doesn’t have a microSD slot – you’ll need a separate Arlo SmartHub or Base Station to store clips offline.

2. Nest Cam

A dinky detector fit for inside and out, Google’s neat Nest Cam is back with battery power. Which means you can install it in a jiffy, no wiring necessary (although the optional weatherproof cable lets you hard-wire if you want). And once it’s fitted to one of your four walls, the weatherproof watcher does all the smart stuff you’d expect.

It can tell the difference between people, pets and passing cars, meaning you won’t need to panic every time your moggy goes outside for a stretch. Fire up the Google Home app, and you can view a live feed, zoom in and talk to intruders (or your tabby). And if the Wi-Fi goes down, it’ll store up to an hour of footage offline.

Clever as it is, the Nest Cam is not without its limitations. There’s night vision, but no spotlight (for that you’ll need the Nest Cam with floodlight). Full HD footage is clear enough for most people, but you’re limited to 3 hours of event-based history without a Nest Aware subscription (from $6 / £5 a month). Shell out and you get continuous cloud clip history, but you’re still locked into the Google ecosystem: there’s no native HomeKit support.

3. Ring Stick Up Cam Battery

Despite its name, the Ring Stick Up Cam Battery doesn’t attach to walls with Spidey-like ease. Instead, like most of the best outdoor security cameras, you’ll need some screws to fix the backplate in place. And like many of the best outdoor security cameras, you’ll need to unmount the main part to recharge the battery. So keep your ladder handy, unless you pair your camera with Ring’s optional solar panel.

Ring’s upstanding cylinder competes with a lot of the top cams when its comes to recording specs. You get 1080p footage, a 110° horizontal field of view and infrared night vision. And it’s not short on smarts, offering motion-detection zones, customisable person alerts and photo preview notifications for quicker info when triggered. It’ll capture photo snapshots throughout the day, too.

But there are drawbacks. Several of the above features are not available unless you have a Ring Protect subscription. While this starts at a relatively reasonable $3 / £2.50 per month – including 60 days of cloud video history – it doesn’t change the fact that you need to keep paying for full functionality. There’s no local storage, either, and the Ring Stick Up Cam Battery won’t integrate with Apple HomeKit or Google Home.

3. Blink Outdoor 4

The Blink Outdoor 4 is Amazon’s latest no-fuss security cam. It’s a small black box that runs on two AA batteries and, in ideal conditions, can keep going for up to two years. Setup is simple, and it’s built to handle the weather, though it still feels a bit plasticky.

Video quality has had a bump over the last model, with clearer Full HD footage and improved low-light performance, though there’s still no built-in spotlight. Motion detection is customisable, and you’ll get real-time alerts when something trips the sensor. There’s still no smart subject recognition, but for general home monitoring, it does the job.

The Blink Outdoor 4 works with Amazon’s Alexa system, so you can view the live feed on an Echo Show or through the Blink app. You can store footage locally using a USB stick and the Sync Module 2, but there’s no free cloud option – for that, you’ll need a Blink Subscription Plan (starting at $3 / £2.50 a month).

4. Netatmo Smart Outdoor Camera

Netatmo’s light-up looker isn’t the newest camera in this list, but it still has the skills to protect your property. And unlike many of the best outdoor security cameras on this list, it doesn’t require monthly fees: there are no subscription plans or recurring fees to pay. Simply insert a microSD card, install the camera on a wall, and all of its guarding abilities are good to go.

That means smart object recognition, real-time alerts and customisable activity zones. It also includes full event history through the partner app, helpfully labelled with what the Netatmo thinks it’s seen. And thanks to the light bar above the lens, it can illuminate intruders at 25 paces (or use infrared night vision for undercover obs).

It’s not picky about systems, either: the Netatmo Smart Outdoor Camera works with Alexa, Google Home and Apple HomeKit. Vids are recorded in 1080p and encrypted on the memory card. Want to keep clips in the cloud? The camera supports Dropbox and FTP connections, as well as HomeKit Secure Video. The latter lets iCloud+ subscribers save 10 days of recordings with no impact on their allowance, or keep footage for longer using their account’s allocated cloud storage capacity.

5. Eufy SoloCam S40

Want a cam you can set and forget? Just two hours of daily rays are enough to keep this solar-powered protector on the job. Stick it somewhere sunny and you could be looking at a lifetime of a security coverage. There’s also a built-in battery, to account for the risk of overcast crime.

It might cost more than others up-front, but besides making a smaller impact on your energy bills, the SoloCam S40 is also free from subscription fees. Instead of sending clips to the cloud, up to 60 days of video can be saved to the 8GB internal storage. Which means you can skip the cost of a monthly plan and spend the savings on further deterrents. Like a life-size cardboard cutout of an Alsatian.

The SoloCam’s sensor maxes out at a resolution of 2K, covering a garden-spanning 160° field of view. Surrounding the lens is a light ring good for 600 lumens and full-colour footage after dark. Offline AI means speedier detection of trespassers (think 200 milliseconds), plus rapid alerts when someone – or something – strays into an activity zone. It also learns from past experiences to improve its perception, which you can test with your flat-pack German Shepherd.