Tapo C120 review: A feature-heavy yet affordable security camera

For many, security cameras like this Tapo C120 will be the entry device into a wider home security system. That’s why they’re so cheap and affordable. These are gateway products just like Amazon’s Blink 2 camera and Ring’s Battery Video Doorbell: they’re designed to draw you in and get you hooked so you spend more on premium products further down the line.

The Tapo C120 is a gateway, however, to a far wider range of home security tech than you might at first think. Its range of home network kit is much more extensive than either Blink or Ring’s and includes not only cameras and doorbells, but also thermostats, sensors, buttons and switches, not to mention smart looks and burglar alarms. They system runs the full gamut.

If you’re thinking about dipping your toe into the world of smart home gadgets with an eye on seriously automating your gaff without coughing up a vast amount of cash, then, Tapo is one of the better brands to adopt from the get-go.

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Tapo C120 review: What do you get for the money?

So what about this particular camera, then? Its starts well, with a solid, affordable price of £40, although at the time of writing Tapo is running an offer with the price knocked down to £33. You can also buy a two-pack – on offer at the Tapo store for £56 – and there’s a slightly modified version (the Tapo C125) with a manual privacy shutter for £50 – on offer at £40.

If you like the sound of the Tapo C120 but want a battery device then Tapo has you covered: the Tapo TC82 is much the same as the C120, bar the rechargeable battery, and is yours for £80 – currently on offer for £40.

At that price, you could be forgiven for expecting the C120 to be a bargain-basement affair, but you’d be wrong. The C120 is long on features, offering 2.5K video, colour night vision, intelligent alerts, IP66 weatherproofing and twin built-in spotlights. It will also store recorded video locally on a memory card and it supports voice commands via Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

Even that brief list of features is better than that boasted by the C120’s obvious competitor, the Blink Mini 2, which costs £35 and can only record video at a maximum of 1,920 x 1,080.

Physically, the Tapo C120 is a compact cylindrical device that measures just 67.4 x 57 x 44mm. The body is made from glossy white plastic, while the camera fascia is black, and it’s fixed to a magnetic base with a 25mm-long articulating arm that pivots and swivels, giving the camera a full 360 degrees of manoeuvrability.

The microSD card slot sits behind a rubber cover on the right side of the camera housing (cards up to 512GB are supported), while at the back you’ll find a USB-C power port and a speaker grille. The C120 comes with a 3-meter-long USB power cable, a USB power adapter, a metal mounting plate, a round adhesive mounting pad and a quick start guide.

Add the metal mount to the magnetic base and it is heavy enough to act as a stable stand for the C120 that easily withstands cable drag. If you want to mount it on a vertical surface the magnetic attraction between the base and metal mounting plate is very strong, so it should stay in place even in the strongest wind.

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Tapo C120 review: How easy is it to set up?

Set up is much the same as with any other wireless camera. Download the Tapo app, create an account and then link the camera to the app. You do momentarily need to connect your smartphone directly to the camera’s Wi-Fi hotspot connection in the process, and connection is restricted to 2.4GHz networks only, but it is otherwise a straightforward enough process.

Once set up, the camera appears in the My Home launch page of the Tapo app. Tap the camera icon and you are presented with a clearly laid-out menu page that provides access to the camera’s basic functions like turning on the LED floodlight, taking a snapshot, recording video, making a call to the camera, activating the alarm and accessing the microSD card.

Tapo’s idea of having a magnetic mounting makes positioning the camera as straightforward as can be, because you are just mounting a flat metal disc rather than an entire camera assembly to your wall. You can secure the magnetic camera base to the metal mounting plate with a screw if you are worried about your camera getting stolen. But, on a more mundane level, I also like the fact that the camera can be mounted on the fridge simply by attaching it.

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Tapo C120: What does it do well?

For a budget camera, the video feed is excellent. Video is captured at a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 and 20fps and looks crisp and colourful while the 103-degree horizontal and 55-degree vertical field of view gives you a wide view of proceedings.

At night, you have the option of IR capture – with or without the tell-tale red IR lamp – as well as colour night vision for added detail if there is enough ambient light or you want to use the LED lamps. Audio performance is good, too, with the active noise cancellation doing a good job of suppressing wind noise and the built-in speaker sounding loud and clear.

While most basic security cameras have one LED floodlight, the C120 has two and this makes quite a difference if you want to illuminate a large outdoor area like a yard or garden. These combine with the customisable 96dB siren – which can be set to activate either manually or automatically – to make for an effective intruder deterrent.

When it comes to selecting what sort of activity the camera will capture, the C120 has all bases covered. You can choose between basic motion detection, person, pet or vehicle. Additionally, you can define a virtual zone within the camera’s field of view where motion must be detected before the system starts to record. For instance, this allowed me to set the system so it only started recording when my greyhound wandered into the dining room proper and not when he walked along the wall taking the direct route from the lounge to the kitchen.

On top of visual alerts, the C120 can also be set to detect certain types of audio, and it will distinguish between a baby crying, a dog barking, a cat meowing and glass breaking. Due to the Christmas and New Year holidays, I was unable to procure a small child or cat for this review so I can only vouch for the dog barking and smashing glass detection (a chipped pane of old window glass was sacrificed to simulate a break-in) both of which worked perfectly.

And the Tapo app is surprisingly fully-featured. It includes options to change the playback speed of recorded video between 16x and 1/16x as well as the option to view up to four live feeds at the same time. You can also set the app to show which object detection triggered each clip, so you know when it gets something wrong like mistaking a big cat for a small dog. Supposedly, it learns from its mistakes, too.

Perhaps even more impressive than all this, however, is that most of it is available free of charge. The only things that are blocked are the cloud storage of video clips and enhanced “rich” notifications. To access these, you have to pay for the company’s Tapo Care subscription service. This is reasonably priced: for the Basic tier (7 days of cloud storage) it’s £2.49/mth for one camera, or £9.49 for up to five cameras. For the Premium service (30 days storage), it’s £2.99 for one camera, £5.49 for two, £7.99 for three and £8.99 for up to ten cameras. As you’d expect, there is also a 30-day free trial.

As with all the cameras we test, I measured the C120’s reaction times both to manual activation and motion detection and found the fastest we’ve yet encountered. Compared with the Ring Pan/Tilt Indoor Camera, the C120 was either as fast or faster and the Ring Pan/Tilt is no slouch.

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Tapo C120 review: What could it do better?

Picking faults with the C120 involves being very picky, so I’m reduced to pointing out that there’s no support for Apple’s HomeKit system or the Matter smart home standards.

Of course, for a majority of home users, support for Alexa and Google Home will be more than adequate, so these omissions are not something I can criticise the Tapo C120 too hard for. Other than that, this camera really has no weak spots.

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Tapo C120 review: Should you buy it?

While the Tapo C120 may not have the mass-market brand recognition in the UK of Ring or Blink, it offers more features and higher resolution. That it also lets you access those features without the penalty of a monthly subscription is the cherry on the cake.

That makes the Tapo C120 one of the best cameras you can get for the price. The crisp and detailed 2.5K image and colour night vision features, along with the IP66 weatherproofing make it ideal for use day or night, outdoors or indoors, fair weather or foul. You simply can’t go wrong with it.