Things To Be Considered While Buying A Home Security Camera

Buying a home security camera is something that every homeowner should consider. It goes a long way towards your home’s overall security and will help you identify a perpetrator if something does happen in your home.

The issue is that you have a host of different models on the market. This makes choosing the right one a daunting task. And this is especially true if you aren’t really well versed in the industry because it’s easy to fall for marketing tricks and overpay for something you won’t use, or get a subpar camera.

Therefore, we’ve got a buying guide for you. We’ll talk about a few things that will certainly help you choose the right camera, and we’ll discuss the features that are worth paying a bit extra for. Now, without wasting any more of your time, let’s take a look at the things you have to consider when you’re buying a home security camera.

You’ll need more than one

This is the first thing you’ll need to consider, as it’ll have a major impact on your purchasing decision, especially when you’re looking at your budget. A single camera may be good for one room, but you don’t only have one room, do you? You’ve got multiple rooms inside, and you might want a camera or two outdoors as well.

Therefore, make sure that your budget accounts for multiple cameras. To add to that, the ones that you’ll use on the outside will need to be more rugged and somewhat weatherproof, so they might even be a bit pricier.

Note the resolution

The resolution is the most important thing from the spec sheet, as it directly impacts the quality of the video you’ll get from the camera. Fortunately, whereas higher resolution cameras used to be expensive at one point, they’re now pretty reasonably priced, so you can get a good resolution.

The bare minimum you should go for is 720p, or 1280 x 720. This is considered HD, and anything below that should be avoided. However, if you can, go for 1080p, which is 1920 x 1080. As you notice, this has quite a lot more pixels than 720p, which directly translates into more details captured and better footage. A higher resolution like this will let you distinguish faces more easily, which might be crucial.

Now, you will come across cameras that have even higher resolutions, such as 4K. While this means even more details, chances are that you will overpay quite a bit for such a camera, and it is seldom worth it.

The field of view is also important

This one relates to the multiple cameras factor. Each camera comes with its field of view, which is indicated in degrees and tells you how much of the room it captures. A wider field of view means that a single camera can capture a larger part of the room. Consequently, if you have one big room, you can either have more cameras with a narrower field of view or fewer cameras with a wide field of view.

In any case, it’s a smart call to go for a camera that has a wide field of view. There is a downside since a wide field of view often results in somewhat of a quality loss near the edges, but the alternative is either multiple cameras, which is expensive or a camera with a rotating head, which is also expensive. In any case, it isn’t worth it.

Note any extra features

The last thing you’ll want to note with a security camera for your home is the addition of extra features. Lately we’re seeing a trend with wireless cameras that don’t require an Ethernet connection and don’t use a video feed cable, but instead, they transfer data wirelessly. This is useful for the indoors, but you might notice a quality loss if you opt for such cameras outdoors.

Another thing that you’ll notice is two-way audio. You can not only record audio (note the legality of this, though, as it isn’t allowed everywhere), but you can also talk via the camera, as it has a built-in speaker. This might come in handy if you want to scare away someone.

Within “extra features” you’ll also find smart integration with other devices, and this is something that’s actually worth investing into. If you already have smart home devices, getting a smart, or “connected” camera that integrates with them can be pretty useful.

Wrapping things up

At the end of the day, a security camera is the core of any home security system and is definitely worth investing a bit extra in. Hopefully, with the things we spoke about above, you’ll be able to choose the right camera for your needs.