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The Tapo C320WS Outdoor Security Wi-Fi Camera ($59.99) is one of two outdoor cameras TP-Link announced earlier in 2022 as part of its new lineup of Tapo smart home devices. Despite its low price, the C320WS packs a lot of premium features including 2K video, a built-in spotlight and siren, color night vision, and intelligent alerts. It performed admirably in our tests, too. Even so, the Editors' Choice-winning Wyze Cam V3 ($35.98) offers many of those same features for even less money, though it sticks with lower-resolution 1080p recordings.

The Tapo's rectangular white enclosure measures 2.5 by 4.1 by 5.6 inches (HWD) including the mounting base and arm. It has an IP66 weather-resistant rating and sports two adjustable Wi-Fi antennas on either side that resemble wings. The cube-like Wyze Cam V3 (2.2 by 2.0 by 2.0 inches) is significantly smaller by comparison, but carries a slightly less impressive IP65 rating.

The bottom of the camera holds a Reset button, a microSD card slot, and a speaker. A hardwired 14-inch cable runs from the back of the camera and branches out into a proprietary connector for the 10-foot power cord and an RJ-45 jack (for connecting the camera via LAN cable). You can also connect to your network using the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi radio and position the antennas for the best signal.

The 4MP camera has a resolution of 2,560 by 1,440 pixels, offers 8x digital zoom, and captures 2K video at 15fps. The device uses two high-powered infrared LEDs to provide up to 100 feet of black-and-white night vision, along with two white LEDs for color night vision. You can configure the white LEDs and built-in siren to activate if the camera detects motion.

A status LED turns solid red when the camera is starting up, blinks red and green when it is ready for setup, blinks red slowly while it connects to Wi-Fi, turns solid amber when it successfully connects to Wi-Fi, and shows solid green when the camera is connected to the TP-Link cloud server and everything is working correctly. The C320WS comes with mounting hardware, a setup guide, and a weatherproof sheath for the power cable.

You can configure the C320WS to record video and send push alerts when it detects motion. Depending on your preference, the camera stores recordings locally on a microSD card (up to 256GB, not included) or in the cloud (more on this in a minute).

The camera offers several motion detection settings including a sensitivity slider, activity zones, person detection, Line Crossing detection, and Area Intrusion detection. The Line Crossing feature lets you set a boundary line in the camera’s field of view; if a person crosses that line in either direction, you get a notification. The Area Intrusion setting lets you create activity zones in which the camera will only look for and detect people (rather than animals).

If you want to create custom privacy zones (areas that the camera won't record) and receive rich notifications with snapshots, you have to subscribe to a Tapo Care plan. The $3.49-per-month ($34.99 per year) Basic plan gets you 30 days of recording history, rich notifications with snapshots, and custom privacy zones for one camera. The $11.99-per-month ($119.99 per year) Premium plan offers the same features, but expands support to 10 cameras.

As with the C210 camera, the C320WS camera uses the Tapo mobile app, available for Android and iOS. It doesn't support any of the features in the app's Smart Actions section, which would allow it to work with other Tapo devices. Moreover, it doesn't work with IFTTT applets or Apple's HomeKit platform. At least you can use Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands and routines.

The camera sits in a dedicated panel on the app's My Home screen. Tap the panel to see a live stream from the camera and access buttons for taking a snapshot, recording a video clip, muting the speaker, switching to a split-screen view (for multiple cameras), and enabling a full-screen view (you can also just turn your phone sideways for this). More controls sit below the video panel: The Talk button initiates two-way talk, the Voice Call button lets you communicate via the camera without having to press and hold the microphone button, the Privacy Mode button turns off streaming and recording, the Alarm button sounds the built-in siren, and the Tapo Care button reveals subscription pricing. To access thumbnails of local recordings, tap the Playback & Memory button. If you pay for a cloud storage plan, thumbnails of video uploads appear at the bottom of the screen.

Tap the gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen to access camera settings. Here, you can invert the camera image, disable the status LED, create privacy zones, configure night mode settings, adjust the white light brightness level, and select a video quality setting (1440p, 1080p, or 720p). Use the Detections and Alerts menu to set up Line Crossing and Area Intrusion settings, enable the Camera Tampering feature (which sends an alert when someone tries to block or remove the camera), configure activity notifications, enable the alarm, and adjust motion sensitivity settings.

Installing the C320WS was fairly easy, but if you don’t have a GFCI outlet nearby, you need to snake the power cable to an outlet inside your home.

After that, the first step is to download the Tapo app and create an account. I opened the app, tapped the plus button on the My Home screen, and selected the C320WS from the list of cameras. You must select a wired or wireless network connection at this point (I chose the latter). Per the on-screen instructions, I confirmed that the LED was blinking red and green. Next, I used my phone to connect to the camera’s Wi-Fi network and entered my credentials. Once the camera connected to my home network, I gave it a name, specified a location, scrolled through a couple of tutorial screens, and took the camera outside to mount it on a deck post with the included mounting screws. I plugged the camera into a nearby GFCI outlet to complete the installation.

The C320WS recorded pleasing 2K video in testing. Color quality is excellent and image detail appears sharp. Black-and-white nighttime video also looks crisp, while the white LEDs help deliver good color video in the dark. However, as we’ve seen with other cameras that offer color night vision, such as the Arlo Pro 4 Spotlight Camera, the colors don't seem as vibrant in these recordings compared with those in daylight.

Motion detection features worked accurately with very few false alerts, and push alerts arrived quickly. I also didn't have any issues with the Line Crossing and Area Intrusion detection features, which allow you to customize specific areas to monitor. The white LED spotlights aren’t overly bright, but they sufficiently illuminate the area directly in front of the camera. Alexa routines performed as expected, and the camera responded instantly to my Alexa voice requests for it to stream video to an Echo Show display.

The TP-Link Tapo C320WS proves you don’t have to spend a lot to get a 2K outdoor security camera with lots of premium features. It delivers sharp 2K video, accurate motion alerts, and color night vision, and has a spotlight, a siren, and anti-tampering alarms. It’s a good value, but the Wyze V3 Cam remains our favorite affordable outdoor camera because of its lower price and better support for third-party devices, even though if maxes out at 1080p. If you want 2K recordings, the Tapo C320WS is a welcome higher-resolution alternative.

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