I see all these tapo recs and I head over to the Amazon reviews. There’s not much difference between what I see here and what they are saying over there.
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I don’t know if it’s the video you’ve mentioned previously, but I watched a comparison recently that gave me the impression that Cam OG has superior night vision to Cam v4 (typical “night vision” using IR, not the “color night vision” with the starlight sensor). I get great results with Cam OG on the “dark” setting in a garage at night.
I think it depends on which camera model(s) you might consider and what your intended use case(s) is/are. I have experience only with the C120, and at its price I think it beats Cam v4 in a number of feature areas (most notably “free” AI-enabled detections). I left my initial impressions about that in another topic.
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I get the live view, but small. How do I expand it?
The floating window? It’s supposed be small, try expanding it with your fingers outwards.
First thing I tried. I was trying to get the same size as the other guy had.
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I understand.
When I looked at the comparison of the Tapo vs. Wyze from that same reviewer, the Tapo image quality was pretty poor in my opinion, both day and night.
Yep, same one I used to compare the two (or maybe one of his others, but it showed both OG and v4). I felt both color and IR night vision were better on the OG. Basically didn’t see any reason to upgrade, even the day images were pretty close, the 2.5K/QHD resolution seems to be mostly defeated by the higher compression rate.
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I guess the only way to know is buy all of them.
I like my v4 video quality.
I’ve got all the cams I need. If the OGs hit $5 clearance at Home Depot, maybe I’ll find a use for a couple more.
If the v4 used the same or less compression than the OG (in which case the image quality should benefit from the higher resolution) I’d consider it, but from what I saw, there was no compelling reason for me to upgrade (not to mention the difference in mounting would be a pain to swap out).
I will say the v4 is a nice looking cam and probably has a few more UI features than the OG (like timeline overlay on the video making it easier to scroll through video in landscape mode, like the v3). If I was buying new it might be a contender for me vs the OG.
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Likewise but in reverse. May try OG someday but all of my needs are met, with a v2 left over.
Maybe try an OG-Tel.
I have one, it was originally intended for a different purpose, didn’t work for that, so I decided to aim it toward a dangerous intersection near my house, both to catch any accidents that might happen and also because at the angle it is at, it has the best chance of catching a license plate should one be needed. It also catches the sidewalk in front of my house from about a 45 degree angle so potentially could grab a good view of a face that can’t be seen as clear on my other cameras.
The 3x lens seems to mute the colors a bit but otherwise it works well.
So far the best thing it has caught is 5 deer that apparently took a wrong turn and wandered up my street. It did also get a good view of a couple kids who were breaking into unlocked cars, the optical zoom provided the clearest picture, but they were wearing hoodies and black COVID masks so not of much use.
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If that happened, then I’d consider grabbing some just to use as motion sensors (for automating lights) and as accessory chimes for Video Doorbell v2.
I have a V3 working as a people sensor for a floodlight. The floodlight is looking at a narrow pathway that curves around a corner. Even though the floodlight can’t see the people coming up the pathway, the V3 sends a command to turn on the floodlight.
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Yeah, I’ve moved my single Cam OG around a bit at different times and had it doing various short-term tasks for me. It’s like a little workhorse. If it ever got to the price @dave27 suggested, then I imagine I’d wind up with more than I need.
A store near me has a non-descript brown box full of them stuffed in a random place. Last I checked (we have aisle price scanners in my state by law) it had come down to $20. But they’ve been selling them online for $20 now so I suspect in store has dropped some. Haven’t checked in a while.
The smart plugs went to $5 and stayed there forever, so hard to predict what the “floor” for the OGs will be, but probably something in that neighborhood. Assuming they don’t all get snatched up when they drop to 15 or 10.
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