Tapo C615F Kit floodlight cam review: Lights, camera, solar!
At a glance
Expert rating
Benefits
- Can be installed anywhere outdoors
- Incredible value for its feature set
- Good image quality, day and night
- The app is packed with features
Disadvantages
- Some minor bugs with motion detection
- A single projector is not as bright as with wired models
- Solar panel cable can be difficult to install correctly
Our Verdict
Despite some minor bugs, this low-cost battery-powered floodlight camera knocks it out of the park in many ways.
Price when reviewed
This value will display geotagged pricing text for the undefined product
Best price today
Best prices today: Tapo C615F Kit
$84.99
See the offer
The “Kit” in the TP-Link Tapo C615F kit refers to the inclusion of a solar panel that comes with this complete security camera/floodlight combo to keep its battery charged. That’s right, you don’t need to connect it to your home’s electrical wiring, which greatly expands your options for where you install it.
This battery powers both a motorized pan/tilt camera and its built-in spotlight, covering all the bases for wireless outdoor surveillance. With an MSRP of $100 and a street price of just $85 as of this writing, it’s a truly impressive value.
Features
There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s take it step by step.
First up, there’s the IP65-rated camera, recording at 2304 x 1296 pixels at 15 or 20 frames per second, with a fairly tight 100-degree diagonal viewing angle. But this narrowness is offset by the fact that it’s mounted on a pan/tilt motor capable of scanning 338 degrees horizontally and 97 degrees vertically. It is designed exclusively to be mounted on a wall, ceiling or eaves; there is no way to effectively use the camera on a tabletop or invert its image.
Day or night, the video quality is pretty good for a 2K image; I was able to make out facial features from a distance of at least 30 feet.
The camera (and its spotlight, which I’ll get to shortly) is powered by a large 10,400 mAh battery that can be charged via a wired USB-C connection or the included solar panel. There’s a built-in dual-band (2.4-/5 GHz) Wi-Fi adapter, two-way talk support, and a 97 dB siren. The system is compatible with Alexa and Google Home, but the product webpage does not mention Matter certification (the Matter standard was not expanded to include security cameras until November 2025).
The Tapo C615F kit’s LED spotlight, mounted above its security camera, offers up to 800 lumens of brightness, which isn’t bad considering both it and the camera run on solar power.
Christopher Null/Foundry
Videos can be stored locally on a user-provided microSD card (capacities up to 512 GB are supported) or saved to the Tapo Care cloud storage service (up to 30 days of events). Tapo Care also adds a few more features, the most notable being the ability to receive rich push notifications with snapshots when motion is detected. Plan pricing starts at $3.49/month or $35/year for one camera, with different plans going up to $11.99/month or $120/year for up to 10 cameras, but most users probably won’t need a plan at all.
A single dimmable spotlight panel sits above the pan/tilt camera; it can emit up to 800 lumens of white light at a cool color temperature of 4,000 Kelvin. The spotlight can be pointed in a fixed direction independent of the camera, but it is not mounted on the camera motor and must be adjusted manually.
The solar panel included with the Tapo C615F kit can be mounted directly above its projector or, with a USB-C extension cable, in a nearby location with more sunlight.
Christopher Null/Foundry
Most wired floodlight cameras, such as the Eufy Floodlight Camera E340 that we like, have two or more much brighter spotlights that can be adjusted independently of each other. The E340, for example, offers up to 2,000 lumens of brightness. On the other hand, this Tapo model also has a set of four LED spotlights next to its lens, so they rotate and tilt with the camera. TP-Link doesn’t publish the number of lumens these projectors produce, but they illuminate the scene enough to capture color images at night.
The final piece of the puzzle is a 2.5 watt solar panel measuring 6.82 x 4.74 x 0.61 inches (173.42 x 120.42 x 15.7 mm) that you will attach to a movable arm. The panel can be mounted above the projector or you can mount it in a different location with better sun exposure; a USB-C extension cable is included for this purpose. In the old setup, you can also mount it on a pole, like I did for this review.
Installation and configuration
The Tapo C615F kit application offers a multitude of settings.
Christopher Null/Foundry
A large-format quick-start guide explains the basics of setup, and it can be handy because once the system is unpacked, it may not be immediately obvious how the parts fit together.
A short USB-C cable is attached to the solar panel, with a connector on the other end wrapped in a rubber strip to ensure a waterproof seal when you plug it into the camera or extension cable. But the rubber is so thick that it’s hard to push the plug all the way into the port, or to tell if it’s actually pushed all the way in. The only way to ensure the camera battery is charged is to expose it to sunlight and check the app. When I set up the camera on a rainy day, it made for a particularly harrowing adventure.
I’ve complained about the Tapo app’s setup process before, and that complaint remains the same here: To integrate your camera, you have to select the model from a menu listing dozens of obscure and often similar options. If you forget the specific model number you’re setting up, you’ll have some extra work to do to look it up. Tapo, please correct it.
Other than that, integration was straightforward and after a short firmware update I was up and running.
Using the TP-Link Tapo C615F kit
The Tapo C615F kit captures video in crisp 2K resolution.
Christopher Null/Foundry
The Tapo C615F has many features available through its app. On the camera’s home screen, a grid of on-demand controls allows you to record video and capture clips manually, initiate a two-way talk session, trigger the siren, turn on the projector, or initiate manual pan and tilt controls. Up to four waypoints can be configured in the pan/tilt system, giving you a quick view of commonly used areas, and a limited patrol option lets you command the camera to briefly scan back and forth (or up and down).
A deeper dive into the settings menu reveals some useful options, including settings to automatically track moving objects and whether you want to detect people, pets, vehicles, or any movement. The camera can also be configured to track moving objects once they are detected (which is half the point of a PTZ camera). A 24/7 recording mode is also available, but it’s a bit misleading: This mode captures a still image at an interval you specify, then records video only if motion is detected. This is akin to a time-lapse mode that fills in gaps between recorded clips, and it works reasonably well.
You can manually control the camera’s pan/tilt motor with the app’s directional pad, or you can set waypoints and have it automatically “patrol” the scene.
Christopher Null/Foundry
The brightness of the spotlight is adjustable, as is the length of time the light stays on if motion is detected or if they are manually activated. Two night vision modes are supported, including a color mode (active when the spotlight is on) or an infrared night vision mode. Both modes look surprisingly good, thanks in large part to the power of the floodlight, floodlight, and infrared lighting.
Day or night, the video quality is pretty good for a 2K image; I was able to make out facial features from a distance of at least 30 feet in good lighting conditions, and video distortion was virtually zero thanks to the limited viewing angle. Clips are limited to a maximum duration of two minutes (this is user configurable), and the cooldown can be set to zero time between motion-triggered recordings, if desired. The video loaded quickly from cloud storage or the microSD card I used, and I had no issues with missing video, thumbnails, or the like. There’s also a cool “video summary” feature that lets you create a (very) abbreviated super-clip of the day’s activity, all bundled into one video.
The 800 lumen floodlight isn’t the brightest, but the fact that it doesn’t need to be connected to your home’s electrical system is a nice compromise.
TP-Link
I encountered some small problems with the application. Detection of people and pets could be hit or miss at times, and I received several false positives for both when nothing was happening on camera. Overall, I found the motion sensitivity to be rather lacking, even at its highest level. I also had issues with the camera’s privacy mode, which turns off camera video on demand. Once enabled, I couldn’t turn this mode off due to a persistent error in the app, and ended up having to find a workaround to get the camera back online.
The solar panel, although limited in power, did a great job of keeping the battery charged even during a series of cloudy and rainy days and with 24/7 recording enabled. I am confident that with reasonable access to sunlight, this camera will be able to maintain a charge indefinitely, even with heavy use.
Should you buy the TP-Link Tapo C615F kit?
With a list price of $100 and a street price as low as $85, it’s hard to argue with the incredible value the C615 kit represents, especially since its practical use doesn’t depend on a subscription. It’s not a perfect product, but its few flaws aren’t a big deal.
Hopefully app updates over time will continue to alleviate some of these.
