The Blurams Outdoor Pro ($89.99) lets you see what’s going on outside of your home without spending a bundle. This affordable weather-resistant security camera delivers sharp 1080p video and offers lots of features including voice control, local and cloud-based video storage, face recognition, and interoperability with third-party smart home devices. It’s a solid value, but our Editors’ Choice, the $49.99 Wyze Cam Outdoor, is even more affordable, easier to install, and you can take it with you wherever you go.
Blurams Outdoor Pro Features
The Outdoor Pro uses a white pill-shaped enclosure that measures 2.2 by 3.6 by 3.8 inches (HWD) and has a glossy black facing and an IP65 weather-resistance rating. It’s supported by a mounting base and an arm that provides tilt and swivel adjustments, and is powered by a 10-foot hardwired USB cable and a USB power adapter. Behind a rubber gasket at the back of the camera are a microSD card slot and a reset button, and the bottom edge holds an LED status light.
The camera captures video at 1080p and has a 129-degree field of view, 4X digital zoom, and support for sound and motion detection. It uses two infrared LEDs for black-and-white night vision and contains a microphone and speaker for two-way audio, a white strobe light, and a 110dB siren. Connectivity comes by way of an embedded 2.4GHz Wi-Fi radio.
It records video and sends push notifications for each motion and sound event. You can have it store video locally on a microSD card (up to 128GB), but you’ll have to supply your own media. Alternately, you can view 12-second clips that are stored in the cloud for free for 24 hours.
If you want to view longer video recordings, share cloud videos with friends and family, and take advantage of the camera’s face recognition feature, you’ll have to subscribe to a Blurams cloud storage plan. The Standard plan is $4.99 per month or $49 per year for one camera and gives you access to seven days of video history, one-hour clips, face recognition, 24/7 recording, and video sharing. The Medium plan goes for $5.99 per month or $59 per year and gives you everything from the Standard plan along with 15 days of video history and three-hour clips. The Premium plan is $14.99 per month or $149 per year and adds 30 days of history and five-hour clips.
The Outdoor Pro works with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands, and supports IFTTT applets that allow it to interact with other smart devices. Although it doesn’t support Apple HomeKit, it does support Siri shortcuts that let you view a live stream on your phone using a Siri voice command.
You can access the camera via the web portal or the mobile app (for Android and iOS). When you launch the app, you’ll see a home screen containing panels for each camera with the name of the camera and a still image. Along the bottom edge of the panel are Cloud, Sharing, Settings, and Power buttons. The Cloud button tells you your current subscription status and the Sharing button allows you to invite family and friends to access the camera. The Settings button takes you to a screen where you can turn the camera on and off, configure notifications and face recognition, and schedule a Device Off time that disables the camera at a certain time. Here you can also configure video quality and rotate the image, view local storage usage, and set up Privacy Zones that blur out specific areas in the camera’s field of view. There’s also a Dewarping setting that eliminates pincushion and barrel distortion.
Tap the camera image to launch a live stream that you can view in full-screen mode by turning your phone sideways or by tapping the full-screen button on the bottom. This button sits alongside four others including a video quality button (High, Medium, Low), a snapshot button, a manual video record button, and a mute button.
Below the live stream panel is a scrolling timeline of all recorded events with video thumbnails. Scroll down to find a video for a specific time period. You can also use the calendar function to find videos from specific days. At the very bottom of the screen are Alarm and Talk buttons. Tapping the Alarm button sets off the siren and the flashing strobe light, and tapping the Talk button initiates two-way audio. To access all of your recorded videos, tap the Library button at the bottom of the home screen. Here you’ll find thumbnails of all video clips by date. Tap a thumbnail to view the video, share it, save it, or download it.
Installing and Using the Blurams Outdoor Pro
Installing the Blurams camera is relatively easy. I downloaded the mobile app, created an account, and verified my email address. I plugged in the camera, tapped Add Your First Device in the app, and selected the Outdoor Pro from the list.
Following the on-screen instructions, I pressed the reset button until the LED began flashing red and connected my phone to the camera using my phone’s Wi-Fi settings. Back at the Blurams app, I selected my Wi-Fi SSID, entered my password, and after 20 seconds or so the camera was connected and online. I selected the free seven-day cloud trial, gave the camera a name, updated the firmware, and attached the camera to a post on my backyard deck using the included mounting screws. I ran the power cable through a conduit into my attic and plugged in the camera. Note that you’ll need access to an indoor outlet, as the camera’s USB power adapter isn’t weatherproof.
The Outdoor Pro provided impressive video quality in our tests. Daytime video was sharp with crisp colors, and black-and-white night video showed good illumination and contrast. There was some barreling around the edges at first, but enabling the Dewarping setting eliminated all traces of distortion. Motion detection also worked well—alerts arrived instantly, as did recorded video clips.
I linked my Blurams account to my Alexa account and had no trouble streaming video from the camera to an Amazon Echo Show using voice commands. I was also able to view live video on my iPhone using a Siri shortcut. Audio quality is adequately loud and clean, and the 110dB siren is loud enough to be heard throughout my house.
Affordable Outdoor Security
With the Blurams Outdoor Pro, you get a feature-rich 1080p camera designed to withstand the elements at an affordable price. It delivers sharp video quality and offers sound and motion detection, face recognition, and voice control. It’s relatively easy to install, but you still have to run a cable to the inside of your house, and you’ll have to pay extra to use the face recognition feature and to share cloud-based videos. If you can live without face recognition, you’ll save $40 with the Wyze Cam Outdoor, our Editors’ Choice winner for affordable outdoor security cameras. It’s battery powered, requires no wiring, offers free cloud and local storage, and works with lots of third-party devices. It also offers a cool travel feature that lets you take it out on the road and record events without the need for an internet connection.
