The motion sensor will detect movement as small as a spider crawling over it, and you can customise it to however sensitive you need it to be – if you find that it is being triggered a little too often, you can turn down the sensitivity. You can also set which zones you could like it to cover. The Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro stands out for its excellent motion detection abilities, including a Birds Eye View feature that shows an aerial map of where visitors to your property have traveled and a 3D motion radar that lets you set distance thresholds for motion alerts. It doesn’t support Apple HomeKit or Google Assistant, but it works with Alexa voice commands and IFTTT. Who It’s For I do wish the internal storage was bigger, and the fact that it needs hardwiring means that the setup is a little more complicated – this is just the price you pay for having such a powerful and reliable unity though. The Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro is particularly worthwhile if you already use other Ring devices, but it works just as well independently. It costs a lot, but you get a lot for your money including dual-band Wi-Fi, two bright LED lamps, color night vision, HDR video capture, and intelligent motion alerts. Some floodlight cameras contain a microSD card slot that you can use to store local video recordings, but others require you to pay for a cloud subscription to access them. If you require access to your video from anywhere then cloud storage is the way to go, but otherwise, you can get away with local storage. Better yet, look for a model that offers both options.

The cameras typically house Wi-Fi or Bluetooth radios to connect the fixture to your home network and feature weather-resistant enclosures that protect them from the elements. If you have a lot of smart devices on your network, consider choosing a dual-band camera that can connect to either the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi or 5GHz bands.Other than that, it performs in a very similar way to the Ring Floodlight Cam, with a similarly impressive camera, and similarly impressive motion sensors. The field of view is almost identical, they both have a (very loud) siren and the two-way audio is great on them both. However, many of these companies offer subscription services. Ring, for example, offer the Ring Protect Plan, which enables you to record the video that it captures to review later. You don’t need this feature, but it may be helpful. Which Cameras Have a Built-in Siren?

Another Ring camera now, this time the Spotlight Cam. As you would expect from the slightly lower price to the Ring Floodlight Cam that we looked at above, this is very similar, but on a slightly smaller scale. The biggest difference, though, is the size and power of the lights. As you have probably guessed, the Floodlight is much more powerful than the Spotlight (2000 Lumens compared to 700 Lumen). As such, the Spotlight is probably better suited to smaller areas. Make sure your floodlight camera has a two-way talk option that lets you converse with whoever is out there. And if you want to play a personalized audio message, look for a model that lets you prerecord messages. Doing so can help make it appear like you're home even if you’re not. Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight Camera (Credit: Arlo)Everything else is pretty much as you would expect for a floodlight camera of this calibre. The quality of the picture is 2K, which is pretty much as good as you can expect, the two-way audio is great and it is a well-made piece of kit. This is an excellent option for smaller gardens or driveways, and at a slightly smaller price than its stablemate, worth serious consideration if you could make do with the slightly smaller range. If you have other Ring devices such as their video doorbell, this would make a great addition to the ecosystem. However, not all floodlight cams offer the same features. For example, some pricier models have smart detection and recognition capabilities. Others offer broad support for third-party smart home devices and platforms. It is not without its faults though – the motion detector is not of the same quality as some of the other products on this list, with very little flexibility when it comes to customising the settings, and only a 3-meter range.