TP-Link Tapo C660 Kit Review

Design and installation

The C660 Kit is certainly not subtle. It is fairly chunky and more utilitarian than stylish, looking closer to something like the Reolink Altas PT Ultra than the sleeker cams from Eufy or Arlo. That said, it feels solid and purpose-built rather than cheap.

The camera and solar panel both attach to a shared base plate, which you screw into a wall or ceiling.

Once that plate is in place, the camera slots on and the solar panel screws into its own mount. It feels like a single system rather than a camera with an accessory bolted on later, which is something the likes of Reolink are often guilty of.

On the underside of the camera unit itself is a well-sealed rubber flap hiding the microSD card slot, reset button, and power button. Everything is nicely protected and rated IP65, so it is happy living outside year-round.

TP-Link recommends mounting the camera at least eight feet up, and that advice matters. The camera cannot tilt up or down very far, so it is designed to look down from a height.

I initially mounted it closer to six feet for convenience and quickly noticed it cropping the heads of anyone standing too close. When mounted higher, coverage is much more natural.

Installation itself is quick. You’re obviously supposed to use all four screw holes but, for the purpose of this review, I was just putting it up temporarily for a few weeks on a wooden fence and it held up okay with just the two screws. 

Plugging the solar panel into the USB-C port underneath the camera completes the physical setup.

Setup, features and the app

• Records locally or to hub
• Pan and tilt

Pairing the C660 Kit with the Tapo app is straightforward, although I did hit a small hiccup initially.

Despite a strong Wi-Fi signal in my garden, the camera refused to sync until I moved it closer to my outdoor access point. Once paired, I moved it back to its original position and have had no connection issues since.

A Tapo account is required, which may put off some privacy purists, but the upside is that the app experience is one of the more approachable ones in this category. 

The entire install and setup process took around fifteen minutes, with the app guiding you through storage setup, Wi-Fi testing, mounting advice with clear diagrams, and even a detection range test so you can dial in sensitivity.

The C660 supports local recording via a microSD card, sold separately, or recording to TP-Link’s HomeBase at no extra cost.

The HomeBase is a hub for Tapo’s sub-gig sensors and supports Matter-over-Wi-Fi devices, allowing it to act as a Matter controller. This means it can connect and control both Tapo smart home devices and Matter-compatible devices from other brands. 

It comes with 16GB of local storage, expandable with an external hard drive to 16TB. It supports Ethernet and 5GHz Wi-Fi, and can manage up to 16 Tapo cameras as well as support ONVIF-compatible camera. I tested the C660 without the HomeBase, but it is an option if you want to built out a bigger system.

Cloud storage is optional via Tapo Care. Crucially, AI detection for people, pets, and vehicles is processed on the device and works without a subscription.

The Tapo Care plan costs $3.49 per month. If you pay yearly, you’ll get a bit of a discount and there are also bulk offers too, if you want more than one Tapo cam keeping tabs on your home.

The Tapp app is pretty good, and not overly confusing, with a nice tiles layout and plenty of easy to understand icons. It’s the same Tapo account as you’d use for  plugs and other devices so you can also include the C660 in native Tapo routines and automations. 

The C660’s pan and tilt is a major strength. The camera offers wide horizontal rotation and generous vertical movement, which combined with the 105-degree lens gives near complete coverage of a typical yard. Motion tracking works well, following people or animals smoothly before returning to a preset home position.

You can manually pan and tilt – by 326 degrees and by 45 degrees – but the real win is the Viewpoints system. This lets you save up to eight preset angles and jump between them instantly. 

These presets can also be tied into routines, or used as part of a patrol mode that cycles through views automatically. It is genuinely useful, although TP-Link does warn that constant movement could wear the motor over time.

Where things fall down slightly is motion zones. Detection zones are locked to the camera frame, not the physical space. When the camera moves, those zones move with it, often ending up pointed at nothing useful. For a camera designed to move this much, it feels like a missed opportunity.

Performance

Daytime footage from the C660 Kit looks excellent. Recorded at 4K with up to 20 frames per second (the default is 15fps, so you’ll want to up it in the app), video is crisp and detailed, with enough clarity to pick out fine details at a distance.

The 18x digital zoom is predictably soft at the extreme end, but still usable for identifying activity.

There is no HDR, but colours are punchy without looking artificial. You can also tweak image settings like saturation and warmth, which is a nice touch for dialing in the look you prefer.

Low light performance is solid. With enough ambient lighting, the camera can deliver colour night vision, helped by its built-in spotlights. If conditions are darker, it falls back to infrared, giving you more flexibility than colour-only systems.

You can adjust spotlight brightness and behavior in the app, or disable them entirely if you prefer a more discreet setup.

Two-way audio is okay, which is about as good as it gets in this category, and the built-in siren and flashing light can be scheduled or triggered on motion if you want a more aggressive deterrent.

One unusual extra is a timed panoramic capture feature, where the camera automatically takes a wide snapshot at a set time of day. It is a little odd, but potentially useful for keeping an eye on changing conditions in a large space.

Solar performance from the included panel is one of the C660 Kit’s biggest strengths. During testing, even after a full week of overcast weather, the battery only dropped to around 79%. A couple of brighter days were enough to bring it straight back to 100%.

Results will vary depending on how busy the monitored area is and how sensitive you set motion detection, but for a typical outdoor setup, manual charging feels like something you will rarely need to think about. 

Continuous recording is also available, with the camera dropping to a low frame rate when idle and ramping up when motion is detected, all while running on battery and solar alone.

Should you buy it?