Best Security Cameras for Airbnb

Monitoring your short term rental Airbnb is a very good idea as long as you adhere to Airbnb’s rules and regulations. It helps you ensure your property is safe, your guests are safe, and document and solve any issues that may arise. So, it is definitely a good idea to purchase a security camera for your Airbnb. I’ve researched the many options out there and present to you the best security cameras for your Airbnb.

Things You Should Consider When Buying an Airbnb Security Camera

Here are some characteristics of security cameras that you want to consider:

Depending on how you value each of these aspects, you will choose different options for your Airbnb.

Ease of Installation

There are really only two options to compare from: wired and wireless cameras. Wired cameras require power routing to be set up and in some cases, harddrive storage as well. This makes things more difficult when getting set up with wired cameras. Although some cameras do enable you to use just an ethernet cable to power the camera, you still need to route the wires through the house to all the locations you want to set the cameras up at. These cameras are called Power Over Ethernet (PoE) cameras.

Wireless cameras are much easier to set up and only require you to power it on and in some cases, supply an SD card.

Ease of Maintenance

There are both wired and wireless cameras that can upload to the cloud and therefore, you don’t have to mess with SD cards which could fail. However, you do have to pay for that storage on the cloud. 

With wireless cameras, you obviously need to either replace or recharge the batteries. 

Video Quality

At this point in the technological evolution of cameras, pretty much all security cameras have decent enough video quality for you to monitor your Airbnb with. The question then becomes if you need 4K video quality so that you can zoom into locations to see greater detail.

Software Ecosystem

Generally, for wired security cameras, they are meant to be used with desktop systems which can have some clunky software packages. Keep in mind though, not all of these software products are created equal. There are some good ones that are easy to use and work great.

For wireless systems, they are meant to be used with an app on your mobile phone and are very easy to use even for a non-tech savvy person. One drawback with the wireless cameras is that loading the live stream from the cloud can take a few seconds.

Can they be used with other smart home devices like your Amazon Echo? What about Google Home? The Ring ecosystem is owned by Amazon so it works seamlessly with any Alexa product.

Reliability

You want the cameras to be able to work well outdoors in rain or shine. Ideally, it’s not suggested to put cameras inside of your Airbnb for privacy reasons. Also, if you are not vigilant about monitoring your wireless cameras battery power, then wired cameras are more reliable than wireless ones.

Price

The cost of a specific camera system is not just the camera itself but also included in it is the potential subscription costs required for cloud services. You want to take into account this extra monthly cost when making a decision. Cloud services are on the order of $10 per month.

Security Camera Suggestions for Your Airbnb

From my research, I am suggesting 1 wired camera and 1 wireless camera. These suggestions are from the standpoint of an Airbnb host looking to monitor their property. These systems are not geared toward serious home protection but more of a means to document footage and alert the Airbnb host of any issues. If this applies to you as a host, these solutions will work great.

Suggested Wired Camera

The Reolink 4K Outdoor Wired camera (RLC-810A) is the suggested option for a wired camera. 

Reolink Wired Camera

Here are the features:

The one downfall is that it uses a micro SD card that can hold up to 256 GB of data and it is NOT included. However, if you want to save the footage to a NVR system or to a computer through an FTP connection, those upgrades are possible.

In addition to the camera, here is all that you will need for the camera to be used:

Check out this video to see how easy it is to setup and use.

Suggested Wireless Camera

Another Reolink product is suggested for this wireless category, and it is the Reolink Argus Eco + Solar Panel. The reason for this camera is that it’s reliable and easy to maintain because of the solar panel. Essentially, you don’t ever have to recharge the battery with the solar panel, and you don’t have to run cables throughout your house. If you need to recharge the battery for whatever reason, the app will tell you when the power level is low.

Reolink Argus Eco

Here are the features for this camera:

Another thing is the Argus Eco cameras can be powered with a 5V/2A power adapter if you for some reason want to use it as a wired camera. The charger for the battery is a USB adapter (DC 9/5 Volts) which is commonly used for smartphones.

Similar to the Reolink 810A wired camera, you will need a micro SD card for footage storage if you aren’t using any cloud services or storing the footage remotely to a harddrive. You do get the free cloud storage BUT you have to manually renew the subscription every month for it to be free.

Takeaways

Security cameras provide peace of mind as well as important information to you as an Airbnb host. With the many options out there, the Reolink products I’ve suggested are great and affordable choices. Ease of use, reliability, and quality are what makes them the best cameras for your Airbnb.

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