Blurams Outdoor Pro review: an affordable outdoor security camera with excellent AI features

Blurams has consistently impressed us with the quality of its modestly prices cameras. Each of them benefits greatly from the company’s background in intelligent imaging technologies, which has enabled smart detection that trumps that of many bigger, more expensive brands. The Outdoor Pro, the company’s first outdoor camera to include its excellent facial recognition, is the latest in this string of successes.

Design and features

The capsule-shaped camera has a 129-degree field of view and streams video in 1080p resolution. 3D Noise Reduction, 4X digital zoom, and distortion correction augment that resolution. In low light, the camera switches to night vision with two high-powered infrared LEDs providing around 23 feet of illumination.

This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best home security cameras, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping.

The camera must be attached to a wall, ceiling, or overhand via its ball-and-socket mount. The unit has an IP65 weatherproof rating, meaning it’s protected against dirt and dust and is water resistant. (Click here for an in-depth discussion of IP codes.)

Blurams

The Outdoor Pro is stocked with AI-enabled security features including motion, sound, and human detection plus facial recognition, although that last feature is available only with a paid subscription (more on this below). The camera also has as built-in siren and flashing light that users can remotely trigger to scare off potential criminals.

The camera supports both local and cloud storage, which is great for safeguarding security footage for forensic use. You can save event-triggered video clips to a microSD card (the camera supports up to 128GB cards). With the addition of a cloud subscription for $5 per month or $50 per year, you can record video 24/7 and unlock the facial detection feature, enabling the camera to recognize family members and other familiars.

Setup and performance

You’ll need to download the Blurams companion app to register the camera, manage its features, and view its live feed. The setup isn’t difficult: You register a new account or log in to an existing one, and then tap a plus-sign icon to add the camera. The app takes over from there, prompting you to select your Wi-Fi network and enter your password. I completed the process in a couple of minutes with no hiccups.

Michael Ansaldo/IDG

Once the camera is connected, you can mount it at your desired location. Because of the AI features’ processing requirements, the camera must remain connected to AC power. This can present some logistical hurdles if you don’t have an outdoor electrical outlet within reach of the supplied USB power cord. That likely means you’ll have to drill a hole through an exterior wall to get access to an indoor outlet.

It’s also a good idea to customize your various detection features to your liking. Each of the four can be turned on and off in the app with the flip of a toggle. You can also adjust the sensitivity of motion and sound detection by dragging their respective sliders from low to high.

Motion detection can be further customized by masking in activity zones for the camera to monitor exclusively. Beyond these individual settings, you can reduce alert frequency universally by customizing the delivery intervals—you can receive notifications of a similar type anywhere from one minute to one hour apart—or schedule a time block during which the camera won’t send you any notifications at all.

I used the Outdoor Pro to monitor my front doorstep and my driveway at different times. The camera has fantastic image quality in both day and night mode, which undoubtedly contributed to the accuracy of the facial recognition. Night vision was able to keep my driveway lit well enough that I could make out license plate numbers on cars as they pulled in.

Best outdoor camera

Blurams’ imaging technology has worked exceptionally well in each of the camera’s I’ve tested, and that was true here as well. It consistently recognized humans as different from our dog and cats, and it identified those events with the tag “someone appears” next to the respective video clip. Those faces were cataloged in the Discover tab on the app’s homescreen, and all I needed to do was add their name and tag them as a friend, family member, or other familiar. Because my immediate family members were already tagged from previous Blurams cameras, they were identified by name in notifications whenever they were captured on video.

The app keeps all these event-triggered videos well organized in a Library tab. Clips are labeled with an icon denoting the type of event that triggered it—motion, sound, human shape, or human face—and you can filter these by camera, event type, and date.

Michael Ansaldo/IDG

The app provides basic camera controls from the live feed screen. Here you can record video on demand, take screenshots, use two-way talk and trigger the siren-and-light alarm. It also lets you easily switch between videos stored locally and in the cloud.

Bottom line

With its superb image quality and some of the best-performing AI features we’ve seen, the Blurams Outdoor Pro is easy to recommend. And if you want an indoor camera with the same excellent imaging technology, be sure to check out the Blurams Dome Pro. This pan-and-tilt camera has many of the same customizable AI-features plus Motion Tracking to help keep site of intruders.