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Sep 27, 2023

Toucan Security Floodlight Camera Review

The Toucan Security Floodlight Camera ($129.99) is a durable outdoor camera that

The Toucan Security Floodlight Camera ($129.99) is a durable outdoor camera that offers accurate motion detection and uses a bright LED spotlight to deter unwanted visitors and light up your driveway or yard. It delivered sharp, colorful video in testing and was easy to install, but it lacks many of the features that you can get with competing outdoor security cameras. For more money, the $229.99 Lorex 4K Spotlight Indoor/Outdoor Camera W881AAD-E is our top pick thanks to its color night vision, local recording, and intelligent alerts. For less, the Wyze Cam V3 Pro costs just $49.99 and works with lots of third-party smart home devices.

The Toucan Floodlight Camera uses a white IP56 weatherproof enclosure that measures 4.2 by 2.4 by 4.1 inches (HWD). It has an adjustable Wi-Fi antenna attached to the back, just above the threaded mounting hole. There's a speaker, a Set button, and a power jack on the bottom of the camera, while the glossy black front holds the camera assembly, a 1200-lumen spotlight, a microphone, a motion sensor, infrared LEDs for black-and-white night vision (up to 30 feet), an ambient light sensor, and a status LED that flashes blue during setup, flashes purple when the camera is connecting to the cloud server, and flashes red when the connection has failed. Under the hood is a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi radio for connecting the camera to your home network. Included in the box are the camera, a mounting bracket and screws, a power adapter with a 6.5-foot cable, a 19.6-foot power extension cable, and a quick start guide.

The camera captures 1080p video and has a 180-degree field of view. It will record a 60-second video clip and store it in the cloud where you can access it for free within 24 hours, but it doesn't offer local video storage. It’ll send a push alert when it detects motion and can be configured to illuminate the spotlight and sound an Auto Greeting when the motion sensor is triggered, and you can choose one of two prerecorded voice greetings including "Hello who is it," or "How can I help you," or you can choose the sound of a dog barking.

If you want to create your own custom greeting, you’ll have to subscribe to a Toucan Shield Plan. The $2.99 per month Pro plan lets you create a greeting and offers holiday-themed greetings, and it gives you 7 days of video history and lets you share the camera with up to 10 users. It also lets you choose a video duration (30, 60, or 90 seconds) and offers unlimited video downloads (the free plan supports a single user and limits you to 5 downloads per month). For $9.99 per month, the Elite plan gives you everything from the Pro plan as well as 90 days of video history. Unlike the Arlo Pro 4 Spotlight Camera and the Lorex 4K Spotlight, the Toucan camera doesn't offer intelligent motion alerts that know the difference between motion caused by people, animals, vehicles, and package deliveries.

The Floodlight Camera works with Alexa and Google voice commands, but does not work on Apple's HomeKit platform or support IFTTT applets that allow it to interact with third-party smart devices. It uses the same mobile app as the Toucan Wireless Video Doorbell that we reviewed earlier this year. It opens to a Dashboard screen that contains panels for all of your installed Toucan devices. The Spotlight Camera panel displays a still image of the last captured event and contains a gear icon that takes you to the Settings screen, a button for snoozing the motion sensor (between 1-5 hours), and a light button that lets you tune the light on for a set period of time (between 1-120 minutes).

Tap the camera panel to view a live stream with buttons that let you initialize two-way talk, play an Auto Greeting message, capture a snapshot, manually record video, activate the 110dB siren, turn on the spotlight, and place an SOS call to 911. To view the stream in full-screen mode, turn your phone sideways.

The Settings screen is where you go to enable Do Not Disturb, which turns off push alerts but continues to record video, create motion zones and adjust motion sensitivity, choose an Auto Greeting, and enter an emergency call number. Here you can also enable night vision, configure light settings and create a light schedule, select an event video time limit (30, 60 or 90 seconds), and configure Wi-Fi settings.

Back at the Dashboard screen, there's an Events button that opens a screen with thumbnails for all recorded events. Tap any thumbnail to play the video, share it, delete it, or download it. There's also a button that takes you to an account settings screen and a button that returns you to the Dashboard screen.

Installing the Toucan camera was relatively quick and easy in testing. I powered up the camera, downloaded the mobile app, and created an account. I tapped Add a New Device on the Dashboard screen and selected the Security Light Camera and gave it a name. I allowed the app to connect the camera to the same Wi-Fi network that my phone was connected to and followed the instructions to press and hold the Set button on the camera for three seconds. Once the LED began flashing blue and the voice prompt told me that the camera was initializing, I tapped Next and waited a few seconds for the camera to connect to the Toucan servers and be added to my app. I tapped Finish to complete the pairing. I attached the mounting plate to a deck post on my backyard deck, screwed the camera into the threaded mounting post, and plugged the camera into a GFCI outlet to complete the installation.

The Toucan Floodlight Camera performed well in testing. Daytime video was sharp, with well-saturated colors and no evidence of pincushion or barrel distortion. Black-and-white night video was also sharp with good illumination, but details became a bit fuzzy beyond 25 feet or so.

Motion alerts arrived instantly with very few false alerts, and the bright spotlight did a great job of illuminating my backyard area. The 110dB siren was loud enough to scare off intruders and could be heard from inside my house. The camera had no trouble streaming video to an Amazon Echo Show display using Alexa voice commands, and my Alexa routine to have the camera's motion sensor trigger a Wyze Plug worked flawlessly.

If you’re searching for a reasonably priced outdoor security that does more than just capture motion-triggered video, the Toucan Security Floodlight Camera is worth a look. It's relatively easy to install and delivers solid 1080p video, and it's equipped with a bright floodlight and a siren that's loud enough to deter unwanted visitors and critters. Motion alerts are instantaneous, but the camera doesn't offer intelligent alerts that differentiate between motion events triggered by people, passing cars, animals, and package deliveries, and it won't store recorded video locally. You’ll spend more for our Editors’ Choice winner, the Lorex 4K Spotlight, but in return you'll get stunning 4K video, intelligent alerts, local recording with a free SD card, and color night vision. Or you can save a bit with the Wyze Cam V3 Pro, which offers 2K video and more third-party compatibility for a lower price.

The Toucan Security Floodlight Camera is a wired outdoor cam that offers a bright spotlight, sharp 1080p video, and free cloud-based video storage, but it comes up short in terms of extra features.

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