Today’s connected surveillance cameras provide a relatively affordable way to monitor outdoor activity around your home or business without having to invest in a full-blown multi-camera surveillance system. The Schlage WCO100NX Home Outdoor Camera ($189), designed exclusively for the Nexia Home Intelligence System, lets you view live video streams on your smartphone and PC Web browser and offers motion-triggered video capture. It will store recorded video in the cloud and send email alerts, but you’ll have to purchase a Nexia Bridge and pay a monthly subscription fee for the service. Moreover, it doesn’t offer the high-definition video quality that you get with our Editors’ Choice, the D-Link Outdoor HD Wireless Network Cloud Camera (DCS-2330L) , and installation could be smoother.

Design and Features
The WCO100NX ($209.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) has a white-and-black weatherproof housing that will operate in temperatures ranging from 14 to 133 degrees Fahrenheit. The camera measures 4.1 by 3.7 by 1.5 inches (HWD) and has a maximum resolution of 640 by 480 at 30 frames per second. It has a 50-foot daylight viewing range that drops to around 15 feet at night when it relies on eight infrared LEDs to light the way.

The front of the camera holds the lens, a light sensor, a Passive Infrared (PIR) motion sensor, and a power LED. A Wi-Fi antenna is attached to the right side, and there’s an Ethernet port and a power port around back along with a screw-in receptacle used for attaching the camera to its stand. The stand is black with a round base and a swivel hinge for positioning the camera. The WCO100NX comes with an Ethernet cable, a power adapter with a 118-inch extension cord, an install guide, and mounting screws.

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The WCO100NX only works with the Nexia Home Intelligence System, and as such it is controlled using the well-designed Nexia Web, iOS, and Android apps. The Video page is where you go to view live video from the camera, enable motion detection, and view recorded video. You can click the record button while watching live video or have the camera begin recording when it detects motion. Your $0.99-per-month Nexia subscription gives you 250MB of video storage in the Nexia cloud, and you can add more for $1.99 per gigabyte. Motion-activated recording can be set to record from 15 seconds to a maximum of 4 minutes using the Nexia Automations section of the app, and you can have the camera trigger other Nexia devices such as light switches and locks. The camera also offers email and push alerts when motion is detected, and you can view a 90-day history of automation and motion detection events.

Installation and Performance
As noted in the Nexia Bridge ($179.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) review, installing the WCO100NX was somewhat problematic in my tests. Mounting the camera on its stand and attaching it to a soffit outside my back door was easy enough, but getting it to work wirelessly wasn’t. I connected the camera to my network using the included Ethernet cable and paired it with the bridge by entering the cameras MAC address and selecting Add Camera in the Nexia app. Next, I selected the Setup Wireless option and was told to choose from a list of available Wi-Fi networks. Here’s where I ran into trouble: There were no networks listed, even though I was no more than three feet away from my router. After several tries, I called tech support and was advised to hit the camera’s Reset button and re-enroll it to the bridge. I repeated this process three times before successfully connecting the camera to my wireless network.

Once installed, the WCO100NX did its job. Live daytime video offered good color quality, but the camera’s 640-by-480 VGA resolution lacked the crisp image detail provided by other outdoor cameras such as the Swann SWNVW-470KIT(Opens in a new window) and the D-Link Cloud Camera 7100 DCS-7010L(Opens in a new window), both of which offer HD (720p) video. Motion detection worked well, but there’s no way to adjust sensitivity or limit detection to a specific area in the camera’s field of view like you can with the D-Link DCS-2330L. As with the D-Link DCS-2330L, nighttime video was black and white, and deteriorated around 15 feet.

I set up an Automation to have a lamp turn on and an email sent when the camera detected motion, and it worked flawlessly. Email and push notifications were instantaneous in my tests, and recorded video had the same quality as live video. Unlike the DCS-2330L, the WCO100NX does not record audio.

Conclusions
The Schlage Home Outdoor Camera WCO100NX is a good choice for users who have already invested in a Nexia Home Intelligence System. In fact, it’s the only choice, as it’s the only outdoor camera that works with Nexia. It does a good job of capturing video and storing it to the Nexia cloud, and its durable housing will stand up to most outdoor weather conditions. That said, its low-resolution video and limited night vision hold it back. It also requires a bridge. On the other hand, our Editors’ Choice for outdoor security cameras, the D-Link Outdoor HD Cloud Camera DCS-2330L, offers a much more detailed HD video stream and doesn’t require a bridge (or a subscription service), is much easier to install, and a few dollars less expensive.