Tapo C120 Review: A 2K Renter Camera With No Fees

This is the feature the camera is sold on for renters, so it is worth being straight about it. The base is magnetic, which means it needs a ferrous surface, and a modern rented interior has startlingly little steel in it.

The fridge works. A steel radiator works. A metal-framed shelving unit or a filing cabinet works. What does not work is most of the places you would actually want a camera: plasterboard walls, uPVC window frames, painted timber door frames, plaster coving, tiled surfaces. Aluminium and stainless-steel trim are non-magnetic too, so a smart-looking metal frame is not a promise.

Before you plan a position, take a fridge magnet round the room and test the spot you have in mind. Where nothing sticks, the fallback is the same as any other renter mounting problem: stand it on a shelf, or use a small steel disc on a removable adhesive pad and accept that the adhesive, not the magnet, is now the thing that has to come off cleanly at check-out. That is covered in more detail in the guide to securing a rented flat without drilling.

It is USB-C powered with a cable in the box, and that constrains siting more than the mount does. The camera has to live within a cable run of a socket, and in a rental you cannot chase a cable into a wall or add an outlet where you want one.

In practice that means the good camera position and the available socket are often in different parts of the room, and you end up choosing between a compromised view and a cable taped along a skirting board. Work out the run before you buy, not after. If the plan involves an extension lead across a doorway, it is the wrong plan.

The weatherproofing has the same shape of catch. The body carries an IP66 rating but the power connection is not sealed to the same standard, so outdoor use needs the joint kept under cover and an outdoor-rated supply, which in most rentals simply is not available. Treat it as an indoor camera that tolerates a sheltered porch, rather than an outdoor one.

A camera in your own room, in a flat you rent alone, is an ordinary domestic matter. A camera covering a shared kitchen, hallway, landing or garden in a house share is a different thing entirely, because it records people who live there and have not agreed to it.

The Information Commissioner's Office treats home cameras that capture beyond your own household space as carrying data-protection responsibilities: letting people know the camera is there, keeping footage only as long as you need it, and providing footage of someone who asks for their own. In a house share the boundary of your household is effectively your room, so a camera in the hall is squarely in that territory.

None of which makes it wrong to want one. It means the sequence is: talk to your housemates first, agree what it covers, use the detection zones to exclude what is not yours, and put the recordings on a card you control rather than a cloud account they cannot see. A camera nobody was told about is the version that ends a tenancy badly.

Worth knowing, because renters find these more often than they expect and the instinct is to assume it must be allowed if the landlord installed it.

During a tenancy the property is your home, and that is the frame to reason from. A camera inside a let dwelling, pointed at space you rent, is not a landlord maintenance device; it is surveillance of a tenant in their home. Cameras in the common parts of a shared house sit on more arguable ground, but the landlord is then the one carrying the data-protection duties, including telling residents the camera exists and what it records.

If you find one you were not told about, photograph it in place before anything else, put your questions to the landlord or agent in writing so there is a record, and take advice rather than removing or covering it unilaterally. The ICO handles the data-protection side and Shelter covers the tenancy side; both publish free guidance.

The camera itself unplugs and lifts off, which is the whole appeal, and if you used a steel disc and adhesive that is the only thing needing a careful removal.

The part people forget is the card. Local recording is the reason to buy this camera, and it means your footage of the flat, and possibly of housemates, is sitting on a microSD in your hand. Wipe it deliberately rather than just pulling it out, and unbind the camera from your account and the flat's wifi before you leave so it is not still holding credentials for a network you no longer use.