Which driveway camera keeps useful detail at the car?

Planning reach by model

Our planner converts each camera's published horizontal lens angle and sensor width into a planning reach: the distance at which the picture still holds 20 pixels per foot (a recognizable person) or 40 pixels per foot (a face you could identify). Night reach uses the maker's night-vision figure or the light the camera carries. Wider lenses see more driveway and keep less detail; the two columns show that trade-off directly.

* sensor width taken from the resolution label because the maker publishes no pixel figure. Models whose maker publishes only a diagonal lens angle are not listed; they have model pages but no planning reach. Manufacturer specifications, not our tests.

Plan one driveway viewPlan an overview plus a closer view

Put the doors inside the identify distance

The number that matters is the distance from the mount to the car doors and to the point where someone leaves the street. If that distance is beyond the identify column, the camera will show that something happened without showing who. Moving the mount closer beats buying more resolution: halving the distance doubles the detail, while stepping from 2K to 4K adds far less at the same spot.

Night is the driveway's normal condition

Most car break-ins happen after dark, so plan for the night column, not the day one. A hardwired floodlight camera lights the scene and keeps color to about 40 ft in our model; the floodlight shortlist lists the ones that need a fixture circuit. Infrared cameras keep a black-and-white picture at shorter range and can wash out a face that walks up close. Whatever you choose, headlights sweeping across the lens are the scene the camera has to survive; test with the car pulling in.

License plates are a different job

A wide driveway camera at eave height does not read plates dependably. Axis's guidance on plate capture describes specific alignment, angle and exposure settings for that task, and none of the general-purpose cameras above are set up that way by default. If a plate is what you need, treat it as a separate, dedicated camera position aimed along the drive at bumper height, and accept that the same camera will be poor at faces.

One view or two

A single camera can cover a short single-car driveway when the doors and the street approach both sit inside its identify distance. A two-car driveway, a car parked nose-in against the garage, or a drive that turns behind a hedge usually needs an overview plus a closer view of the doors. The planner's driveway entries above open the house layout with the driveway already required, so you can see what one position does and does not reach before adding a second.

Power at the driveway position

Driveway mounts are often the farthest from an outlet and the closest to an existing outdoor light. That makes a fixture-wired floodlight camera or a plug-in camera on the garage circuit the usual choice, with battery or solar for a position with no wiring at all; the power guide separates the three. A battery camera at the driveway records on motion only, so a car sitting still is not being filmed between events.