Budget
Security spending goes wrong when it buys the impressive thing rather than the effective one. These five come to under a hundred euros together, and between them they cover the door, a window, an approach, an opening and the water damage that costs more than all of it.
A hundred euros spent well changes more than five hundred spent on the wrong things.
A cylinder, because the builder’s one is what gets snapped. A window lock, because securing a door moves attention to the windows beside it. A camera, because knowing matters. A door alarm for a shed or a side door. And a water sensor, which has nothing to do with security and guards the most expensive damage a house is likely to suffer.
Longer screws. A strike plate held by two 25 mm screws into a door lining is what gives way, and 80 mm screws into the stud behind it cost less than a coffee and do more than anything on this list.
A parcel box, if deliveries are frequent. It is the only product on this site that prevents rather than records.
Dummy cameras, until there are real ones.
1080p · 360° pan, 130° tilt · 30 m IR · microSD to 512 GB · IP65
The cheapest way into a pan-and-tilt outdoor camera that records to its own card. TP-Link states 1080p, a 360° horizontal sweep and night vision to 30 m, and the listing is unusually frank about what the model is not.
Best for: A first outdoor camera on a wall that already has a socket nearby, where 1080p is enough and the card matters more than the picture.
≈ £33 / 31 €
Some of it is the best value in this catalogue. A cylinder, a window lock and long screws address the ways houses are actually entered, and they cost a fraction of a camera. What is not worth anything is a cheap version of something whose whole point is resistance — a thin padlock, a light safe.
A safe, because a cheap one is a portable box, and an alarm kit, because a cheap system is one you stop arming. Both are worth doing properly later rather than badly now.
Prices quoted in these summaries are dated readings. The live price is shown next to each product.
Cameras, alarm kits and safes swing by thirty euros or more across the year, and the biggest "discounts" often land at prices the same model sold for six weeks earlier. UniverTrack tracks the real price history across retailers, spots fake reductions, and alerts you when it is genuinely the moment to buy.
