Long term wave measurement is of vital importance for assessing the wave power resources, optimizing the productivity of wave energy devices, and determining the largest waves for the survivability of the wave energy device during its life time in sea. Among the technologies developed for measuring ocean waves, wave buoys may beare one of the most popular ones used for long-term wave measurements. In order to investigate whether the wave characteristics can be accurately measuredrecorded using the wave buoys accurately, an experimental study was carried out on the performance of three wave buoy models, that is, viz two Wavescan WaveScan buoys and one ODAS buoy, in a wave tank using the European FP7 MARINET facilities. The wave measurements using the wave buoys are compared to the measured waves using the reference wave gauges in the tank so the accuracy of the wave measurements can be examinedunder scaled regular and irregular wave conditions, including long and short crest waves. This paper presents the results in both time and frequency domains and the comparison between the wave buoys and wave gauge measurements. The analysis results reveal that the wave buoys are reliable for measuring the scaled wave conditions, for both regular and irregular waves. Besides, the Wavescan buoys have better performances than the ODAS buoy in terms of accuracy and the correlation with the wave gauges.