Eufy Dual Cameras Are Worth the Money
For the past year I have been installing and removing security cameras to test the outside of my home. My goal was to see which ones had the best video, were the most responsive, were easiest to install, and stayed charged the longest. Although installing and removing them was a difficult task, I liked how paranoid it made the neighbors. Eufy has a lot of outdoor security cameras, but I’ve had two of their dual cameras (both released last fall) installed for a few months now, and while they’re not perfect, there’s a lot to like about the Floodlight Cam E340 ($219). and Solocam S340 ($199).
Dual lenses combined with pan, tilt and roll
They’re essentially wired and wireless versions of the same dual camera: you have a macro lens on top and a micro lens on the bottom. The wired version comes with incredibly powerful floodlights, while the wireless version comes with a solar panel. The cameras are rotatable and can rotate 360 degrees. In addition to being able to provide almost any angle thanks to the pan and tilt, this latitude gives some options for mounting the camera in different places that you would normally be able to do.
Robustly built units
Unlike some of the smaller wireless models on the market from Nest and Blink, these are solid, large, and well-built devices. Black and white molded plastic combined with metal and glass looks durable. Wired versions will be less flexible in placement since you’ll need external wiring to connect and, like many smart products, you’ll need a neutral wire. The wireless version can be mounted anywhere, and the solar panel can be mounted anywhere within 15 feet of the camera using the included USB cable, or simply attach it to the top of the camera. Because of my yard and wanting it to get as much sunlight as possible, I mounted a wireless camera on a pole about 15 feet above my yard, attaching a solar panel to the top of the camera. Once installed, my wireless camera never showed a charge level of less than 90%, even during the Pacific Northwest winter, including a two-week cloudy period.
Reliability even in harsh weather conditions
The Eufy app is well designed, it’s easy to navigate, there’s no clutter, and the cameras are easy to connect. Not once in the 10 weeks of installing them did I have any outages, even with sideways rain and the harshest weather the PNW has seen in years with freezing rain, single digit temperatures and winds that knocked out power and trees. all over the city.
Endless possibilities for wireless installation, whereas wired installation is complex
While choosing where to place a wireless camera would be the hardest part of installing it, installing a wired camera was much more difficult. The Eufy comes with parts including an S-hook to help you hang the camera while connecting it, which is very useful. However, there are two pain points during installation. First, you run the wires through a mount that is attached to the building, and then you put the camera on and secure it to the mount. Despite reading the instructions and watching company and user videos, I spent several days trying to turn on the camera with no luck. Euphie eventually sent a second squad, and although I was much more careful this time, it was still quite difficult to line up and took many tries. The second problem is that the wired camera has spotlights that are so powerful that they have stickers on them to protect you during installation. You don’t remove the stickers from the lamps until the installation is complete, except the stickers don’t come off easily and now you’re standing on the stairs trying to peel off the stubborn stickers with your fingernails. I would suggest removing the stickers on the ground before installing and covering the lights with paper bags that can be removed at the end. (The light is actually blinding, so be careful.)
Live streaming your yard gets interesting
Once the cameras are turned on, you’ll spend your time simply fascinated by watching videos on your phone, playing with the panning and tilting that allows you to focus on literally everything in the camera’s field of view. While the detail on both lenses is amazingly clear, the micro lens is something else. In my side yard, the macro lens captures a panoramic view of the street, but the micro lens is so good that I can see aphids on my cabbage 50 feet from the camera. Sound is also picked up, and although voices are crystal clear within a 15-foot radius, there is always a white noise effect from the wind. Both cameras have two-way audio, so whether you want to scare the crap out of someone walking across the yard or want to convince your dog that you’re the voice in the sky, Euphie has your back. In live view, you can manipulate the lenses in any direction (they work together) using a virtual joystick. You can also preset a number of “stations” that you want the camera to operate on. All of this comes at the expense of the camera’s ability to detect human and pet activity, alert you to the presence of activity, and then track that activity.
Even more impressive is the night vision. Obviously, a wired camera’s spotlight is able to illuminate a space so effectively that you get all the colors you would have in daylight, albeit without the brightness. But even without floodlights, the wireless camera has a light that can be turned on for night vision that illuminates the area amazingly effectively. Even without the light, you can still see pretty clearly at night, especially if you use it to locate a person or pet.
Goodbye cloud subscription fees
This brings us to one of the benefits of Eufy cameras – local storage. Some cameras, including both of these models, can store clips locally on the camera itself. I could never figure out how to enable this feature and eventually gave up on Homebase. Paired with the Homebase ($149.99) , which acts as a hard drive and a sync module that you store inside for cameras, you can store captured clips on a USB drive connected to the base. This means you can eliminate the cloud entirely, and with it the cloud fees. You can effectively use Eufy cameras without having to pay a monthly fee, which in my opinion is very important when you are talking about security cameras. (Eufy offers a cloud solution for some models , but not these specific cameras.) Your storage capacity will be determined by the capacity of the USB drive in Homebase, and you’ll still be able to securely transfer clips to your phone from anywhere. . However, even when I was right inside the house, no more than 20 feet from the camera and base, the delay in retrieving clips was sometimes tedious and sometimes timed out. It’s faster to go live even when you’re away from home, but if you’re away from home it may take 10 seconds or more.
More features than you need or don’t understand how to use.
Eufy cameras are chock full of features—so chock full that I found it difficult to understand what each feature actually does, and some don’t work as well as I’d like. It’s easy enough to understand that within line of sight you can set areas that the camera ignores for activity notifications, such as the sidewalk. But no matter what I did, my wired camera alerted me every time a car drove down the street. At the same time, it did not capture raccoons 10 feet away, within sight, like any other camera installed in the same location. In addition to zone settings, there are a range of sensitivity settings for video and audio playback.
You can set up automation in Eufy, but I can’t figure out why you’d need it. For example, if your front camera detects a person, you can automatically turn on the rear camera. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just rely on the rear camera to capture the activity itself, which it does quite well. You can integrate Eufy cameras with Alexa and Google Home, so I guess you can add those to automation as well. The big new feature of the Eufy models is an artificial intelligence service called BionicMind. It uses “face management” to tell you whether the person hiding in the yard is your partner or a creeper. It can also detect packages and pets, although my Doberman was identified as human about 85% of the time (she’s a dead ringer for Al Pacino).
Eufy has tightened its security practices
The only issue that can’t be ignored is that these are security cameras, and like many companies, Eufy has had some security issues in the past, namely image thumbnails being sent with notifications (and there have been some questions about real-time viewing functions). ). Euphy makes it clear that no customer data was exposed and has taken pains to explain what tests they carried out and how they changed their policies after that. End-to-end encryption is used for all notification images, which are deleted once the notification is viewed. Live views are moved exclusively to a secure web portal, and all AI and biometric data remains local and is never moved to the cloud. A large portion of the public remains extremely skeptical about the safety of our security devices, and I think that is a healthy skepticism, but I am also reassured by Euphie’s work in this area.
There is some work to be done, but it’s worth it
It’s impossible to ignore how expansive Eufy’s views are, thanks to 360-degree pan and tilt, and the exceptional video quality and detail available with macro and micro lenses. The connection stability these cameras provided in challenging environments was admirable, and they reliably notified me of human activity and, to a lesser extent, animal activity. I was very impressed with the wireless camera’s ability to charge from a small solar panel in mediocre weather, and I liked how quickly both cameras used the joystick in real time. The best part is that Eufy is the first security camera I’ve used, indoor or outdoor, that doesn’t require a subscription just to view recorded clips. While I would have liked to be able to recall recorded clips faster and would have liked the app’s features to be a little clearer, neither are dealbreakers. Considering the build quality and all the above points, I think both models are quite reasonably priced, especially since you don’t need a subscription. I will continue to install new cameras for testing, but I don’t want to take down these Eufy cameras.