eufy - eufyCam 2, 2-Camera Indoor/Outdoor Wire-Free 1080p 16GB Surveillance System - White

I picked-up this camera for two reasons: 1) there is no additional cost, like a monthly cloud subscription, to view my saved footage, and 2) it is made by Anker. I have been buying Anker products for years because of the quality. Anker was started by two former Google employees and their knowledge in technology and product manufacturing shows in their products. Everything I’ve bought from them has worked well and lasted, so I was curious to see if their new wireless camera system is the same. And so far, I’m really impressed. These cameras come with a lot of features that make using them extremely easy. And the accompanying app is reliable, simple to use, and allows for you to customize settings if you choose to do so. Many of these features (e.g. human detection & facial recognition) cost extra with other brands but are included as part of this system for no extra cost. And not having to pay anything extra per month to view and store my footage was very important to me. In terms of setup, it was very easy. There is a speaker at the bottom of the base that provides verbal instructions to aid in the setup process. The audio is quite loud, so I don’t recommend setting the system up while the family is asleep for the night, like I did. It takes about 12 hours for the cameras to fully charge, so I charged them the night before I planned on setting everything up. After setting up the base and cameras inside the app, you are prompted to update the firmware (the hardware’s software) on each. I highly recommend updating the firmware as soon as the system is up and running. Doing so brings the software up to date with the latest features, as well as corrects any bugs and errors that users may have encountered in the past. Other features include the ability to connect the base directly into your router using an Ethernet cable, or via Wi-Fi if you’re not able to set it up in the same location as your router. In terms of battery life, the app has three modes that control how much the camera activates and records events. You can choose from: “Optimal Battery Life” where video clip length is kept to 20 seconds max; “Optimal Surveillance” where video clip length can be up to 60 seconds; or “Customize Recording” where video clip length and detection periods can be customized. I’m assuming the 365-day battery claim is achieved with the first setting only (Optimal Battery Life). I choose the second option to begin with, but the modes can be changed anytime. And if you want to extend the number of recordings the base can store, there is an option to plug a USB drive into the base. The app’s help section clearly states that this feature isn’t enabled yet but will be supported in a future update. In terms of picture quality, the images are clear and crisp at 1080p in well lit conditions. I also love that the viewing angle is 140 degrees, which is much wider than most competing cameras on the market. And during night use the images are also clear. However, I noticed that the infrared lights do a good job lighting up the dark areas immediately in front of the camera but aren’t strong enough to brighten the areas further away (see pic). This may be because the camera only uses 4 infrared lights. Other cameras I’ve used either had more lights or brighter ones built in. My guess is the number of infrared lights on these cameras are related to the battery life. It’s a trade-off I’m willing to accept if it means I only need to charge these cameras once a year as they claim. A few more things worth mentioning, I tested the sirens on both the camera and base, they are loud, but not ear piecing loud. Depending on your needs, this may be acceptable or not. There are sirens built into the camera’s themselves, so if someone tries to steal one from its mount, the siren on the camera and base will go off. Again, these settings are optional, but it’s well thought options like this that makes this camera system well worth it. Another well thought out option is this camera’s ability to use Google Assistant. This feature is still in the Beta (testing) phase, but I was able to pair the camera with the Google Home app. Once connected, I can say, “Okay Google, show the Patio camera on the living room TV.” You can see an example of this in the attached pic. It shows the Eufy camera pointed towards the TV while streaming its live feed on the screen. While I don’t have a Google Hub, my TV does support Google Chromecast, so anyone with Chromecast can use this feature. Similar features are also being tested from Amazon Alexa too. Finally, if you need help, you can live chat with tech support directly through the app at any time, day or night. I had a few questions, so I used this option a couple of times and was connected with an Eufy employee immediately and got the answers to my questions within minutes. Again, this is another reason why I’ve trusted Anker products all these years. I am really happy with this system.

I've been using these EufyCam2 for 1 1/2 years now and am happy with them. ________________ +Pros: +Even though they are 1080p, not the newer 2K resolution, they provide a clear image in both day and night conditions. +Battery life is excellent. The advertised 1-year charge is only realistic for a camera that has minimal use, but these last for 6+ months on a charge with moderate activations. Not bad, IMO. +The Eufy cellphone app is easy to use and enables me to quickly see live views as well as recordings. +Eufy customer service and support have been top notch. _______________________ -Cons: -I wish the sensing range was longer. My cameras max out at 20 to 30 feet. -I haven't encountered any serious drawbacks to these battery powered Eufy cameras. I liked these two so well that I added 7 more Eufy devices.

The eufyCam2 system has been pretty impressive and a very solid performer for me over the last 7-10 days of use. Once up and running, I’ve had zero issues with camera connections, quality of video feed and notifications and changes to settings and locations. I’ve used similar camera systems from the other top 2-3 brands in this space, and the eufyCam2 delivers as good or better performance in all areas. Setup: Very easy. The package came with a HomeBase2 unit and two cameras. The first thing you’ll notice is that the cameras are very large, compared to others in this space. As you can imagine, touting 365 day battery life, the internal batteries are pretty big. I downloaded the eufy Security app for iOS and followed the setup instructions. Very simple and easy to follow. You basically connect your HomeBase to your home network (either by Ethernet or wifi) and then add each camera, and place them where you’d like. The app will notify you of the signal strength between the HomeBase and your cameras, allowing you to place them all in ranges that maximize connection strength. I started by using Ethernet connection directly to my router, however my second camera seemed to get a lower than desired connection, so I simply switched my HomeBase connection to wifi and placed the HomeBase in the middle of where the two cameras were placed, and all connections are solid. This is a great feature, and something you don’t get with some of the other brand cameras. It also states that the HomeBase can be used as a wifi extender when used in wifi mode. I’ve not tried that out since I use a mesh wifi system, but that’s an awesome feature to have just in case for those that might need it. One of the nice things about the eufyCam2 system is there is no need for cloud storage subsections. Your videos are stored locally within the HomeBase unit. It comes with a 16GB internal storage, that can be expanded to 128GB. Eufy says the internal 16GB will store up to 3 months of clips (at their standard factory settings) but being able to expand and not have to pay monthly or yearly cloud storage fees is awesome. And you can download and save any or all your clips to other devices when and wherever you want. App: The app is great, very polished and very fast to load and operate. From the home screen you have direct access to your cameras installed and can quickly add new cameras if needed. The first thing you do in the app is either go directly to your clips, or go directly to Live Streaming. You don’t have to wait for motion detection, you can always go directly to a live stream video to see what’s happening in real time on any camera at any time. Eufy says that the system will accommodate up to 16 cameras, that’s amazing and well beyond what other brands offer. You can toggle between your devices, your recorded video history and your desired security settings. Video history of course keeps a timeline of all recorded video events the camera has captured so you can go back by day/time and find the clip you want. from here you can view the clips, save them to your device, share them with others or social media, even share them with eufy, and also delete the clip. The security tab allows you to modify what mode you want the camera system to operate in; Home, Away, Disarmed or Scheduled. These can be adjusted to do different things related to notifications, motion detection, alarm settings etc. The app also allows your direct control over the cameras and their individual settings. Per camera you can turn them on or off. You can adjust night vision to on or off per camera, you can adjust different motion detection settings, audio settings and other custom configurations, all per camera. So based on placement, you might need different settings for one camera that you don’t need for the other and vice versa. The app allows you to configure them individually however you’d like. It also has an alarm setting, meaning that if someone were to try and move your camera or remove it from its mount, the camera will start sounding an alarm. Great feature to have! You also can control activity zones per camera to detect motion. You can create custom, single or multiple zones in which the camera will prioritize when motion is detected. And if you don’t want to use zones, no problem, the camera will detect motion across the entire field of view. And this can be set to all motion, which depending on placement can be a good or bad thing. somewhere where motion is limited, that’s great because you’ll immediately be notified, but somewhere else, and you’ll get leaves, trees, bushes, animals, cars, etc. So you can set the motion detection to People only, so the camera will notify you only when it detects a human. It even has facial recognition, so it will zoom in and save a shot of the persons face. This is great for high traffic areas where you don’t want false alarms. You also have complete control over the length and duration of the video clips. You can let eufy record for as long as it thinks it needs to, or you can customize specifically how long and how often you want your clips to be. This will have an impact on battery life, but if you want to have more control over the videos, eufy gives it to you, which is great. Performance: I’ll start by saying the video quality is very nice. It is only 1080p, and while having 4K resolution would have been nice, I’m finding that the 1080p quality of the video is very solid. Clips or live stream video is very clear with little to no jitter or frame rate buffering or pixilation. Quality is best is very bright sunlight, but it holds up very well in dark conditions too. And when it’s too dark for clarity, you can switch to night mode. I do think the night mode could be better, it seems sort of washed out to me, with an overly gray contrast-less appearance, but it’s much better than no night mode at all. Field of view is very good, I think 140° so not super wide, but wide enough, giving a nice clear view of all surroundings. The motion detection is very fast, and I’ve never missed a portion of a triggered motion event because the camera took too long to start recording. Live view video is also very fast. I can open the app and immediately activate a camera to live stream in just a couple seconds, no buffering or waiting for the connection to happen, it’s all instant. I’ve found the range to be pretty good, not great. I did have to move my home base setup from Ethernet to wifi to make sure I was connected fully to both cameras, which isn’t a big deal, but to me based on the distance of each camera from the home base originally, I would expect slightly better range. But one thing that is nice, is when in the app viewing video, it will show you the current connection signal strength, which I think is awesome. You never have to guess if the camera is connected well or not, because you can see it right on screen. I’ve not been able to validate the battery life claim of 365 days, obviously, but I will say that with lots of custom settings and video record configurations, my battery meter has not changed from day 1. I’d like to be able to see the actual battery % of each camera, but you can only view the battery icon and it’s status. with all the custom configurations I have I am not expecting a full 365 days, but using other cameras systems that needed to be charged every 30 days or so, this will be a much appreciated change of pace. Even if I can get 6 months before a recharge, it’s well worth it to me. Audio is an area where I think there could be improvements. The mic in the cameras is way too hot. They are set so hot that even super subtle sounds or just normal ambient sound is amplified in an uncomfortable way. You can control audio volume from low, mid, high, but that doesn’t seem to also lessen the internal mic settings. When scene audio/noise is happening the audio does tend to balance out, so everything does not become just a white noise mess, but overall the audio has been the one distracting element overall for me while using the eufyCam2. The two way audio speak and listen capability is nice, and the audio through the camera seems to be nice and clear, which is good. Overall: The eufyCam2 is a solid system. Having used the other top brand versions of similar camera systems, I can say that the eufyCam2 is the system that I’m currently going to be using going forward. Easy setup, loads of custom settings, fast operation and great motion detection highlight the system to me. A subpar night mode and way too hot internal camera mic recording are things that keep the system from being a solid 5 star performer, but aren’t things that would sway me from using it. This is the best motion detection camera system I’ve used, and if the battery life promise even half lives up to its claim, I’m all in!

This wireless camera system is easy to setup and simple to manage. Crisp and clear images every time. Real time push notifications to your phone is great as well. An all around great system!

75% of the time it totally misses someone walking up to my front door, if I were to login and look at my front door there’s nothing there, I didn’t get an email from Amazon saying my package was delivered, I login and low and behold there’s a package at the front door, no indication from the camera that anything had happened. When it does pick up motion it’s usually the person walking away back to their vehicle and the package on the front step. The picture quality is not bad at all when it does pick something up. Will leave the camera where it is but will start saving for a wired system that continually records and saves to a hard drive and then will sell this on eBay. I don’t think the system is any worse than any other system, I just don’t think these wireless/wi-Fi security cameras are ready for prime time yet. Maybe if you have an apartment and you put these cameras indoors and you have no pets this could be a fine fit, but not for me.

It's been almost a month. The bad first, the motion sensors are so wacky. It will pick up my flag flying across my driveway but not me pulling in my driveway in my truck, or walking around my truck detailing it. See pictures. I'm not impressed with the night vision..if you dont have street lights or a porch light on they are basically worthless. IMHO. The batteries are holding strong, but they will not last a year as advertised. I'm guessing 4-6 months...maybe 9 if you get one or two detection a day. Easy to install. I'm not sold, I'm thinking of going back my others that I have to change my batteries more often, they are better at picking movement up.

The eufyCam 2, 2-Camera Surveillance System is a very capable system that allows the user to monitor either indoor or outdoor areas with relative ease. Out of the box, the cameras appear to be well made and solid. Downloading the app, creating an account, and setting up the base station was extremely simple and went flawlessly. Adding the cameras to the system was just as simple and also went off without a hitch. Both the base station and cameras updated their firmware right after the initial setup, but even with that, the complete set up was only about 15-20 mins. The quick start guide suggests that you fully charge the cameras, but the cameras already appeared to have about 90% charge (according to the app), and I needed to test the system asap, so I placed them immediately. I currently have an Arlo 2 system, so I placed the Eufy cameras as close to the Arlo cameras as possible so I could get a good comparison. When placing the cameras, the app allows you to choose a location that has good WiFi coverage. However, the location I chose showed very poor coverage on the app, even though the camera, once installed, shows 3 out of 5 'bars', so I'm not sure how accurate the app is in that regard since it's dependent on the device on which the app is installed. The first thing I noticed is that the Eufy cameras are more visible because of their shape, although I'm not sure if that's a bad thing since intruders might avoid the area altogether if they see the cameras (of course they could also try to circumvent them and go to another location that's not monitored). Once positioned, the Eufy app allows complete control over the cameras. The main settings are Camera Working Mode and Motion Detection. The first allows you to set the camera for Optimal Battery Life, Optimal Surveillance, or you can create a customized recording template. The second allows you you to turn motion detection on or off, set the sensitivity of the motion detection, create multiple activity zones (which Arlo only allows if the camera is plugged in), and it gives you the ability to have the camera alert you to all motion or just humans by using face recognition algorithms. The ability to only alert on human recognition is a huge plus for me for one camera location because of the number of animals that come through the area. Another big plus for the Eufy cameras is their night vision; the Arlo 2 night vision seems to have a fog over the entire video making it almost impossible to see what's moving around if the target is more than 6-8 ft away from the camera, whereas the Eufy cameras are extremely clear, even up to 15-20 ft. Another plus for the Eufy system is that the base station stores a year's worth of video locally on a 16GB microSD card (upgradeable to 128GB) without a paid plan whereas Arlo stores a week's worth of videos on the cloud and requires a paid plan to store more video. Moreover, the Arlo system requires a paid service plan if you want to have more than 5 cameras connected to your base station, whereas the Eufy system supports up to 16 cameras connected to one base station, all without a monthly fee. The only feature missing from the Eufy cameras is the the ability to detect and alert on audio detection. The Eufy base station seems to be very stable; the Arlo cameras occasionally appear to be offline even though I know they're not, and if the router needs to rebooted, the Eufy base station comes back online much faster, allowing access to the cameras almost immediately, whereas the Arlo cameras can take several minutes to come back online. Overall, the eufyCam 2 surveillance system appears to be a very robust and capable product with some outstanding features. If the cameras prove to be durable over the next few months, which I feel certain they will, I will definitely be purchasing additional units to place around my house. I would recommend this product in a heartbeat to anyone wanting to keep an eye on their property.

Eufy Cam2 Full disclosure: I was given a two camera EufyCam 2 system in exchange for a timely, and honest review. This is a long review, so if you just want my summary, scroll to the bottom. First, the two-camera kit comes in a very compact box. It is well presented and the contents are well protected by the packaging. The sleeve on the outside clearly emphasizes battery life, which Eufy claims could be up to 365 days. I know from my fairly extensive experience, that this will depend greatly on the amount of “action” these cameras see each day and therefore how much the record each day. I won’t be able to comment much on battery life given the timeframe I have for writing this review versus the claimed battery life. The top of the box reinforces the battery life message by saying “Recharge your EufyCam one year from today”. I opened the box to see the little blue folder holding the quick start guide and a little reset key that looks a lot like a rounded version of the SIM holder key for an iPhone. The Quick Start Guide is pretty much what you would expect. It starts with “What’s included” and walks us through the setup. I took a good look at all of the hardware. The fit and finish is excellent. The Homebase 2 and EufyCam 2 devices have a very nice, quality look and feel. I compared the size of the Homebase 2 to my Arlo Pro and Pro 3 base stations. The Homebase 2 is smaller overall than both of the Arlo base stations. It is square and tall, but not big overall. See photo. So far so good. I like it. The cameras are long and tubular in shape, but OK...just a different approach to batteries. The 1st installation step is to plug the Homebase 2 into your router or other LAN port on your home network. Then power up the Homebase 2. I placed mine in a 2nd floor bedroom where I have no other wireless equipment. Then I came back downstairs to get my cameras ready. The next step is to download the Eufy app and create an account. I did this first, so I was looking at my EufyCam 2 cameras when I thought I heard someone talking loudly upstairs. I immediately realized, the Homebase 2 talks to us. Ugh. Like Guardzilla as I recall. I grabbed the cameras and went back upstairs to configure them. The Homebase indicated it needed to do a software update, so I let it do that and then continued. I pulled out the first camera and started the process of adding a device. I tried to add the camera and the app told me I needed to add a Homebase first. Good coaching. I added and Homebase 2 to the app using the camera on my iPad to scan the QR code on the bottom of the Homebase 2. It took a few tries to get the distance and lighting correct. It would have been nicer to be directed to scan this code before I connected the Homebase 2 to a network, so I could have easily positioned it in the light. I was successful, but this seems like an opportunity for improvement. Scan the QR code...then go place it and connect it. After the Homebase 2 was installed, I think “she” spoke again loudly announcing my success. It was last night and I am recalling from memory. I should have taken very detailed notes. I then moved on to adding the first camera. This is well guided and involves keeping the camera about 3’ from the Homebase 2. The first time I tried, it failed, but gave me good instructions about what to do before retrying. I power cycled the Homebase 2 and when that was complete, the process for adding a camera progressed beyond the previous failure point. The camera pairing process is done via an audio signal that is fairly loud, but not as “wake up the dead” loud as the previous voice announcements. This time it was successful and the camera paired just fine. I repeated the process for the second camera. Overall, I liked the level of detail, quality of presentation and flow of the set up process. What I did not like was the voice prompts and audio pairing. I don’t like to disturb other people with my technology. I keep my volume set to off, of all of my iPads and laptops unless I’m specifically listening to something and I use low volume or earbuds when I do turn up the volume. So I find the audio prompts really annoying and a one star detractor. If the prompts were a user choice, that would be fine, but having a very loud and IMHO annoying sound forced upon me, is not acceptable. Another rather odd part was that after pairing the cameras, I was directed to fully charge the cameras before mounting them. It would seem like this should be the first step even though I know consumers are generally impatient and want to get going with the installation. The cameras were only about 55% charged when they arrived, so directing us to fully charge them before setting them up would seem prudent. It also struck me as being inconsistent (though not technically) with the message on the top of the box “Recharge your EufyCam one year from today”. You still have to “charge” it today. The camera mounts look decent. The kit came with two indoor and two outdoor mounts. The indoor mounts are metal half-domes, similar to the Arlo, Pro, Pro 2 mounts. The outdoor mounts are small 1/4”-20 thread connections on a locking ball mount. Also the instruction for mounting include a video. The camera positioning view seems to give me a static image. I have to refresh the image as I move the camera to an optimal position. Charging the cameras from about 55% to full, took a few hours using a 12 watt iPad adapter. I should have thought to use my 48 watt (I think) Anker IQ charger. The provided charging cable has a USB-A connector on the adapter end, so I could not use a USB-3 PD charger unless I used a different cable. After charging overnight, the first camera was offline the next morning. I poked around the app a bit and discovered guidance on what to do. I just pressed the sync button momentarily and it flashed a blue light. After a refresh in the app, the camera was back online. I believe the second camera also did this. After charging both cameras, I placed the cameras around the room and played with the settings. Under security we have the choice of modes: Home, Away, Disarmed, Schedule and Custom. Each mode determines how each camera will react “when motion is detected”. The action choices are: record video, push notification, camera alarm, base alarm. I did not see an option for email notifications. The default mode for Disarm has all actions disabled as you would expect. The Home mode was set to record video and send a push notification. The Away mode was set to also trigger the camera alarm. I made the mistake of setting the mode to Away before checking these actions and I was quickly blasted with a piercing siren. Ok, my mistake! I don’t use any alarms on any of my surveillance systems. My experience is that these systems see a ton of motion that doesn’t warrant an alarm at my locations. I could see using the alarm if I was monitoring an interior space where no one should be, when the cameras are in Away mode, but outside, I think this would be problematic. My preference would be for eufy to disable alarms by default and offer them as a choice, so people to accidentally suffer the startling and piercing alarm by accident like I did. I created a Custom mode named “Night” to see how that worked and it was easy. I then created a schedule and that was also straightforward. I like that I was able to set up a block of time from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM with one operation. Arlo requires schedules passing by midnight to be set up as two time blocks on either side of midnight, rather than one contiguous block of time. This is nice and represents a thoughtful design process that considered user needs above programming convenience. Notably absent from the mode choices is geofencing. Eufy has Home and Away modes, but I appear to have to manually change the mode rather than the system automatically detecting my entry and exit from my location. This seems a bit odd, since the app installation included a query as to whether I wanted to allow eufy to use my location. Perhaps this is indicative that geofencing is under development and will be available in the future. I am not privy to their plans. After disabling the siren settings from my two cameras, just in case I put them in Away mode again, I left them to capture some motion events. This is a good spot to discuss one thing I don’t like about the eufy app. I use my iPad as my got-to device. 99% of the time, I’m on my iPad. The eufy app does not appear to have an iPad version or mode, so I’m stuck looking at a tiny sideways user interface. I have to rotate my iPad to portrait orientation (or read sideways) and all of the iPad screen real estate is wasted. The UI looks fine on my iPhone, but I really want an iPad UI as well. There is a browser based UI for people who use Eufy cloud storage, but I didn’t use it, so I can’t review it. When I had several events recorded, I viewed the footage. The video quality is excellent even in (infrared) night mode. I like the “watermark” time and date stamp on the videos. This is so important when saving video for future use by authorities or even personally. Eufy, like other camera manufacturers doesn’t properly set the video metadata time and date stamp to the recording time and date. The metadata shows the date and time the recording was downloaded. This is a royal pain, IMHO. If I take a photo with my camera and download the photo (or a video) a week later, the date and time metadata correctly reflect the date and time the photo or video we’re actually taken (or at least whatever was set on my camera at the time it was taken).