Boxing It All Up

Reviews
1

Purchased: 5 x Pro 2K cameras, 2 x Wireless 2K doorbell, 1 x HomeBase 2. Currently in the process of dismantling the whole setup for return and refund. Why?

  1. I wanted to use the cloud storage as a backup in case the HomeBase 2 was taken in the event of a burglary. The service is frankly laughable:

a) Recordings to the cloud are only in 1080P which would be bad enough in the era of widespread 4K streaming except…

b) Enabling cloud storage also forces local recordings to 1080P for no apparent reason.

c) Canceling the cloud storage service still leaves the local recordings hobbled at 1080P until the subscription expires. No option to just stop the service immediately. Oh and no support on the weekends to try and resolve this either.

d) The doorbells cannot record to the cloud even though they record to HomeBase 2 just as the cameras do. On the plus side it means that they’re not stuck at 1080P resolution.

Really, if I wanted to record in 1080P then I would have bought 1080P cameras. Why is this considered acceptable when your main competitor has a 4K recording plan?

  1. The cloud service for the whole hour that I had it enabled was - how can I put this nicely - “spotty”. I deliberately triggered 12 recordings, all of which were stored locally, and only 1 of which actually made it to the cloud. 8.33% success rate. Please don’t try and blame my internet connection. It’s 300Mbps down / up and the HomeBase 2 is connected directly to the router via ethernet. All cameras show a signal strength of “Great”.

  2. Automations are also iffy. I had motion on the front yard camera set to trigger recording on the driveway camera, and vice-versa. It worked maybe 50% of the time.

I get the feeling that this is a community being used as beta testers for a not-particularly-serious product. Very disappointing.

2 Likes
2

Sorry you’ve had a bad experience. These cameras aren’t for everyone but I can definitely see the frustration in using the cloud storage. I also don’t understand why they would down grade your Homebase 2 recordings to 1080p also. I’m guessing they upload 1080p to the cloud due to larger file sizes but this should be your fault!

3

Just for grins, I recorded a 1 minute video from one of the 2K doorbells at 2560 x 1920 resolution (higher than the 2 Pro which records in 2304 x 1296). It’s unlikely that most clips uploaded to the cloud service would be that long, but I’m working on the worst case scenario. The file size is 14.35MB. Assume 30 minutes of video per day recorded at that resolution, and you’d be looking at 431MB per day or 12.93GB for a rolling 30 days which is what the cloud plan provides. Double that to 1 hour of 2K footage per day and you’re still only looking at 25.86GB.

Amazon S3 storage costs 2.3 cents per GB per month. So 1 hour per day, 30 days, 25.86GB has a cost of roughly $0.60 per month. Seems like that’s not asking too much of a service for which Eufy is charging $9.99 per month. Heck, quadruple it to 4 hours of 2K video per day, far beyond what most users would generate, and the storage cost would still only be $2.40. That’s quite the profit margin. No wonder their main competitor can offer 4K / 30 day storage for $14.99 per month.

My biggest problem with this though is that none of it is disclosed up front. Not that cloud recordings will be in 1080P. Not that your local recordings will also be downgraded to 1080P. Nothing. A reasonable person would assume that a cloud storage plan for 2K cameras would store clips in 2K.