Eufy Security 2021 Review - 8/10

Seen a lot of negative reviews on here so wanted to share a positive experience for balance. I have the following:

  • Homebase 2
  • 2x door sensors, 2x motion sensors, keypad
  • 2x 2C Pro Cameras
  • 1x Indoor PanTilt Cam

Overall I think this is a really good system for the money. Definitely some limitations to be aware of and areas for improvement but still 8/10 in my book. Key positives and negatives below:

Positives:

  • Installation and setup was a breeze. Everything paired straight away and the process is very intuitive.
  • Signal strength between HomeBase and cameras is good, even one that I have in the basement.
  • Have had zero issues with false alarms (unlike my Hikvision cameras which alarm on trees, shadows, rain etc). Human and pet detection is accurate, although can miss a few events if the sensitivity is not set higher.
  • Overall good image and audio quality for this price point
  • Great to have the option to trigger white light automatically or manually
  • Sound detection on the indoor cam is very useful (I use it to detect error sounds from the pellet burner in the basement!).
  • App is very intuitive and flexible with a wide range of settings and schedules. Great to be able to set camera alarms, Homebase alarms, notifications, alarm delays individually for every device based on home/away/night/holiday schedules. Geofencing also working fine for me.
  • Indoor Cam tracking works well.
  • Motion zones are very flexible (many systems only allow one box or line to be created).
  • Added the rtsp stream from the indoor cam to my Hikvision NVR with no issues (have not done this with the 2C Pros as it is obvious this will kill their battery - why are people moaning about this!).
  • Notifications are almost instant.
  • Notifications and video available when away from home without any additional setup (e.g. having to configure port forwarding and DDNS). For those moaning about data going to the Eufy server this is the reason why they do that, and in my view a very small price to pay for a plug-n-play system.

Negatives:

  • Adding devices to HomeKit is not worthwhile as it disables too many features. It is a shame you cannot have the best of both worlds but I suspect this is largely the limitations imposed by Apple.
  • IFTT would be nice, although with video, alarm, siren all natively available I can live without it.
  • There is a bit of motion blur, I assume due to low frame rates that they set to minimise bandwidth. But if you place the cameras well you should still get enough clear/crisp images of each event.
  • They should make it possible to combine Home Base connected devices with others such as Indoor Cam, and manage everything through one set of modes/schedules.
  • Would like to see devices able to connect indirectly to Home Base over Wireless LAN so they could be placed further away without needing an additional Home Base (I have a guest bungalow 50m from the main house and the signal is just out of range).
  • They should add a MicroSD slot on the Home Base for additional storage (even better than enabling USB storage in my view). I have not had any issues with the 16GB internal storage so far but good to give users the choice.
3 Likes

Good to hear your positive views. What is your opinion with regard to being able to delete all data from the Homebase by pushing the sync button on the camera for 10 secs? Then when this abysmal issue is highlighted a mod hides the thread?
I really want to purchase a few bits of the system but there appears to be too many problems for my liking. I realise other brands have issues so I was wanting to like eufy :grin: