Eufy Security 4+

Some great features / Annoying Bugs

There are some great features on this camera. Namely the HomeKit integration and the auto-tracking features (which ironically don’t work if HomeKit is enabled).

Bug-wise there are a couple:
- if you leave the camera on for long periods you occasionally get a ‘piping’ sound, like static. It keeps going until the feed is stopped and started, then it’s fine. It’s not my camera, because if you connect to the same camera from another device while it’s happening, that other device doesn’t experience tbe popping sound.
- equally annoying, the camera restarts overnight regularly for firmware updates. The update time seems to be 02:37, during which the camera moves around (2k pan and tilt) and the connection from your smartphone is lost. These updates should be selectable so you can update manually and not lose your feed overnight.

Potential but backwards “updates”

This app is ok. That’s about as good as it gets. It’s missing some key features for making it a truly effective security solution. For example you can’t combine geofencing with schedule so you can’t automatically have it set to record over night and while you’re away but not while you’re home during the day, so instead you have to just have it recording all the time which drains the batteries faster.
Also the geofencing is buggy, it’s fairly reliable at setting away mode but very unreliable on retuning home, most of the time you have to manually open the app to get it to recognise you’re home, making having a geofencing option completely redundant.
Finally there are some questionable changes when updates are released. Like for example the notification when you leave the geofencing area used to tell you that it was now in away mode and then when retuning saying it was in home mode (normally after you opened the app to force it to notice you’re home), with the latest update these notifications just say “arming change” for everything so you don’t know if its changed to armed or home. Obviously you can guess but why make this feature worse by taking away information?
All in all it’s not as refined as the arlo app which I also have but then Eufy also doesn’t charge a subscription so I guess you get what you pay for.

Developer Response ,

Hello, dear user, we are sorry for the inconvenience. We’re opening beta testing of the Geofencing feature (as we told to other fans before).
So if you’re interesting, please contact us via support@eufylife.com.We will reply to you as soon as possible.
eufy Security Team

Good camera but less impressive app and spyware!

UPDATE - Eufy is now being taken to task in America for sending biometric data to a certain foreign country without permission. STAY WELL CLEAR until everything is fixed and secure.
The 2k Pan-and-Tilt camera is an impressive piece of kit for only £39 and the night vision performance is excellent. The app is not up to that standard. In particular, the app loses sound quality after 30 or so minutes and begins to whistle and distort the sound. Stopping and restarting the camera fed cures the issue for a while but it returns time and time again. Needs a fix. The Eufy app also does not play well with Apple Home. It is not possible to simply give the camera a static IP on the router and then connect to Home; you are required to use the Eufy app. When you do, it does connect but it disables some very useful functions in Home and also the Eufy app as long as the camera permission to Home remains. Disconnecting the camera from Home is not always recognised by the Eufy app and you need to delete the app, reinstall and reconnect the camera to get the functionality back. Last but not least - why do I need a Eufy account to control a camera with an app over a local network connection? Every company seems to want user registration in order to run an app that does not need the Internet or remote connection. Stop it and give us our privacy!