AI surveillance and 4K smarts make this safety digital camera a best choice
When you’ve been delay by pan-and-tilt digital camera previously, the Eufy Safety Indoor Cam S350 may change your thoughts. With its programmable home place, this digital camera returns shortly to its default place, ensuring you by no means miss an vital occasion. Picture high quality from its 4K digital camera is luxurious, whereas the 2K digital camera supplies close-up element while you want it. Twin View mode reduces picture high quality to the purpose the place it’s not very usable, however flip this off and this digital camera is a superb indoor mannequin, effectively suited to extra sophisticated room layouts.
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Glorious 4K picture qualiy -
Intelligent pan-and-tilt options -
AI picture monitoring -
Built-in object detection -
No month-to-month charges
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Twin View mode reduces picture high quality -
Want HomeBase for some options -
Fairly costly
Key options
- Kind: Indoor pan-and-tilt
- Connectivity: Twin-band Wi-Fi 6
- Ecosystems: Amazon Alexa, Google Home
On the finish of final yr Eufy, the smart safety wing of Anker Improvements, took the covers off of 4 new home safety cameras; a brand new vary that boasts twin cameras and AI cross-camera monitoring expertise together with the Eufy Safety Indoor Cam S350, which is on check for this overview.
The large factor throughout the brand new vary, {hardware} sensible at the very least, is these twin lenses, which provide up surveillance choices by no means seen earlier than on a home smart safety cam.
The principle lens, the one with the larger sensor, is worried with the wide-angle high-resolution footage.
The opposite focuses on telephoto elements; i.e. zooming in on key particulars equivalent to individuals’s faces, garments or license plates.
If that wasn’t sufficient, the footage the cameras observe will be mixed to supply multi-camera mash ups of an occasion from an array of vantage factors.
You may get far cheaper indoor pan-and-tilt cameras, such because the Aqara Digital camera Hub G3 or the Nooie 360 Cam 2 however contemplating the vary of options that it has, the Eufy Safety Indoor Cam S350 is superb worth. The characteristic listing is much longer than with the rivals: twin cameras (one 4K wide-angle, one 2K telephoto), motorised pan-and-tilt, and offline storage.
That’s a outstanding listing of skills that make this indoor safety digital camera extra able to maintaining a tally of your home and ensuring that you simply don’t miss a factor. Learn on to find how these options work and why the Eufy Safety Indoor Cam S350 might be the last word indoor safety digital camera.
Learn on for our full the Eufy Safety Indoor Cam S350 overview to seek out out why…
Design and set up
- Twin digital camera design
- Works with and with out the HomeBase 3
- USB-C powered
Most safety cameras look moderately uninteresting and primary, designed merely to watch an space. Whereas monitoring is your complete objective of a safety digital camera, the Eufy Safety Indoor Cam S350’s rounded physique and twin lenses make it look extra attention-grabbing and, dare I say it, cute, even.
With a motorised pan-and-tilt system, this digital camera can rotate 360-degrees and tilt as much as 75-degrees, which implies inserting it’s simpler than with a hard and fast digital camera.
Simply drop this mannequin the place you need it (or screw it to a wall with the supplied mount beneath the digital camera), after which you need to use software program to place it.
Beneath is the place the USB-C energy socket goes. There’s loads of cable to achieve an influence socket and you could possibly at all times purchase an extended USB-C wire if wanted.
When used asa standalone smart safety digital camera, the Eufy Safety Indoor Cam S350 has dual-band Wi-Fi 6, so it may possibly join straight to your home community.
On this configuration, you do must work out what to do when it comes to storage: there’s a microSD card slot, though you too can pay $2.99 a month for the Eufy Cloud for 30 days of video historical past.
Alternatively, if in case you have a Eufy HomeBase 3, as launched with the EufyCam S330, you may join the Eufy Safety Indoor Cam S350 on to this as a substitute. That lets the digital camera utilizing the HomeBase 3’s storage, plus it provides facial recognition into the listing of skills.
For a HomeBase 3 to work, this digital camera does need to be in direct Wi-Fi vary of the station.
The HomeBase 3 can be your ticket to multi-camera, AI -powered, cross-tracking, which I’ll speak extra about in a bit.
Options
- Object detection
- Exercise Zones
- Home and Away modes
- Voice assistant integration
Management is through the Eufy Safety app, which is home to all of Eufy’s different cameras. You’ll see that the digital camera will get its personal thumbnail picture on the Units web page, which you’ll faucet to leap into the dwell view.
Right here, you get the options you’d count on, equivalent to two-way speak, however there are some extras all the way down to the best way that the digital camera works. First, there’s a button to change between the usual 4K digital camera, and the 2K telephoto digital camera, which presents a 3x zoom. It’s a neat trick, as I may zoom in to have a look at element within the picture.
With pan-and-tilt onboard, the app additionally let me transfer the digital camera to alter what it was . That’s significantly helpful for rooms with a number of doorways and home windows, as I may go searching and see all the pieces.
Many pan-and-tilt cameras fall down at this level, as as soon as a digital camera has been repositioned, it stays trying the place you left it, which might imply that movement occasions are missed.
Eufy nails easy methods to arrange a pan-and-tilt digital camera correctly by introducing a configurable home level. After no exercise for 10 seconds, the Eufy Safety Indoor Cam S350 will return to its home location robotically, monitoring the primary space that you simply wish to regulate.
In addition to the home location, a number of favorite areas will be set, together with the place and digital camera to make use of. These will be chosen within the dwell view, leaping straight to the realm you wish to regulate, plus the digital camera will be configured to pan via your favorites, patrolling for hassle robotically.
There’s additionally a customisable privateness characteristic, the place you may level the digital camera at a wall while you don’t need it to report. As a further security characteristic, the LED on the entrance of the digital camera turns pink when its recording or dwell view is getting used.
As with most cameras, the default configuration is to identify all movement after which warn you about it. To chop down on the variety of alerts generated, the Eufy Safety Indoor Cam S350 has customisable movement settings.
Movement sensitivity could make the digital camera extra and fewer doubtless to answer motion, but it surely’s the extra superior options which are extra helpful. With exercise zones, the Eufy Safety Indoor Cam S350 will be set solely to watch a part of the image. And the digital camera will be set to warn you about your selection of individuals, pets or all movement.
Utilizing the correct mix of settings, it’s straightforward to make the digital camera solely ping an alert about occasions that you simply’ll genuinely be keen on. The individuals detection characteristic is spectacular and works very reliably.
In addition to merely recording static footage, the Eufy Safety Indoor Cam S350 has an AI Monitoring choice, which follows an object robotically. It’s unnervingly correct, simply following me, at the same time as I attempted ducking and diving, and transferring quick.
If that wasn’t sufficient, in the event you’ve acquired a Eufy HomeBase 3 hub, the footage the S350 tracks will be mixed with different Eufy Cams to supply multi-camera mashups of an occasion from an array of vantage factors.
This AI software program combines the entire photographs captured to supply edited clips that mix footage from throughout your Eufy digital camera setup vary; so that you get movies of the identical occasion and/or particular person, organized chronologically right into a single clip.
Eufy states this proprietary AI cross-camera monitoring is the “world’s first home surveillance mesh powered by native AI”.
For instance, you could possibly get a notification of a clip whereby you see your child arrive safely home from faculty, make herself a snack within the kitchen, do her homework within the eating room and play with the canine within the backyard.
It’s like having your individual safety officer on the job 24/7, besides this one gained’t miss key occasions whereas he performs Sudoku.
The excellent news is that this cross-camera monitoring will even work with older Eufy safety cameras equivalent to the wonderful EufyCam S330 that we just lately reviewed.
Basically, in case your Eufy digital camera works with the HomeBase 3, it’ll work with the brand new AI cross-tracking tech.
In line with the app, turning on AI Monitoring limits the digital camera to recording at a 2K decision, however I discovered that the downloaded clips had been all recorded at a 4K decision utilizing the primary lens.
If you wish to report what each lenses can see, there’s an choice to activate Twin View, which stacks the 2 digital camera views one above the opposite. It’s neat to see, however the recorded video suffers from compression, so I wouldn’t use this. I discovered it finest to report utilizing the 4K digital camera and to make use of the 2K digital camera manually after I wished to see what was happening.
Footage is recorded to a microSD card or HomeBase 3. There’s a timeline view, with onboard controls to skip between occasions. I discovered that this view made it difficult to leap to an earlier occasion.
As an alternative, there’s an Occasion tab within the app, which will be filtered by digital camera, date and occasion kind (particular person, pet or different), presenting a easy thumbnail view of recordings.
All recordings will be downloaded from the app to your cellphone, though it may be fairly gradual to take action, significantly with lengthy clips recorded at 4K.
To manage when the digital camera can and might’t report, there are modes, equivalent to Home and Away. These will be configured manually, on a schedule or with geofencing (a number of members of the family supported).
Amazon Alexa and Google Home help are additionally obtainable, with the digital camera in a position to stream its dwell feed to a appropriate smart show.
Efficiency
- Glorious 4K footage
- Clear night time imaginative and prescient
- Twin View reduces picture high quality
At its finest, the Eufy Safety Indoor Cam S350 data video at 4K (3840 x 2160) utilizing the primary lens. Its picture high quality is superb. Offered there’s sufficient ambient mild (daylight, and even mild bulbs), the digital camera can shoot in full color. The element is superb proper to the again of the body: you actually can’t get higher from a safety digital camera.
When it’s darkish, the digital camera activates its IR lights and shoots in black and white. This does have a slight softening impact (as IR does on all cameras), however the 4K decision overcomes many issues, and the video stays sharp.
With AI Monitoring turned on, I discovered that the digital camera adopted me easily round; rivals that I’ve reviewed have tended to maneuver in a jerky, much less predictable sample that may trigger some movement judder.
Placing the digital camera into its Twin View mode was far much less spectacular. Excessive compression meant that element was misplaced, and artefacts had been launched to the purpose the place I can’t advocate this mode.
Remaining ideas
When you don’t wish to spend this a lot cash and might make do with a fixed-lens digital camera, there are many options obtainable.
Nonetheless, for rooms with difficult layouts, the Eufy Safety Indoor Cam S350 is good, panning and tilting on demand to seize all the pieces. On the identical time, the 2 lenses give extra choices while you take handbook management.
How we check
After we publish our opinions, you may relaxation assured that they’re the results of “residing with” long run exams.
Smart safety cameras normally dwell inside an ecosystem, or a spread of merchandise that – supposedly – all work in concord. Due to this fact, it’s unimaginable to make use of a safety digital camera for every week and ship a verdict.
As a result of we’re testing smart home equipment all day, on a regular basis, we all know what issues and the way a selected digital camera compares to options that you may also be contemplating.
Our opinions are complete, goal and truthful and, in fact, we’re by no means paid on to overview a tool.
Learn our information on our overview course of for smart safety cameras to study extra.