I've had the 2C Pro camera system by Eufy up and running on my house now for almost 2 months,
providing 24/7 protection for our property ever since. I made a review video after a couple of
weeks of use, and that video was generally very positive. If you've not already watched
that video, I'd definitely recommend checking it out before you watch this one, as I give a super
in-depth review of all of the functionality of the system, I'll include a link to it in
the description of this video, as I don't want to cover all of the same content again in this video.
But having the system up and running now for a couple of months, has given me the chance
to really get to know some of the nuances of it, the kind of small, but sometimes
quite impactful details that you might not notice right away. Spoiler alert, I still
really like this system, I haven't suddenly decided that I'm sending it back or anything
like that. But there are definitely some things that I've discovered that I'm not so keen on,
things that Eufy might well be able to fix with future updates to the system,
but things that I do think you as a potential owner of the system need to be aware of. And
these aren't all negatives by the way, there are some good and bad points to discuss here.
So, let's talk about my experience with the 2C Pro system, some 2 months later.
**System Updates**
I've noticed that Eufy are good with their updates, the cameras, the HomeBase and the
app all seem to get updated on a pretty regular basis. This happens over the air,
you don't have to remove any of the cameras or plug them in or anything like that, and honestly,
most people won't even recognise that the firmware update has taken place.
You get a notification on the app which lets you know that a system update has occurred, and that's
it. In terms of the cameras, these updates tend to focus on stability improvements and bug fixes,
I've not yet seen one that introduces a new feature or anything like that,
while the app did recently update to include privacy zones.
One thing I will point out though is a confusing situation with regard to firmware versions between
the cameras. We've got 5 cameras in our system, we had 3 to begin with, added a 4th a couple of
days later, then a 5th several weeks later. That 5th camera is a totally different firmware version
to the other 4, and whilst the other 4 seem to update every couple of weeks, this one never does.
Eufy have said that this is due to the cameras having slightly different internal chips due to
the global shortage, which I guess would make sense? I also do feel like I should mention
that this camera in particular, is definitely, erm, 'choppier' than the other cameras when it
comes to recording, as you can see from the clip here. This doesn't happen every time by the way,
the camera generally works very well. I'm going to wait for the camera to receive whatever
update it gets next, and then if the issues persist, I'll see if Eufy can help me fix it.
**Charging and battery life**
Charging remains one of the strong points of this camera system, it's dead easy to do,
and I actually discovered an even easier method than bringing the cameras into the house to charge
them. I bought this 9 metre, or about 29 foot micro USB cable from Amazon, and I just drape this
out of a nearby window or door and plug the camera in, then leave it. I have noticed that charging is
slow, and I don't know if that's related to this cable, but it generally takes a full day to charge
the cameras up, but the nice thing is that the cameras remain fully functional the entire time.
But, this does bring me to a point about battery life. That 180 day battery life that Eufy claim
is entirely possible, but in IDEAL conditions, anything other than ideal is going to drag that
battery life down considerably. By ideal, I mean close to the Homebase, 5 metres or less I'd say,
not too many walls for signals to pass through, and installed in a location with minimal activity.
Our back door and French door cameras meet those conditions perfectly, and I'm on course to get
at least 4, if not 6 months of battery life out of those two cameras, no worries. But compare
that with our driveway camera, which is a long way from the Homebase, has thick walls between it and
the Homebase, and activated several times a day, every day, and that battery life is terrible in
comparison. I'm finding that I'm getting about 6 weeks battery from that camera at a push,
which to be fair isn't bad for the coverage it provides, and I'd much rather be confident
that it's keeping us secure and have to charge it more often, but it's something to be aware of.
**Artificial Intelligence Issues**
These cameras don't record 24/7, due to them being battery operated,
and instead use artificial intelligence to figure out when to record, and when not to.
So for example, they might spot motion, but then realise that the motion is a car,
or a dog, and therefore decide not to alert you to that motion, and not to record.
And that's great, in theory, and it does generally work and work very well. But in seemingly obvious
situations, the cameras will work flawlessly 49 out of 50 times, and then randomly just not work.
For example, we had a situation a week or two ago where a courier came to our front
door with a package, and the system recorded them, as it always does, and alerted us to the
person coming up the driveway. Some 10 minutes later, in the same clear daytime conditions,
another courier arrived, and even had a brief conversation with me when I opened the door.
None of that interaction was captured, and for the life of me I don't know why.
Like I say, it's generally pretty flawless, but does occasionally slip up. Obviously,
if that one slip up is the time that a crime is happening at your house, then that's not great.
And it does bring me to a real, genuine complaint that I have about this system,
my biggest complaint by far, and that's the fact that Human detecting AI does not work at night,
which is such a let-down. So, during the day, you can tell the system to only alert you to
human movement. Cars, cats, foxes, birds landing on your lawn, they all get ignored by the system.
But at nighttime, it defaults to letting you know about everything.
So then, when you discover, like we have, that a neighbourhood cat likes to come and hang in our
garden every night, that poses a real problem. Because I don't want alerts multiple times each
night telling me about a cat. But I do want an alert that one time that a crime is taking place.
I'm genuinely hoping that Eufy might be able to add this in through a firmware
update, or at the very least a future version of the cameras,
as it might persuade me to upgrade. I think this is probably the one missing feature
that could be a deal breaker for a lot of people, so just keep it in mind.
**The AI is kind of stingy**
My one other consideration when it comes to AI, is that it can be kind of stingy with
recordings by default, focusing more on trying to maintain a battery life and reduce storage
than actually capturing footage, but you can fix this yourself. So for example, we actually
caught some guys trying to break into our cars, I'll play the footage now. You can see that the
footage is really short, and it stops just as the guy walks away from our second car. And this is
because the AI at this point, deemed that there wasn't sufficient movement to keep recording,
which is kind of odd. What I would have preferred, is that the cameras kept going to see where they
went next. Now, you can fix this, which is what I've done, you simply force the cameras to record
for a defined set of time, up to 2 minutes, and they will record for that long each time,
without stopping early. This does increase your storage usage and decrease battery life,
but I've found this to be pretty negligible when compared to the benefit of having usable footage.
A good tip to know, as I do find 5 or 6 second bursts of footage can be a bit pointless.
**Useless if the power or Wifi goes out**
This system is 100% reliant on you having both a constant source of power and internet to your
home, and if either of those things drop out, the camera system is fundamentally rendered useless.
The cameras won't work, they won't record during that time. Now this does make sense when
you understand how the cameras and the Homebase work, but it's a shame that there isn't a backup
solution. Perhaps a gig or 2 local storage within the cameras, that could only be used when the
power is lost, and then the footage transferred back to the HomeBase when the power is restored?
I guess for most people, this isn't too much of an issue, we've had one planned power cut
since we moved in, and whilst our internet does need resetting once every couple of weeks or so,
it's quickly back up and running, but if you live somewhere where power
and/or internet is a bit choppy, you might need to consider this.
**Apple Home integration is poor**
Integration with Apple Home is poor with these Eufy cameras, but in fairness, that's an issue
with Apple more than with Eufy. Because at the time of writing, Apple still limits video support
to 1080p, and the cameras automatically switch to the lowest bandwidth option,
creating awful quality footage. And that's a real shame, because the fundamentals of Apple Home
integration are excellent. Being able to view cameras using your voice or via your Apple TV,
being able to take advantage of Apple Home's AI, which can alert you about specific people
being at the door, or whether people are carrying packages, that sort of stuff.
I even wonder if the nighttime AI issue might be resolved if I used these cameras with HomeKit,
but unfortunately I won't find out until Apple support 2K streams at a better bandwidth,
as I'm just not prepared to drop the video quality to that level.
**Automations are good, could be great**
Automations are a nice feature within the Eufy app, which allow you to have one of your cameras
or a Eufy brand home security device trigger another camera. So for example, I know that if
someone were to climb over the gate at the side of our house, they're going to come out by our patio
doors, and so I've got an automation where, if motion is detected at the gate, the patio camera
will immediately begin recording, ready to catch anyone as soon as they come around the corner.
The uses for this are, I think, pretty obvious, but it would be nice if it could be a bit more
advanced than simply "if you detect motion here, record over there", and it would also
be great if the app could work with other smartphone devices, like Hue for example.
I'd love it if, should our front door camera detect motion at night, it could not only record
the footage, but also automatically switch on our internal entrance light. I think this is
the kind of functionality that would take this from being a good feature to a great feature.
**Conclusion**
Over all, I'm still really happy with the 2C Pro camera system. It works really well for us,
I've seen some people on Twitter lately complaining about cameras failing
or disconnecting from the network, and honestly, we've not had that experience,
I will update these videos if we find that's the case in the future. As this system is right now,
it's a more than sufficient home security system, that doesn't come with a monthly subscription,
which I think is an important point to remember. Firmware and software updates
could make this setup even better, so fingers crossed Eufy keep looking to improve the setup.
But that lack of human AI for nighttime mode is a killer. If I were back at square one shopping for
cameras and knew about this drawback, would it stop me from buying? Honestly, it might,
it would certainly make me see if any other camera systems are better with nighttime AI.
Like I said, hopefully firmware updates can fix this, or at the very least future versions of
the Eufy cameras, because in general, I really do like the cameras, the app,
and the general Eufy approach to security. It's very very good, but not quite perfect.
What do you think? Have you got some Eufy cameras set up? If so, do you like them? Or
have you opted for a different brand? Let me know about it in the comments, and let's talk about it.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like,
and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video!