We've had these Eufy cameras protecting our home for the past 6 months or so and I really
like them.
They're excellent for looking after small, well-lit spaces like our front door and our
driveway.
But, as good as they are, what if you need something a little more powerful, with a brighter
light, and able to cover a wider area, say an entire back garden?
Well in that case, you need to consider something like the Eufy Floodlight Cam 2 Pro, a bit
of a monster of a security camera when compared with the subtlety of the 2C Pros, but packing
a huge amount of power and technology inside this white plastic shell.
In this video, I'm going to get mine setup, and then share my thoughts with you, having
used it for a few weeks.
I do want to quickly disclose that, whilst I purchased my 2C Pro camera system myself
with cash, Eufy have provided this camera to me at no cost.
However, they've not sponsored this video, they have no editorial control over any aspect
of it, and won't have visibility of it prior to it going live, all thoughts and opinions
in this video, good and not so good, are entirely honest and entirely my own.
OK, let's get into it!
### **Unboxing and setup**
The camera weighs around 2.5kg, and is designed to be wall or ceiling mounted, and must be
connected to mains power in order for it to work.
In the box, you get absolutely everything that you need to set this up, save for things
like your power tools, and setting the camera up is actually very simple, it took me about
30 minutes.
The setup process starts inside your home.
If you've not already, you're going to need to download the Eufy Security app from your
relevant App Store, and set an account up.
Connect the camera to your mains power using the included micro USB cable.
You can then head into the Eufy app and start setting the camera up.
You'll use the sync button on the device to get the camera ready to be paired, and then
connect it to your home Wifi.
Once that's done, and the camera is connected, it will begin updating it's firmware, and
that's honestly a good time to leave it connected inside the house, and head outside to get
the physical part of the job done.
Now, you're going to need a power source for the camera to connect to, like you would for
any typical outside floodlight.
Ours is a new build house and it thankfully came with the wiring ready to go for an outside
light, I had this cheap one from Amazon there originally so the first thing I did was take
that down, and remove absolutely everything, including the junction box.
Then, it was a case of feeding the wires into the new junction box, marking the point where
I need to drill some holes, and then fitting the junction box to the wall.
With that done, connect your existing wiring to the junction box, and then fit this long
bolt in the centre of the box, don't worry, this isn't going into your wall.
You're then going to use the included strap to hang the camera from the included bolt,
keeping the camera close enough for you to wire it into the junction box, but leaving
both of your hands free for you to work.
With the camera wired up, pull the bolt out, tuck the wires into the junction box, and
then connect the camera to the junction box using the bolt you just took out.
That's it, it's that easy.
Once power is restored, your camera will automatically connect to your Wifi and your Eufy app, and
will be ready to go.
If you're connecting into a ceiling above you, you can keep the unit folded up, if you're
connecting onto a wall like I am, you need to fold it down like this.
Remove all of the plastic protective film and labels, which by the way are made using
the stickiest glue known to mankind, I honestly reckon you could just stick the camera to
the wall using the same glue they used on these bits of plastic, and once that's finished,
the all-seeing eye of Sauron as my fiancé and I now like to call it is ready to go.
### **What does it do?**
So, how does this camera differ from the other cameras in the Eufy lineup?
Well, clearly this is a wired camera and not a battery operated camera, that's the first
key difference, but the differences go far beyond that.
Cameras like the 2C Pro have a spotlight, a pretty timid one at that.
It's designed to give the camera just enough light to be able to effectively operate the
colour night vision, and in fairness it does do a good job, here's an example of our back
door camera, where there is literally no light from any external source at all, and as you
can see, the spotlight doesn't exactly illuminate the area, but if we switch to the view from
the camera, it does do enough to allow for colour night vision, even in the pitch black
of night.
This camera on the other hand has a floodlight, literally designed to flood an area with light,
and it really does, the light here is only operating at 50% brightness, but it's still
more than bright enough to illuminate our whole garden with ease.
Our garden by the way, is about 10 metres by 10 metres in size.
The panels can operate at up to 3000 lumen, and you've got three, and whilst they can't
operate independently from one another, they can be pointed at different angles if you
need to, so for example you've got this one at the front, but then the left and right
can be positioned at quite sharp angles, or can be positioned pointing more forward as
required.
So then, the way that this camera works is you've got a 360 degree motion sensor, and
then this camera housed in a bubble at the bottom.
That camera can turn a full 360 degrees, and can also tilt down and a little bit upward,
so the range of view that this can cover all from the same stationary spot is really quite
impressive.
For example, our garden, in the default position, we can see all the way to the fence at the
back, and from the fence on the left all the way to the wall on the right.
But by bringing up the on-screen controls, I can tilt the camera left, to our patio and
our French doors, which was the area that we previously had a 2C Pro camera pointed
at, and then all the way to the right, to what was previously a camera blindspot.
If the device senses motion, it will quickly activate it's camera, turning it to where
the motion has been sensed.
I’ve noticed that when this happens, you get a bit of pre-roll, so nothing is missed,
suggesting that the camera is constantly recording a kind of ‘ready stream’, but do note,
this isn’t a 24/7 recording camera, it does only capture footage when it’s activated.
The camera can then intelligently move around the field of view to track motion.
So if for example, someone came into our garden, got spooked by the light and then tried to
move over to the back of the garden, away from where they might assume a camera would
be pointing, the camera would follow them all the way along.
It's impressive stuff, and it definitely does help to make you feel that extra bit secure,
knowing that both an extremely bright light, and a tracking camera are there to help protect
you.
Storage is local, and all footage is stored in the camera itself, on it’s internal 8GB
of space, and the camera has an IP65 weatherproof rating.
We’ve got it installed slightly in cover, but as you can see from this footage, it’s
been out in some pretty rough rain of late, and it’s operating absolutely fine.
The camera features 2-way audio, meaning that you can listen to what's going on within a
certain range of the camera, and you can talk back to people using the camera as a speaker
system.
I’ll include a sample of both of these features now.
### **The Preview Window**
OK, let’s take a quick look at the camera within the Eufy Security app.
First up, if I hit the Play button on the preview, that's going to activate the camera
and give me a live view of what's going on now.
If you do this at night, it will also illuminate the floodlights, so if you heard a noise outside
for example and wanted to see what was going on, tapping the play button would light up
the area that this camera is monitoring.
The preview window is a little different than normal, mainly, you've got this kind of joystick
icon underneath the preview window, and that's because tapping or pressing and holding this
will allow you to remotely control the camera.
A minor gripe here, and perhaps something Eufy could add in a future app update - I
wish there was a 'return to home' button in the middle of the joystick.
As it is, you have to tap out of the preview window, which will make the camera return
to it's primary position, then go back into it.
Down at the bottom of the preview window, you have a number of buttons.
Record gives you manual control of recording the feed, a little timer will appear on your
screen as you do this, and once you stop, the recording will automatically be saved
to your camera roll.
The same with screenshot, albeit it's a screenshot that you capture instead.
Speak is to activate the 2-way speak controls.
360 Look Around is a pretty fun feature that sends the camera immediately off on a 360
tour of your space.
Again, another minor gripe here, I wish you could set the left and right boundaries for
this 360 look around.
Yes, I get that it would no longer be a '360 degree' look around at that point, but when
I press this button, half the time is spent looking at our bricks, which is a bit pointless.
Not a big deal at all, but something that perhaps could be changed in the future, and
the feature is pretty useful.
The sound button allows you to mute the audio feed coming in to the app.
Event allows you to view previously recorded events, and you can do this using a calendar
view to give you the ability to go further back in time.
You can toggle Auto Night vision on and off using that button here, and you can manually
trigger the 100b alarm using this button, which does also include the flashing of the
LED panels if you wish.
You can toggle the subject tracking function on or off using that button here, I think
it's a great feature so I'd definitely be looking to have it switched on for me, and
you can force the camera to calibrate itself using this button here.
### **Settings**
OK, Settings next.
You can choose the level of motion detection sensitivity you'd like, and set activity zones
using the menu here.
You'll need to experiment with this, based on your space and the kind of surveillance
you'd like to have.
You can choose between Human motion only, or all motion, which would include cars, animals
etc.
You can set the Detection Range, either in general, or by PIR sensor individually.
In Light Settings, you can choose whether or not you'd like to have Ambient Light, which
is actually quite a handy feature, it essentially lets you have just the floodlights come on,
either automatically at dusk and stay on until dawn, or on a schedule that you set.
You can also choose the brightness and colour temperature, so if you've got this over a
driveway or a front door, you might want to set this to come on until 10, 11 at night
on a very low brightness, with a warm colour, to help illuminate your front door.
Under Motion Activated Light, you can choose exactly how the lights should behave when
they detect motion, how bright they should come on, how warm the light should be, and
how long they should remain on for after triggering.
Again, a minor gripe here for Eufy, but having a 15 minute option, but no 10 second option
seems a bit mad to me, I'd love it if we could have a bit more control over the timer here,
but 30 seconds is OK.
You can also set a different light setting for activating the light manually, and you
do that in the preview window.
So again, maybe you know you've got guests coming over, and you want a warm, not too
bright light for when they arrive, you've got that option.
In Monitoring Settings, you can choose how the camera should behave when it detects motion.
Motion Tracking means the camera will automatically follow a subject around the area, and you
can adjust sensitivity levels here.
Preset positions allows you to immediately move the camera to some preset positions that
you can choose, and Auto Cruise will make the camera move between those positions when
it detects motion.
I guess, if you know that you've got an area where, if motion is detected somewhere, you
want to see that area quickly regardless, this could be useful to you.
In Video Settings, you can, as the name suggests, make lots of changes that impact the overall
video quality.
I won't cover everything, but what I would suggest, is that where you can, ensure that
the camera is recording in 2K quality, with a high streaming quality, have the camera
record for a set duration of time and switch off the 'End clip early if motion stops' toggle.
My only reason for saying this, is that I've found Eufy cameras can be a bit stingy with
how long they auto-record for, sometimes cutting off in the middle of activity, as I experienced
last year when someone tried to break into our cars - the cameras stopped recording while
someone was still stood right next to our vehicle.
Forcing the camera to record for 30, or 60 seconds is in my eyes, advisable, and shouldn't
impact too heavily on your storage.
In Audio Settings, you can choose whether to enable the microphone, whether to record
audio or not, and how loud you'd like the speaker to go.
This thing can screech out an alarm at 100db, so it can get pretty loud if you need it to.
### **Performance**
OK, so that's the technical specs covered, but how does it perform?
So far, this camera performs every bit as well as the other Eufy cameras I already own,
in that it captures clear, crisp footage when we need it to, and very rarely lets us down
in that regard.
The camera is quick to respond when you press the Live Preview button, and the controls
for things like switching on the light are quick and responsive.
My only gripe with the controls, and it’s a very minor one in fairness, is that the
movement of the camera itself, done with an on-screen joystick, is a bit scratchy, there’s
no smoothness to it.
If you simply tap the controls very lightly, the camera will move the tiniest amount, you
have to press and hold for a larger movement, and this needs to become a bit of a muscle
memory for you to be able to do it effectively.
I kind of know now, that if I want to tilt the camera to the left to be able to see our
side alleyway, I have to hold it for about 1.5 seconds, for example.
Quick access to my preset positions here would be really good.
As for when the camera is functioning by itself, it does do a good job of picking up human
motion.
I’ve got our camera setup to face straight forward by default, and it’s still quite
fun to see the camera swivel around each time I open our patio doors, you can see the moment
in the videos where the camera suddenly recognises that there’s movement, and snaps to attention.
It will hold there for a few seconds, then snap back to where it was, and then if movement
is detected again, it will immediately look back to where it was.
One complaint I have about this camera though, is that at present, it’s quite easy to fool
it by walking underneath it, as you can see in this footage.
You can see that, whilst the sensors are indeed covering a 360 degree radius around the camera,
they’re pointed slightly down, suggesting that anything directly underneath them won’t
be picked up, just like anything above the camera wouldn’t be picked up.
The above part isn’t really the issue here, it’s the below part, and we’ve noticed
that walking underneath the camera does seem to throw it off.
The issue for us at least, is that the way our camera is installed, we’re going to
walk underneath it each time we cross over the patio, and so would any burglars.
The camera does usually realise that you’ve moved to the other side of it, but this can
take a good 10 seconds or so for it to do so.
But, I’d temper that by reminding you that most burglars are not going to appear directly
underneath the camera, they’re going to trigger the camera by coming in from an angle,
and when that happens, this camera is pretty much flawless, both in detecting human motion,
and in tracking that motion across our garden.
It does still trigger at night when animals are detected, the same cat that we’ve had
an issue with on all of our other Eufy cameras has been setting this one off already, which
is kind of a shame, when you consider the brightness of the spotlight, I’d have hoped
that this camera would do a better job of differentiating people from animals in the
dark.
Also, one thing I do fully accept is that the height of the camera on our wall is probably
at the lowest that Eufy would recommend.
There’s not much I can do about that unfortunately, this is where the power for our outside light
comes out, and I’m not paying an electrician to wire something in higher up, in an ideal
world this would be higher up, and then I’m guessing the downward-pointing sensors would
be able to work a bit better.
In terms of the spotlight, there’s not much to say about it other than it is super, super
bright.
Our garden is around 10 metres by 10 metres, and it more than sufficiently floods the entire
area with a lot of light, if the garden was twice this size I think it would still be
able to provide cover, the footage I’m showing you now is with the light set at 50% of it’s
brightness range.
It’s also much less likely to get triggered by accident than the cheap floodlight we had
here previously.
We get quite a lot of windy weather here, and that floodlight was constantly being triggered
overnight when we had bad weather.
Not so with this, so that’s good.
Again, a minor gripe is that I’ve noticed the spotlights can cause some glare at night,
which I think is down to the camera being housed in this little glass bubble, the light
from the floodlights somehow reflects negatively off of that bubble.
It’s not awful, but it’s noticeable.
You can use the Floodlight Cam 2 Pro with your smart assistants by Google and Amazon,
but unfortunately not Apple, for whatever reason, this camera is not HomeKit compatible.
## Conclusion
So, overall, I really like this camera.
The look, whilst a bit harsh, has actually grown on me, and whilst I wouldn’t buy one
of these if aesthetic appeal was my number one concern, this is a security light and
camera at the end of the day, it’s designed to scare people off, and I reckon it would
do that.
I think if I were a burglar, and I’d made it all the way around to this part of the
house, only to have all of these floodlights come on, and then on closer investigation
realise it was also a camera filming me, that would probably be enough to make me think
twice about trying to break in.
Even if it doesn’t, you’re going to have good quality footage to be able to give to
the police.
I still wish that Eufy would fix the issue regarding nighttime human detection, animals
like cats still trigger this camera, because if I had confidence in nighttime AI, I would
be tempted to have the alarm trigger if someone was detected in our garden, say from 11pm
through to 7am or something like that.
As it is, this isn’t a function I can switch on, for fear of annoying our neighbours.
At $300, this is an expensive piece of kit.
But by the definition of it being something that you hardwire in, it’s an investment
in your home security that should last you a number of years, and if it scares off one
possible crime on your property, I’d argue that it’s been worth the money.
It’s really going to come down to what you’re after, and in many ways, that’s what I like
about Eufy, they have different cameras to suit different needs.
At the front of our house, our driveway, that’s a small space where I can get a good vantage
point from the side, so a camera like the 2C Pro can cover all of my needs there, without
needing to install something like this.
But in my garden, a large space with lots of different angles that need covering, trying
to do this with battery cameras would be almost impossible, I’d have to create a whole network
of them, which would look a bit silly.
The Floodlight Cam 2 Pro is therefore great here, as it gives me all of the coverage I
need, all from one position and at one price.
As ever with Eufy cameras, there are no monthly fees, thanks to that footage being stored
locally.
So there you go, my thoughts on the excellent Eufy Floodlight 2 Pro camera system, a beast
of a camera and floodlight combination.
What do you think?
Is this the kind of thing you’d pick up for your home?
Or is there another brand you’re considering instead?
Drop me a comment, 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.