My favourite safety digicam is $170 throughout Amazon’s Black Friday sale

What is the Black Friday deal?

The Eufy Safety Floodlight Cam E340 is my favourite safety digicam at my house and it is right down to $170, due to Amazon’s Black Friday sale. 

Why this deal is ZDNET-recommended

“Is that this an individual?” No, Eufy, that garden chair on the deck just isn’t an individual, as I’ve advised you ten occasions already in the present day. It is okay; we each know you may ask once more in two minutes. 

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The Floodlight Cam E340 from Eufy Safety, which I have been testing over the previous week, is one in every of 4 new safety cameras that the corporate lately launched. It is geared up with an ultrawide and telephoto lens for capturing extra distant topics, and the digicam works actually laborious. At occasions, too laborious. Let me clarify.

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Eufy Safety Floodlight Cam E340

The Eufy Safety Floodlight Cam E340 is from the newest line of Eufy’s twin cameras. It has two floodlights for a complete brightness of 2000 lumens, tracks motion, and information in 3K decision, all with no month-to-month charges.

First, some housekeeping: The Eufy Safety Floodlight Cam E340’s wide-angle digicam captures 3K-resolution video, whereas the telephoto digicam information as much as 2K decision and may seize particulars as much as 50 toes away. 

To check the Eufy Floodlight Digital camera E340, I changed one in every of my yard floodlights, which was already within the superb place for surveillance. My husband and I activate these lights every time we take the canine out at evening or each time we’re hanging out on that facet of the yard, which is the place the grill is. The lights bought a variety of use, and changing them with a floodlight digicam was a no brainer.

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We had beforehand arrange a Wyze Cam after which the Arlo Professional 5S on the bigger facet of yard, however, till the Eufy Floodlight E340 got here in, we hadn’t discovered an answer that coated the entire area.

Organising the Floodlight Digital camera E340 was as straightforward as changing an outside lighting fixture, particularly since we had been putting in it with current wiring. This digicam requires a wired set up to work, so if you do not have current wiring the place you need to put the floodlight, you’d must run electrical wires to that spot. 

As soon as the digicam was put in, the remainder of the set up course of ran via the Eufy Safety app. We have already got a Eufy HomeBase 3 at house, which is a neighborhood storage and hub for this digicam, but when that is your first Eufy digicam, you may want to purchase one to work with the floodlight. 

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As a result of it is related to energy and will be arrange with expandable storage, it is potential for this floodlight digicam to report 24/7, although you can even select to report occasions solely. Recordings will be saved on the HomeBase S380 or a microSD card of as much as 128GB. With the HomeBase, you may broaden the SSD help as much as 16TB, which makes a giant distinction.

By far, probably the most spectacular characteristic of this digicam is the extent of protection and picture high quality. Our yard extends all the best way into the woods, which will be pitch black at evening. However even with the digicam rigged up on my second flooring and over 30 toes away from the fence, you may nonetheless clearly see particulars within the wooded areas, regardless of the time of day. 

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Day or evening, I can see if a squirrel is bopping alongside the fence or a deer is strolling within the woods, and I anticipate an identical degree of element if there’s ever an intruder within the distance. The digicam tracks motion very effectively, maintaining topics within the body as they transfer round totally different areas, which is important for a big yard. 

The one draw back to the Floodlight Cam E340, which I alluded to earlier than, will get a variety of false alerts for human detection. The HomeBase 3 makes use of AI to not solely detect people but in addition be taught to acknowledge people and detect autos, pets, and some other shifting objects.

The Floodlight Cam E340 unit I examined erroneously detects a human on our deck and a mulch path as usually as each two minutes when nobody is there; it is superb in case you consider in ghosts! The extreme quantity of alerts has been sufficient for me to see a noticeable dip in battery life on each my iPhone and Apple Watch. And I am certain my aged neighbors do not recognize the human detection alarm going off at 7:15 a.m. on a Saturday morning.

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My husband, ever the optimist, believes this is not an issue; you simply have to coach the system to acknowledge what a “particular person” is. I consider there must be a greater resolution than ready for the digicam to repair itself.

How I have been tackling the difficulty is by reporting the faulty detections by way of the Eufy Safety app, which we have often achieved to discourage the digicam from misunderstanding what’s human. Extra successfully, I’ve since decreased the sensitivity of the movement detection characteristic, which now yields roughly one false alert each hour versus each two minutes. It is made a giant distinction.

There’s additionally an choice to silence the notifications briefly whereas nonetheless recording occasions, however this detracts from the aim of a surveillance digicam.

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It does not seem like a difficulty with the HomeBase as a result of that is the one digicam of all our Eufy merchandise at house that does this. The great factor is that this may be fastened with an over-the-air firmware replace, and it is not a dealbreaker for me. It is not very nice, however it’s nothing some changes cannot repair.

ZDNET’s shopping for recommendation

My expertise with the Eufy Safety Floodlight Cam E340 has general been optimistic. I like seeing my yard in 3K decision and getting an awe-inspiring degree of element from so distant. The two,000lm brightness alone competes with some best-selling PAR38 bulbs, and it may be set to ambient lighting on a schedule or routinely from nightfall to daybreak.

At $170 throughout Amazon’s Black Friday sale, you get a variety of bang on your buck with a system you by no means must pay month-to-month charges on, cost, or exchange batteries. And it features a motion-tracking duo of high-resolution cameras. In the event you do not need to spend further on the HomeBase S380, you may add as much as 128GB of storage to the digicam on a microSD card. 

If Eufy Safety can repair my one challenge with the human detection alerts, the Floodlight Cam E340 could be the most effective out of doors safety digicam I’ve ever examined, bar none.