eufy Security SoloCam

I have 3 of these. The great functional use of the first one, prompted me to buy a second and then a third. Give me another payday, and I will get a forth. Mechanically speaking: Upon receiving my cameras, I found them to be well assembled of high quality components. They looked good. Insofar as the mounts, visually I found item to be barely up to task - they looked cheap or like a hastened afterthought. The nylon lock washers all had loose fitting threads that felt like they're ready to strip when tightening. It was a dicey step in the mounting process. This was the case on all three cameras I bought. The base of the mount is thin and easily cracks when tightening the screws, so be careful. Regardless, the mount did not allow the camera's aim to move in recent 65 mph winds! I was surprised. The 2K picture is very good (not great) and clear once the cameras are fully "awake". They do not enlarge well. When the cameras are awoken out of their slumber, the picture quality sucks until it finally clears up. This wake up time varies from just a second or two, to a very irritating many seconds. Sometimes you only get just a few seconds of usable "footage" of an offense, and if the sleepy camera hasn't cleared up the image enough, the offense is not well captured. One of the greatest things of the 2K quality are the family videos that occur whilst everyone is behaving naturally. Verses everyone posing, putting on the forced smile or locking up from camera shyness. That alone is good reason to get one. Be advised, it'll also show the world the bald spot on top of your head that you didn't know was there. The IR night vision covers our small yard very well at night - about 35 feet. But beyond that in the street where our vehicles park, it struggles. I HAD use use supplemental IR lighting in certain areas to get usable imagery. People walking laterally to the camera are rather blurry in very low to no light conditions. Note, I have the white spot light turned off. The color vision works well as dusk or dawn get underway. I am pleasantly surprised by the level of color captured when things are in that in between zone, between daylight and night time. My biggest PERSONAL disappointment is not having the ability to take still photographs with it. Just videos. The date/time stamp is white. Therefore if the date/time stamp are in a portion of the image that covers a white building or sky, it cannot be seen at all during certain times of the day. Too bad the stamp did not give options for color and/or shadow effects for better clarity. Insofar as the human detection AI, it is not perfect. Sometimes it misses people altogether. Oftentimes it mistakes cattle for humans. Sometimes, even trees, a watering pail, or even a closed umbrella. One day, I had a hundred videos of a "human" that was a watering pail with an top opening resembling a smile. So I had to move the pail. Nonetheless, I am happy that I now live in an age where such technologies exist for consumers at a reasonable price. It works as intended more often than not. And for the price, I am very happy. Insofar as when "motion" detection is selected, it will detect any motion within the selected sensitivity setting and within the "activity zone" that you select. Using motion detected gathers the most reliable evidence as it records virtually any motion. HOWEVER, that leaves you with the task of going through allot of videos. If you chose not to go through the videos and do a mass delete because you don't think anything happened, you could be sorely wrong. We have found people acting truly mental or even criminal when we didn't think anything happened. Occasionally, a video disappears when "downloading" to be put on another drive. Such was the case this morning when I had a large spider that looked like it was "Zip Lining" from my eaves, across the lawn, and onto my car in the street. That video disappeared during downloading. Like other infrequently lost videos, it wasn't important, but it was really cool. I think spiders invented Zip Lining. Having said all that, I'm certainly not going to hyper criticize a technology so new - consumer technology that it wasn't attainable just a few years ago. Therefore, I heartily give it a 5. A couple more years down the road, it'll be comparatively obsolete like everything else in consumer technologies. But for the here and now, I well pleased with my affordable and high quality Eufy S40 cameras.

I currently have four outdoor security cameras, 3 Ring and 1 Eufy. I decided to try out the Eufy S40 with the built-in solar due to all the impressive reviews. Unfortunately I was disappointed with the camera’s app and overall functionality for four reasons: 1) I could not access events using the app 2) Camera sporadically picked up movement 3) When the camera did pick up movement, the lag was about 6-8 seconds and 4) the camera would not link to Alexa. I decided to contact Eufy (Anker) support rather than return to camera in case I was doing something wrong or biased due to familiarity using Ring app/cameras . I am pleased that I contacted Eufy support because tech rep Thomas was experienced, patient and most helpful by thoroughly going through several scenarios that may be causing my problems. In the end, Thomas concluded that I may have a defective camera and he immediately sent me a replacement-exchange, which arrived in 2 days! Well the replacement camera has been up for a while now & I could not be more pleased. I now see why this camera receives such high ratings. The camera is so easy to set up and install . Fortunately I have a workaround for 2.4 GHz frequency devices like this camera; particularly when using a dual band router like Nighthawk, which offers both 2.4 & 5 Wi-Fi networks, but doesn’t have the capability to select one or the other when installing 2.4 devices. The fix is to go outside with the device until your phone goes from 5 to 2.4 (long range) and the device immediately connects – like the Eufy S40 did. I find the Eufy’s data transmission/video streaming to be fast, smooth and with clear footage, even at night particularly when changed (in app) from default B&W to color. The Eufy app offers a lot of features, some of which I initially found difficult to locate like; the function to designate specific areas for the camera to pick up. I was able to figure out everything due to the plethora of support videos offered by Eufy. The lag-time is minimal (delay from real time) at around 2 seconds; which is better than my high end Ring cameras. Last of all, this camera’s built-in solar panel provides impressive battery life. I was out of town for a month over the holidays and the battery use was barely depleted. Overall, this camera is the closest thing to "plug & play and walk away" worry free. A great camera that I highly recommend and a company offering superb support; again a shout out to Thomas! Addendum: I meant to include the following: if you receive a replacement camera make sure to remove the defective camera from the app before attempting to add the new one. Addendum 2: my replacement was replaced because it got water inside - it was 4 months outside the warranty too. The company was very responsive, I sent pictures and them immediately sent me a replacement. They required the defective camera to be returned to help improve their product. Don't heisitate to buy from this company for the great products (robo vacs too) but superior customer support!

SO MANY ISSUES with these! Purchased 2 in November 2022. We have many eufycams going back to the original EufyCam 1 (which still works great). All subsequent cams since the first one have been lesser quality and functionality than the originals. These are almost useless and one is completely dead after less than 8 months. 1 – First discovered issue: The mounting hardware is not as pictured! The bracket included is cheap, thin, weak with a tiny ball socket that wobbles, doesn’t catch and hold to allow for positioning the camera’s angle, and doesn’t hold the camera up properly if at all. At some point Eufy changed the mounting bracket that comes with the SoloCam S40 from the 3-screw solid bracket system in the pictures here, on their website, and in the instruction manual, to an inferior and ineffective 2-screw extra long one. We spent an over an hour each trying to get them tightened and positioned correctly - and after finally giving up on getting the view we wanted and accepting the only position the bracket would allow, the cameras were already drooping. One was pointing straight down by the end of the day and there’s no way to get it to hold position. The other dropped slowly over the course of a week. Point being, the mounting brackets are not adequate to hold these cameras! All other Eufy cameras have much more solid, secure, and easy to adjust brackets than the ones that came with this. It’s strange that their biggest heaviest camera has this pathetic weak mounting bracket. I called the company and they claimed they have had no complaints - but then also told me other customers have bought 3rd party mounts. They also told me it may be affected by the type of surface it was mounted to - which makes no sense as the wall surface does not affect the way the bracket and ball socket attaches to the camera! They sent new mounts but they’re the same cheap flimsy ones. I ended up buying a third party bracket. This is the point at which I should have sent them back for a refund. Looking back at other reviews, many mention that the S40 comes with different and lesser quality brackets than the pictures, going back since at least March 2022! It’s unconscionable, false advertising, and a violation of Amazon listing policy that Eufy has not updated the listing and their own website with the correct photos of the actual brackets they’ve been shipping with these cameras for nearly a year and a half now. 2 – Solar panel does not charge properly. We have these in all-day sun and they don't stay charged. They drain from full to dead while in full sun in less than 30 days with almost no activity alerts or recording (see next point). 3 - Camera misses a lot of activity. Someone can dance back and forth in front of it for 10 minutes and it will record NOTHING. 4 – When it does record, it only captures 10 to 12 seconds maximum, no matter what the settings are or how much activity is in the vicinity. And the picture appears much farther away than it actually is, which reduces the ability to discern what you're seeing. 5 - There are many false alerts – it alerts and/or records 10 seconds when nothing happens or when the wind blows - but doesn't alert or record when there is actual movement. 6 – When an alert goes off and you check the camera, it almost always says “decrypting from local storage” or “unable to play video clip” or “camera is offline” for 2 to 3 minutes, which renders these useless and frustrating when there may be an urgent security issue. We have high speed fiber optic cable/wifi and one camera is 10 feet from the router, so it's not the signal. None of the other cameras we have do this. 7– One of these stopped working over a month ago. It appears to have the water intrusion issue and peeling solar panel that others have reported on these cameras. It's now sitting in a room pointed at the wall and periodically alerts for no reason, even though it says it's turned off and nothing records. The other one works sporadically but misses most activity, and we haven't taken it down yet to check for damage. In short, these cameras are not as advertised, are defective, don't solar charge or hold a charge well, recording of activity is sporadic and limited in size to mere seconds and completely die in less than a year. Super disappointing and a total waste of money!

The first question you need to ask is: do you really need a battery operated camera? If so, why? If there is ANY way you could hardwire a camera, that is a far superior option. In the pic I have attached you can see the S40 on the left compared to the C24 on the right. The next question is: Does the area you want to mount have full sun exposure? The entire panel on the S40 will need at least 2 hours of full sun per day, partial panel exposure won't work. The best use case for the S40 is an open, full sun area where hardwire isn't possible, like back of the yard perhaps. I bought the S40 originally thinking it was a quick and easy way to put some motion detection on an area I wanted to monitor. It is, but there are several concessions going this route and I ultimately switched to hardwired using the C24 OutdoorCam instead which is wildly superior. 1) The S40 is LARGE and with the mount will stick out like a sore thumb (nearly 8 inches), old school warehouse camera large. This will also affect your monitored field of vision, it will be less. 2) The software features are more limited vs hardwire cams. No continuous record, shorter clip saves, basically anything that consumes energy is optimized to use less. 3) You may not be able to mount the S40 where you wanted to because of the full sun requirement 4) WIFI connection quality is very important, so even in that open full sun area, the camera needs a good connection to your router/ mesh network 5) 8GB storage is 4x less than you get in the C24 which may or may not matter to you as recordings overwrite Assuming the S40 is the right fit for you use case there is a lot of good stuff going on here. 1) The 2K camera is clear and crisp, night vision is very good, the spotlight is bright 2) Installation is dead simple and the app is mostly intuitive 3) Integrated solar charging is great and cheaper than adding their stand alone panel to a different cam 4) No subscriptions, no BS, you control your environment 5) No home base required, given the amount of problems people report with these, I think it's a plus 6) Customizable activity zones, sensitivity, brightness, schedules, so you can really dial it in how you want In short the the S40 is a very good outdoor cam if you have the right need for it. I'm knocking off a star due to the size and other battery-related limitations.

I purchased this product in hopes of replacing a Google Nest Battery powered camera. The Google camera was fine, but I didn't want to be forced to subscribe to their Nest Aware service to be able to view more than 3 hours of total playback. Initially, when I setup the Eufy Solocam S40 I ran into connection issues even though I had placed it in the exact same spot as the Google camera. The live footage and playback of recorded footage would be incredibly slow or timeout altogether. I realized that Eufy's Solocam's wifi wasn't strong enough to receive the signal of my router and I ended up purchasing a TP-link wifi extender. Once I purchased the extender, the Solocam began to function flawlessly. All footage loads up very quickly and all my notifications come in within 7 seconds of detecting motion. The Solocam has done a great job at keeping itself powered through its solar panel. Its currently at 97% battery charge and is located at my garage while only receiving direct sunlight for roughly 3.5 a day when it isn't cloudy. It has been recording for 20 days now and has detected and saved 445 events while only having filled up 1.4GB of the 8GB internal storage. The camera also has a spotlight that is pretty strong and has a nice feature that you can change the light to a warmer or cooler color to adjust for the night vision. The footage is much sharper and nicer than the google camera since the solocam records in 2K, however the google camera footage is smoother since it records at 30fps instead of the solocams 15. I'm very happy with my purchase and have recommended it to many and plan on purchasing more Eufy products if they are all just as well made as this one.

So I have 8 of these installed in 2 different houses. I also have like 20 "regular" wireless EUFY cameras installed at the two houses. All outdoors. Suffice it to say - I have alotta tech installed in my two houses. Like tons. WIFI So a lot of the reviews have issues with wifi. I did have some issues early on, but have worked them out. People need to remember these devices are only 2.4 GHZ capable. Those are not just words ! That means something. Most "Internet of Things" devices are only 2.4. So that's not surprising. And yet most people nowadays have WIFI transmitters at home that transmit at 2.4 and 5. Some with only one WIFI name being visible on their computers/iPhones. Just because the EUFY connected the first time - on one of these unified 2.4/5 routers, doesnt mean it will stay connected. The solution is simple : be sure you initially connect on a dedicated 2.4 line, and you should be fine. How to do this ? A few ways : 1. Try using the guest network. Less secure I know, but most guest networks are 2.4 only. Not all tho. 2. Some transmitters transmit a 2.4 signal and a 5 signal separately, and might be named accordingly. Pick the 2.4. Some routers/transmitters - you have to go into the admin settings - and ask it to transmit two separate names (one for 2.4 and one for 5). 3. If that fails, you can go into the admin settings on the router/trasnmitter, and turn off the 5 (temporarily). Now it will only transmit in 2.4. You might need to reboot your router then. Then connect the EUFY. And then go back and turn the 5 back on. Maybe another reboot of the router is then required. I know this is a pain. But it should work. I'll admit that I'm always nervous turning off the 5 (cause I dont know what it the house now disconnected, and might, in theory, have trouble reconnecting. or will be permanently stuck on the slower (but longer range) 2.4) Anyway, that will probably solve most of the wifi issues listed in these comments. It did for me. VIDEO NOTIFICATIONS I recognize this can be hit or miss. Be sure your phone has the notification settings properly set. Both in the EUFY APP, and the Settings>Notifications part of the iPhone. Some iPhone Software updates tend to mess this up, and might need to be redone periodically. I often get too many notices. To the point where it becomes noise. PRIVACY ZONES/MOTION DETECTION Can also be a little hit or miss - you need to keep adjusting the sensitivity in the EUFY app settings to get it just right. Might take a little time. Not perfect, but it generally does work. The Privacy Zones - if you set them too small - might not work. RECORDING I wish it did record to a USB stick on the EUFY base station (like the regular EUFY cameras do). This solar one does not. No EUFY base station is required, but you lose the advantage of having a central store of all videos. I like having a central store of all videos - in case someone cuts your internet line (cable line, phone line, fiber optic cable, etc) or you just otherwise lose connection to the internet for awhile. So that's why I have a mix of these solar cameras, and the regular EUFY cameras. SOLAR CHARGING Also can be a little hit or miss. In the summer, with a few hours of direct line of sight to the sun, this thing charges great. Even with the spot light use like 10 times all night (animals, etc), this thing charges to 100% if you get it right. In the winter, less so. And if there is any awning over the solar panel (even 2 stories above it), the charging is wayyyyy less good. You have been warned ! I have played a ton with location issues here. Sometimes having to point the solar panel/camera in an angle/way to get more sun. I also wish there was a global mute setting - to globally mute all notifications for some set period. Like when the lawn guys are here. Nope. You have to mute each camera individually - pain in the neck. . . . . I have tried many wireless cameras - some with solar panels. This thing seems to be the best out there at this point. The closest thing to an "install once and forget about it" outdoor camera I'm aware of. I am buying more. . . . if that tells you anything. But dont pay the $199 full price. These go on sale quite often.

This camera was everything I was looking for. For my shed, which is completely off commercial power, it allowed me to have a full shot of the back yard while being solar powered. The install was super easy and the picture quality was wonderful. The motion detection was quick and accurate, with almost no false positives. Overall I was beyond impressed with the quality and ease of operation of the camera. Now a little over a year later, I'm pretty disappointed. The camera is still holding a charge just fine from the solar panel, but the quality of the image is highly disappointing. The lens, body, and solar panel have became so sun damaged the quality of the image is almost unusable, especially at night due to the glare. I've tried cleaning the lens with a microfiber cloth numerous times to no avail. The spotlight on the camera doesn't work all the time, assuming due to water intrusion into the camera itself. One of the LEDs was stuck on (dim, but on) after a rain storm for about a week. I would suggest a shade cover directly over the lens to prevent sun damage and glare. I love Anker products, and Eufy cameras. The quality for the price is second to none. This particular camera just isn't living up to the expectations I had for it. That being said I just ordered and install the Eufy Dual doorbell camera and I am impressed with that unit.

OK, I honestly was not pleased with the S40 Solar Security Cameras I ordered, and I returned them. The folks at Eufy contacted me, and said they wanted me to be satisfied. So, after some discussion via messages about what my requirements are for these cameras, they offered to send me a FREE camera, the Solo Outdoor Cam C24, to see if it would work for me. I received the camera yesterday, and I have to say, I am VERY pleased with it. The pictures are extremely clear, both in full light and in night vision. There is about a 2-second lag between the video that comes to my phone and the actual occurrence, but that is totally acceptable. (This is faster than the Ring and Wyze cameras I have, by the way.) I love the fully adjustable magnetic mount, and they provide a VERY long power cable (about 20 feet long) and USB power supply. The weatherproofing on the camera and the cable are both excellent. The person detection is great, and comes built-in, so there is no extra fee for that. The camera stores pictures and videos on a local micro-SD card (a 32 GB card was included) as well as sending the videos to my phone for storage. There is, at present, no Eufy app for PC. If you want to have your videos stored in the cloud, you can pay for that as a separate service, but honestly I see no need for that since the videos are saved both on the camera AND to my phone. If I had a tablet attached, I'm sure it would save them there, too. I really love this little camera and when I can find buyers for my existing cams, I plan to change over to Eufy. Just can't afford it yet. *** OLD review below *** I just received the two cameras I ordered, and I am returning them both. They say "no internet required" and that's fine. But they do NOT clearly state anywhere in the description how much storage is in the camera, and also, it is not apparent that the memory can be expanded. There is a LOT of movement where these cameras would be mounted, and the internal memory of 8 GB would fill up quickly. Also, as they are set up as FIFO devices (first in, first out) that means a critical piece of video could be pushed out of the camera and erased, just because of the pathetically small storage space. I won't buy or use a camera that either comes with a minimum of 32 GB of internal storage, can be expanded with a memory card, or that sends video to a central storage device local to the camera.

tuve un tema debido al cambio de horario ya que las camaras en automático se cambian a horario de verano e invierno y en Mexico eso ya no aplica. me comunique a Eufy y me apoyaron muchismo a solucionarlo, el único inconveniente es que es 100% en ingles así que si no lo hablas vas a batallar un poquito.

This camera is extremely easy to instal and set up. Video quality is excellent, even in low light. The floodlight works well and illuminates a good distance. Battery life so far has remained at between 98-100% after an initial full charge despite a lot of cloud during the day. Connection via wifi was easy and setup instructions via the App takes you through each step. I can live stream to my phone at any time and gives notifications when someone is in the detection area which you can set. Can filter out non human detections so animals don’t set it off. Can’t recommend this highly enough for a basic security camera that suits all my needs.

The product delivered early and in a good condition. The camera is a little bit heavy but consider what it can do, that makes sense. The only problem I had was to add to router. However my router recognized and added to the list, the camera always failed to connect to router. I have other devices that only be able to connect to 2.4 GHz and be able to setup smoothly. With this camera, I have to repeat the process 5 times before be able to connect to router. The configuration is easy and straightforward. I don't have a chance to put the camera to the location I want it due to weather. Overall, I am pleased with the purchase and the quality of the product.

Very happy with this camera. Solar and light features work well. No need to remove and charge the camera

Update 24-Jan-25 This camera had low battery warning three weeks after bring it inside and charging it to 100%, it has been plugged in for days and will not charge past 11% DO NOT BUY! Update 21-Dec-24 Eufy sent me a replacement camera, again this winter the replacement failed. Even when plugging in the camera it would not charge. I had to get a ladder remove the camera bring it inside. Even then it would not charge. I had to delete the camera from the app inorder for it to charge. Then once it was charged go back outside on a ladder in winter to put it back up. Then the only way to re-add the camera to the app is to show the camera the QR code from the app. Not a fun thing to do on a ladder in winter. This camera should not be sold in Canada as it indicate for our winters. I got this camera in July 2022 It worked great until 11-Dec-22 when it completely died due to not getting enough sunlight. Saddy it never came back on, it is now March the days are getting long there is more sun light but once this camera is dead you must plug it in to charge it up again. I took it down brought it inside as soon as it was plugged in it reconnected. My solution to using this in winter was to buy a nine foot cable so when I see next winter the camera power is low I can to plug it in with out having to take the camera down as who wants to be on a ladder in -40C. Pros: Easy to set up Great picture No subscribtion fees Plenty of storage Cons: Dies in winter App does not let you change the font colour as you can see from my screen shot it gets washed out You can not store video to the old homebase and must use the cameras storage