AI surveillance and 4K smarts make this security camera a top choice
If you’ve been put off by pan-and-tilt camera in the past, the Eufy Security Indoor Cam S350 could change your mind. With its programmable home position, this camera returns quickly to its default position, making sure you never miss an important event. Image quality from its 4K camera is sumptuous, while the 2K camera provides close-up detail when you need it. Dual View mode reduces image quality to the point where it’s not very usable, but turn this off and this camera is a great indoor model, well suited to more complicated room layouts.
Pros
- Excellent 4K image qualiy
- Clever pan-and-tilt features
- AI image tracking
- Integrated object detection
- No monthly fees
Cons
- Dual View mode reduces image quality
- Need HomeBase for some features
- Quite expensive
Key features
- Type: Indoor pan-and-tilt
- Connectivity: Dual-band Wi-Fi 6
- Ecosystems: Amazon Alexa, Google Home
At the end of last year Eufy, the smart security wing of Anker Innovations, took the covers off of four new home security cameras; a new range that boasts dual cameras and AI cross-camera tracking technology including the Eufy Security Indoor Cam S350, which is on test for this review.
The big thing across the new range, hardware wise at least, is those dual lenses, which offer up surveillance options never seen before on a home smart security cam.
The main lens, the one with the bigger sensor, is concerned with the wide-angle high-resolution footage.
Related: Eufy SoloCam S340 review / And: Eufy Floodlight Camera E340 review
The other focuses on telephoto aspects; i.e. zooming in on key details such as people’s faces, clothes or license plates.
If that wasn’t enough, the footage the cameras track can be combined to provide multi-camera mash ups of an event from an array of vantage points.
You can get far cheaper indoor pan-and-tilt cameras, such as the Aqara Camera Hub G3 or the Nooie 360 Cam 2 but considering the range of features that it has, the Eufy Security Indoor Cam S350 is excellent value. The feature list is far longer than with the rivals: dual cameras (one 4K wide-angle, one 2K telephoto), motorised pan-and-tilt, and offline storage.
That’s a remarkable list of abilities that make this indoor security camera more capable of keeping an eye on your home and making sure that you don’t miss a thing. Read on to discover how those features work and why the Eufy Security Indoor Cam S350 could be the ultimate indoor security camera.
Read on for our full the Eufy Security Indoor Cam S350 review to find out why…
Design and installation
- Dual camera design
- Works with and without the HomeBase 3
- USB-C powered
Most security cameras look rather dull and basic, designed simply to monitor an area. While monitoring is the entire purpose of a security camera, the Eufy Security Indoor Cam S350’s rounded body and dual lenses make it look more interesting and, dare I say it, cute, even.
With a motorised pan-and-tilt system, this camera can rotate 360-degrees and tilt up to 75-degrees, which means placing it is easier than with a fixed camera.
Just drop this model where you want it (or screw it to a wall with the provided mount underneath the camera), and then you can use software to position it.
Underneath is where the USB-C power socket goes. There’s plenty of cable to reach a power socket and you could always buy a longer USB-C cord if needed.
When used asa standalone smart security camera, the Eufy Security Indoor Cam S350 has dual-band Wi-Fi 6, so it can connect straight to your home network.
In this configuration, you do need to work out what to do in terms of storage: there’s a microSD card slot, although you can also pay $2.99 a month for the Eufy Cloud for 30 days of video history.
Alternatively, if you have a Eufy HomeBase 3, as introduced with the EufyCam S330, you can connect the Eufy Security Indoor Cam S350 directly to this instead. That lets the camera using the HomeBase 3’s storage, plus it adds facial recognition into the list of abilities.
For a HomeBase 3 to work, this camera does have to be in direct Wi-Fi range of the station.
The HomeBase 3 is also your ticket to multi-camera, AI -powered, cross-tracking, which I’ll talk more about in a bit.
Features
- Object detection
- Activity Zones
- Home and Away modes
- Voice assistant integration
Control is via the Eufy Security app, which is home to all of Eufy’s other cameras. You’ll see that the camera gets its own thumbnail image on the Devices page, which you can tap to jump into the live view.
Here, you get the features you’d expect, such as two-way talk, but there are some extras down to the way that the camera works. First, there’s a button to switch between the standard 4K camera, and the 2K telephoto camera, which offers a 3x zoom. It’s a neat trick, as I could zoom in to look at detail in the image.
With pan-and-tilt onboard, the app also let me move the camera to change what it was looking at. That’s particularly handy for rooms with multiple doors and windows, as I could look around and see everything.
Many pan-and-tilt cameras fall down at this point, as once a camera has been repositioned, it stays looking where you left it, which can mean that motion events are missed.
Eufy nails how to set up a pan-and-tilt camera properly by introducing a configurable home point. After no activity for 10 seconds, the Eufy Security Indoor Cam S350 will return to its home location automatically, monitoring the main area that you want to keep an eye on.
As well as the home location, multiple favourite locations can be set, including the position and camera to use. These can be selected in the live view, jumping straight to the area you want to keep an eye on, plus the camera can be configured to pan through your favorites, patrolling for trouble automatically.
There’s also a customisable privacy feature, where you can point the camera at a wall when you don’t want it to record. As an additional safety feature, the LED on the front of the camera turns red when its recording or live view is being used.
As with most cameras, the default configuration is to spot all motion and then warn you about it. To cut down on the number of alerts generated, the Eufy Security Indoor Cam S350 has customisable motion settings.
Motion sensitivity can make the camera more and less likely to respond to movement, but it’s the more advanced features that are more useful. With activity zones, the Eufy Security Indoor Cam S350 can be set only to monitor part of the picture. And the camera can be set to warn you about your choice of people, pets or all motion.
Using the right mix of settings, it’s easy to make the camera only ping an alert about events that you’ll genuinely be interested in. The people detection feature is impressive and works very reliably.
As well as simply recording static footage, the Eufy Security Indoor Cam S350 has an AI Tracking option, which follows an object automatically. It’s unnervingly accurate, easily following me, even as I tried ducking and diving, and moving fast.
If that wasn’t enough, if you’ve got a Eufy HomeBase 3 hub, the footage the S350 tracks can be combined with other Eufy Cams to provide multi-camera mashups of an event from an array of vantage points.
This AI software combines all of the images captured to provide edited clips that combine footage from across your Eufy camera setup range; so you get videos of the same event and/or person, organized chronologically into a single clip.
Eufy states this proprietary AI cross-camera tracking is the “world’s first home surveillance mesh powered by local AI”.
For example, you could get a notification of a clip whereby you see your kid arrive safely home from school, make herself a snack in the kitchen, do her homework in the dining room and play with the dog in the garden.
It’s like having your own security officer on the job 24/7, except this one won’t miss key events while he plays Sudoku.
The good news is that this cross-camera tracking will also work with older Eufy security cameras such as the excellent EufyCam S330 that we recently reviewed.
Essentially, if your Eufy camera works with the HomeBase 3, it’ll work with the new AI cross-tracking tech.
According to the app, turning on AI Tracking limits the camera to recording at a 2K resolution, but I found that the downloaded clips were all recorded at a 4K resolution using the main lens.
If you want to record what both lenses can see, there’s an option to turn on Dual View, which stacks the two camera views one above the other. It’s neat to see, but the recorded video suffers from compression, so I wouldn’t use this. I found it best to record using the 4K camera and to use the 2K camera manually when I wanted to see what was going on.
Footage is recorded to a microSD card or HomeBase 3. There’s a timeline view, with onboard controls to skip between events. I found that this view made it tricky to jump to an earlier event.
Instead, there’s an Event tab in the app, which can be filtered by camera, date and event type (person, pet or other), presenting a simple thumbnail view of recordings.
All recordings can be downloaded from the app to your phone, although it can be quite slow to do so, particularly with long clips recorded at 4K.
To control when the camera can and can’t record, there are modes, such as Home and Away. These can be configured manually, on a schedule or with geofencing (multiple family members supported).
Amazon Alexa and Google Home support are also available, with the camera able to stream its live feed to a compatible smart display.
Performance
- Excellent 4K footage
- Clear night vision
- Dual View reduces image quality
At its best, the Eufy Security Indoor Cam S350 records video at 4K (3840 x 2160) using the main lens. Its image quality is excellent. Provided there’s enough ambient light (daylight, or even light bulbs), the camera can shoot in full colour. The detail is excellent right to the back of the frame: you really can’t get better from a security camera.
When it’s dark, the camera turns on its IR lights and shoots in black and white. This does have a slight softening effect (as IR does on all cameras), but the 4K resolution overcomes many problems, and the video remains sharp.
With AI Tracking turned on, I found that the camera followed me smoothly around; rivals that I’ve reviewed have tended to move in a jerky, less predictable pattern that can cause some motion judder.
Putting the camera into its Dual View mode was far less impressive. High compression meant that detail was lost, and artefacts were introduced to the point where I can’t recommend this mode.
Final thoughts
If you don’t want to spend this much money and can make do with a fixed-lens camera, there are plenty of alternatives available.
However, for rooms with tricky layouts, the Eufy Security Indoor Cam S350 is ideal, panning and tilting on demand to capture everything. At the same time, the two lenses give more options when you take manual control.
How we test
When we publish our reviews, you can rest assured that they are the result of “living with” long term tests.
Smart security cameras usually live within an ecosystem, or a range of products that – supposedly – all work in harmony. Therefore, it’s impossible to use a security camera for a week and deliver a verdict.
Because we’re testing smart home kit all day, everyday, we know what matters and how a particular camera compares to alternatives that you might also be considering.
Our reviews are comprehensive, objective and fair and, of course, we are never paid directly to review a device.
Read our guide on our review process for smart security cameras to learn more.
