This eufy camera does a great job of recording, even if your situation isn't ideal like ours. If you want to see what we did see tuna this video. Hi everyone. It's Mark again from Top Homeowner. And in today's video, we're going to talk about the eufy SoloCam S40.

If you've been looking at this camera, if you've been looking at a camera that you can use in a location where you don't have power, you don't have data, and you still want security, you want to be able to see what's going on at your house, then this could be a really good option for you.

All right, so in this video, I'm going to talk about the features, what you need to do to get this installed and set up, and also some of the pros and cons that you need to know about. Now, you want to be sure to stick to the end of this video, because we've got a lot of information to cover. But at the end, if you're interested in picking one of these up for yourself, I'm going to have a link in the description below where you can go and check out the current price. Also, for full disclosure, eufy you did send me this for review, but with any of the review videos I do, I always want to give you my honest opinion so you can rest assured that you'll have the right information upfront and whether or not this is going to be something that will work for you or won't.

Now, there are a lot of different features I could talk about, but at the same time, I have a slide that I put together with all the key features here, as well as this next slide that shows you all the different technical specifications. So feel free to pause the video here, take a look, dive in, and then you can continue on. As far as some highlights are concerned, I am going to go into a little bit more detail on a couple of different things. The first thing is where these videos are stored. Now, with eufy cameras, the video is stored on the camera itself, which really sets eufy apart from other competitors with other brands.

You have to opt-in to storing your video to the cloud, which means you have a little bit less control over your video. And with cloud storage comes service fees. So if you don't want to store your video to the cloud, if you want a little bit more control over your video, then eufy can be a really good option for you, because by default it only records to the camera itself. Now it uses military-grade encryption if you want it to be uploaded to the cloud. eufy does offer a service where you can pay a monthly fee.

eufy also offers an additional protection plan, which is a really great feature if you're looking for monitored security. So if you have any kind of an instance where your house is broken into, or if you have a fire, or if you have some kind of a medical emergency, you can actually have the police or ambulance dispatched with their monitoring service. So that's another nice feature that you can add on to have that extra level of peace of mind. And in some cases, if you have this protection plan as well, you can save some money on your home insurance. So that's another nice benefit.

The battery life on this is really long, too. So even if you install this in a completely dark location, say in a basement or something like that, the battery is supposed to last up to four months. So even if you want to install this in a location that gets absolutely no sun and you're okay with taking it down and charging it manually every three or four months, then this is still a really good option. Another feature we really liked is the fact that even though it's solar powered, it does include a 600 Lumen Led light. So you can have this turned on when it detects motion as it's recording.

If you have this turned on, then it will actually record your night footage in color, which is a nice feature, and you can choose to not have it turn on when it detects motion as well. So if you don't have it turn on, you'll just be able to capture everything as it is, and it uses infrared lights to be able to record everything with low or no light. You also have the option to be able to turn this on and off in the camera. So if you're looking at a live feed, you can turn the light on or off. So depending on what your needs are, you have a lot of flexibility there.

We also really like the fact it has AI technology built into it, which means it can reject any extra things that you don't want to record. So, for example, if you only want to record people, it will only record and detect people as they're coming into the area that you have specified on the camera. You also have the ability to specify a specific area to record. So if you have your camera pointed at a road or a sidewalk, you can actually tell it to not record those areas. So it will reduce the amount of false alarms you get and the number of videos that it records.

This is a really great feature and one that's overlooked a lot, especially if you're used to other brands that don't have this type of technology. You tend to get a lot of different notifications and a lot of recordings that are meaningless. So the fact that you can actually geofence off an area and you can even specify whether or not you just want to record people. So if there's a person coming into your backyard, that's the only time you're going to get a notification, which also means you're going to pay more attention to it instead of just ignoring it.

Another feature that's really nice to have is the fact that it has two way audio. So you might not think that you would use this a lot, but if you have this in an area where your kids tend to play, if you have kids and you want to tell them the dinner is ready or something like that, you can just pull up the app, use two way audio, have a two way communication, tell them to come inside or whatever it is that you want to say. So just having this feature is a really nice option, especially if you have a family and you want to be able to communicate conveniently.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the installation, but before I do that, if you like the information I've shared with you so far, be sure to hit the like button. And also, if there's anything else in the features that I haven't covered that you like to know about, leave me a comment below. I'm happy to read those and answer your questions.

All right, so when it comes to the installation, the installation process is actually really straightforward because there are no wires to deal with, but there are still some things that you need to keep in mind. So my number one tip for installing this camera or any WiFi-based camera is make sure you have a strong enough wireless signal outside of your house. So wherever you're planning on installing this camera, go ahead and check it with your phone. Make sure your phone shows that you have a high signal from your WiFi to be able to get the signal from your house to your camera. If you don't have a strong enough signal, you're going to have problems with getting the video feed to work properly. It could be choppy or it might not work at all. So make sure you take your time and check your WiFi signal outside of your house.

If you don't have a strong enough WiFi signal, that's okay because there are some things that you can do to help that situation. One, if you have the ability to move your router or your wireless access to a location that's closer to where you're wanting to Mount the camera, that's one quick way of being able to increase the signal without having to spend any extra money. If that's not an option for you, sometimes you can purchase a newer router, especially if yours is really old.

A lot of the newer routers have a lot stronger signals, so that can help you out. The other option you have is wireless mesh networks, and these are multiple devices that talk to each other without having to be hardwired to each other. So if you're looking to cover more of your house, you can purchase a mesh network system and you can put these little modules in different rooms of your house to help you have more of a full house coverage and to cover your house on the outside. And of course you can go with full blown access points as well. Now, if you don't know what an access point is, that's okay.

That's more of an advanced thing. So what I would recommend for you is to go with one of the other options. Most likely you're probably going to end up getting a mesh network or you're going to end up getting a newer router to increase the signal. There's a lot of good options on the market, and these are one of those things that are an investment that will last you years and years and years. Now, eufy recommends that you charge the battery completely before you install it.

Now they don't include a charge brick with this. They just supplied the cable, so you'll have to make sure you plug it into another USB charger in order to charge the camera. Per the instructions. It can take up to about 8 hours to charge the battery fully. In my case, it took around five, so you'll want to make sure you factor that in. That did delay my installation process just a little bit.

I didn't plan on charging the battery for that long, and so I had to wait till the next day to actually do the installation. Now if you do choose to install this in a location that doesn't get enough sun, that's still okay if you're fine with taking the camera down and charging it every once in a while. Now it should last between three to four months on a charge, but if you want to avoid having to charge the camera at all, then make sure you install it in a location that does get enough sun. eufy recommends you put in a location that gets at least 2 hours of sunlight to make sure the battery stays fully charged. A couple more things you need to keep in mind is one eufy recommends you install the camera between 7 and 10ft off of the ground, as well as positioning it to where when you want to detect motion or the things that you want to record that it's kind of moving across the screen instead of directly towards it.

So this is going to give the motion detection the best chance of recording action and events and people or whatever it is on the screen. So that way you get accurate readings. If you position the camera to where things are moving directly towards it, or if you have to go outside of that seven to ten foot range, then you're not going to have as effective of a situation for the camera. However, that's not always possible. Specifically, in our case, we ended up having to mount it at a location that's 12ft off the ground instead of 10ft in addition to we kind of put it in the middle of our driveway in-between two garages.

So it's a little bit more straight on than what we would like it to be, but at the same time it still seems to do a really good job of detecting the motion and being able to alert us and record the different events. The process to install this is really straightforward because as I said, you don't have any wires to deal with, but there are a couple of tips I would leave you with. One is you can use the included template that they have, which is basically just a sticker to put this sticker on the wall where you're going to install this. So that way you can mark the location for the holes that you need to drill or you can just use the bracket itself to mark the location of the holes. Also, if you're just going to install this into a wood-based surface, I recommend using a 5/64 inch drill bit size, which is what I did to be able to make sure that the screws will go into the wood and not split the wood out.

This worked really well in my case.

Also, as you're installing this, especially if you have to install this while you're up on a ladder, be sure to have a partner that can help monitor the video signal as you're installing it. This will make sure that the video signal is still strong and that you get the camera position in the correct location. It will just help cut down on the time that you need to be able to get this in the right spot.

Honestly, there are a lot of things I could talk about again with the application itself, but just know that I feel like it's a really well-designed application and there aren't any features that are lacking that I can tell. Everything that I needed from the interface, anything from watching the live video to being able to view the pre-recorded events to being able to change the features.

Everything is really well put together. One really nice cool thing that they include is this energy chart that you can look and see how much energy your camera is getting. We've been really happy with the video quality as well. Everything is really crisp and clear, especially at night time. Everything is lit up really well and it's easy to pick out details, so we've been really happy with that as well as it's really on par with our other camera that we have installed, which is a 360 camera that's installed in our backyard.

Also from eufy if you're interested in watching that video, I'll have a link that will pop up here that you can go and check out that video, but overall the video quality meets our expectations. Everything is really crisp and clear and it does a really good job of filming the video as well as capturing the audio that's included. If you install this in location that is windy you will get some wind noise in the microphone but that's honestly to be expected with any microphone on any type of device, cameras or anything like that. If you are outside and you're recording you're probably going to get wind noise at some point. Also don't forget I have a link in the description below where you can go and check this camera out at its current price. Again for us it's a really good solution so if after seeing this video if you think it's a good solution for you I would highly recommend that you go check that out. Don't forget to hit the like button and I will catch you in the next one.