Eufy Dual Indoor Cam S350 review: Are two cameras better than one?

Are two cameras better than one? This is the question posed by a new indoor security camera from Eufy. It’s called the Eufy Indoor Cam S350 and it has two cameras. One has a 4K resolution sensor and a wide-angle lens, while the other places a 2K imaging sensor behind a 3x telephoto lens. Combined, they offer an 8x hybrid zoom and a promise of providing the best of both worlds: a wide, 4K view of the whole scene, plus a zoomed-in 2K view when you need a closer look at what’s going on.

There’s no escaping the anthropomorphism here, especially since this motorised camera pans horizontally and tilts vertically, giving the camera the look of a Pixar copyright infringement in the making. Remember, this is a camera from Eufy, not a friendly robot called Wall-E.

As with other Eufy security products, this indoor camera does not demand owners cough up cash for an ongoing subscription to access basic functions. Instead, footage is saved locally to a microSD card (not included, despite the fairly steep price tag) and even Eufy’s artificial intelligence is processed locally. To briefly unpack that, this camera uses AI to spot movement and track it – a person walking across the room, for example – but doesn’t need help from a cloud server to do this. I imagine Ring customers fed up with subscription price increases might already be reaching for their credit cards.

Eufy Dual Indoor Cam S350 review: What do you get for your money?

The lack of a subscription is welcome, but this is still a fairly expensive camera. It carries a retail price of £129, which is more than twice that of Eufy’s Indoor Cam E220. That camera costs just £53 yet still packs a single 2K imaging sensor and includes motorised panning and tilting, in addition to local storage, integration with various smart home systems and AI smarts for telling the difference between humans, pets and other forms of movement.

Still, the Eufy S350 is a nicely designed camera that really packs in the features. For your money, you get a nicely designed indoor security camera that feels very well made. It’s relatively compact but has a nice weight that exudes quality. There’s a hint of motor whine when it pans from side to side, but it moves quickly (the speed can be adjusted in the many settings pages of the Eufy app) and has the robust feel of a device I’m sure will last for many years.

In the box you get a USB-A to USB-C cable and a wall plug for powering the camera, plus a mounting plate with plugs and screws if you want to attach the Eufy to a wall.

This is not a battery-powered camera, so needs to be plugged in, and it requires a W-Fi connection too. It’s strictly an indoor camera and does not have the relevant waterproofing to be used outdoors.

Eufy says the camera has 8x zoom, but that’s a figure that needs some unpacking. In reality, the maximum optical zoom (on the 2K telephoto lens) is 3x but Eufy does some digital zooming to bring that up to 8x. Because you’re starting from 2K, the image remains relatively sharp, even when zoomed all the way in. In reality, I didn’t see much need to zoom in more than 3x, even when the camera was placed at the far end of a moderately sized room.

The wider 4K camera has a 130-degree lens and both lenses have an aperture of f/1.6. There are eight adaptive infrared lights and a night vision system that is claimed to make human faces clearly visible up to ten metres away.

Next comes the AI, which Eufy says uses its own algorithm. This enables the camera to spot a human or a pet, then follow their movement by panning and tilting the camera. AI is a term that gets bandied around a lot these days, but it’s nonetheless welcome in a security camera like this, and helps filter out false positives triggering unnecessary alerts, like the shadow of a tree blowing in the wind outside.

The camera also has optional sound detection. This can alert you to all types of sound, or to let you know when a baby’s crying is heard. Naturally, this turns the S350 into a 4K baby monitor, but crying detection was still in beta form at the time of writing.

Lastly for sound detection, a feature called Round-Look can be enabled, where the camera looks all around its environment when sound is detected. Then, if a burglar is spotted, it will use its AI skills to focus on them and follow their movement. If you’re in the unfortunate position of watching this play out live through the Eufy app, you can shout through the integrated speaker or sound the camera’s alarm in a bid to scare them away. The alarm can be set to blare automatically when movement is detected, too.

Like other smart security cameras, the Eufy S350 has options for blocking certain areas of its view with blacked-out privacy zones. These can be used to prevent the camera from seeing a neighbour’s window, for example, though it should be noted that enabling privacy zones stops the camera from panning and tilting, so you’re better off positioning the camera so it can’t see sensitive areas.

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Eufy Dual Indoor Cam S350 review: What does it do well?

As with other Eufy security cameras, setting up the S350 is a breeze. Adding it to my existing Eufy system took just a few minutes, and even if I were to start from scratch it wouldn’t have taken much longer. The app is intuitive, nicely designed and makes the setup process easy. Everything is explained clearly and despite there being quite a few settings menus to wade through, it’s mostly logical.

Video quality, as you might expect from the twin 4K and 2K sensors, is excellent. There’s a slight drop in quality when you zoom in, as the camera switches from the 4K lens to 2K, but everything still looks great, with lots of detail. Exposure levels and white balance are handled well and colours really pop; this is all welcome, especially since there’s no way to tinker with the brightness or any other video parameters. I like how you can see a live view from both cameras at once, at 1x and 3x zoom; this drops the resolution of the wide-angle lens from 4K to 2K, to match the telephoto lens.

I also like how you can set up to four default viewing positions. For example, if the camera is at one end of a large, open-plan lounge/kitchen/dining area, you can have one view zoomed out and showing as much as possible, another zoomed into the kitchen, one focused on the sofa in the lounge area and another pointing into a far corner, or perhaps where the dog likes to sleep while you’re out. With that all configured, you can simply tap on one of the presets and the camera will pan, tilt and zoom to the pre-configured position.

Notifications arrived quickly during my testing, usually within three to five seconds of the camera spotting movement. I like to see as much information as possible in the notifications preview, so set the Eufy app to show a screenshot of the camera’s view with every alert. That way, you can potentially see what has triggered the camera to activate, right from your phone’s lock screen.

Tap on the notification and the Eufy app opens quickly, then after about three seconds you’re shown a recording of what the camera just saw, including a few seconds of video from before the motion was spotted. In other words, because the camera is constantly active, you’ll be shown footage (with audio) from a few seconds before the potential burglar walks into shot.

I found this to all work very reliably, however on a couple of occasions the Eufy app failed to play back an earlier recording. Downloading the clip also failed and the issue seemed to be with the app trying to decrypt the footage. I tried again a couple of times and the footage finally downloaded to my phone’s camera roll at full resolution.

The Eufy Security app also allows for geofencing, where the system is automatically armed when you leave home, then switches off when you return, based on the position of your phone. You need to allow the Eufy app access to your phone’s location data, but it’s a handy way to disable the camera automatically when you’re home.

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Eufy Dual Indoor Cam S350 review: What could it do better?

All began well, but when I began digging into the geofencing system and how the camera is supposed to arm and disarm based on the location of my phone, the Eufy S350 started to falter. These settings are tricky to find, for starters, and I found the camera wouldn’t always change from one mode to the other, regardless of my phone’s location. Eufy says geofencing is still in beta, so should be improved over time.

Even more frustrating was how manually switching between the I’m Staying and I’m Leaving modes kept failing, with the app issuing a “request timed out” error message. The camera continued to recognise movement and pan and tilt to follow it, but no notifications arrived and the system repeatedly failed to switch between modes.

Resetting the camera failed to fix any of this, but strangely resetting my phone did the trick. After that, the camera came back to life and responded correctly to my inputs. I’m glad all it took was a quick phone reset, but it’s still concerning to see a security camera fail. Lastly, I had a problem where the camera’s time was an hour fast, despite being set to GMT. Changing to a different time zone then switching back to GMT fixed this.

Eufy Dual Indoor Cam S350 review: Should you buy one?

Viewed in isolation, this is a great home security camera. The geofencing setup process is a bit of a pain, and I encountered a couple of issues that a phone reset solved, but otherwise this camera is easy to use.

Video quality is excellent, and I like having the option for 3x optical zoom. There being no ongoing subscription is also very welcome, and a good reason to pick Eufy over some other brands. While local storage is handy, it also means a savvy burglar could steal the camera and its footage, unless mounted out of reach.

The S350 is also rather expensive when compared to Eufy’s E220. That indoor camera also has powered panning and tilting, a 2K sensor and AI, yet costs less than half as much, at £53, versus £129 for the S350. The cheaper camera also works with Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit, whereas the pricier model misses out on HomeKit support.

The key question to ask yourself, then, is if you really need that extra 4K resolution and the 3x optical zoom. Those with larger, open-plan spaces to cover, might benefit from these features, that much is true. For  everyone else, however, a cheaper, less fancy camera will almost certainly suffice.