The smart home company Eufy has released its newest home/business security camera and it has rather stunning night vision capabilities.
The new device is called the EufyCam S3 Pro and it comes loaded with the ability to see in the dark, use radar motion detection for reduced false alarms and can record 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if wired.
The S3 Pro also includes free facial recognition along with the detection of packages, vehicles and roving pets. Another feature of the camera is locally stored video with no monthly fees, according to reporting from The Verge.
Another especially useful feature of the camera for some potential users is that it’s the first in Eufy’s line of security devices to also work with Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video service.
The night vision capabilities of this security camera are especially noteworthy.
Based on the still shots shown by the company, they’re pretty impressive, revealing subjects caught in dimly lit or even nearly unlit settings as if they were standing in the daylight.
Crucially, the night vision feature of the camera doesn’t deliver the usual sort of green or grey-lit visuals most of us are used to seeing with night vision cameras. Instead, it uses something a bit different.
According to Eufy, the S3 Pro comes with a technology that the company calls MaxColor Vision, which promises to deliver “daylike footage even in pitch-dark conditions, without the need for a spotlight”.
As The Verge adds, in a demonstration of the technology during IFA 2024 in Berlin in September, it was “impressive”.
The Verge also elaborates,
“A camera was positioned inside a completely dark room, sending video to a monitor outside, on which I could see everything in the room as if it were daytime.”
According to Eufy, the S3 Pro uses a 1/1.8-inch CMOS sensor with an f/1.0 aperture and an AI-powered image signal processing system to deliver these results.
It would be nice to see more actual, pro cinema and video-capable mirrorless cameras be able to pull off something so sharply lit in dark settings.
Though the night vision in the camera doesn’t need a spotlight to do its surprisingly vibrant recording, the S3 Pro does have a motion-activated spotlight if users need it.
According to Eufy, this light is adapted by the camera through real-time lighting to deliver ideal visual results and can also be manually adjusted during live streams using Eufy’s app for the S3 Pro camera.
As for the camera’s motion-detecting chops, they depend on radar sensing and passive infrared or PIR, letting the camera identify people more accurately with fewer false alarms involving things like moving branches or pets.
According to Eufy, this combination reduces false alerts by as much as 99%.
The Eufy S3 Pro can be wired but it also comes with a very powerful 13,000 mAh battery unit for up to a supposed 365 days of power, again, according to Eufy.
It also has an integrated solar panel for an even longer running time if needed in remote settings where utility current isn’t available.
The video resolution of the S3 Pro is also nothing to sneeze at since it’s 4K UHD. The camera is powered by USB-C and also includes two-way audio for communicating with those caught by its lens.
This audio is quite sensitive too, being able to record human voices at a distance of up to 26 feet as claimed by the camera’s maker.
Other cool features of the camera include a 24/7 snapshot feature that can takes photos in 4K resolution (roughly 8.3 megapixels) at a rate of one image per minute and an 8X digital zoom.
The camera is also protected by IP67 weatherproofing, and integrated with Google Home and Amazon Alexa, aside from its compatibility with Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video encrypted video storage service.
Eufy is launching this new, surprisingly robust home and business security camera this week as a two-camera bundle with a HomeBase S380 unit thrown in for a total price of $549.99.
The HomeBase unit included in this kit is basically a local storage device that comes with 16GB out of the box but can be expanded up to a whopping 16TB. The same storage device also connects the S3 Pro to Apple Home.
In terms of its night vision and battery endurance alone, the Eufy S3 Pro is one impressive device even by the standards of modern compact prosumer video cameras used in videography. Some of these could take a page from its book.
Images credit: Eufy
