Eufy E340 Video Doorbell Review: Data-driven Test Results
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The Verdict
In This Review
Video Doorbells often force a compromise on features due to installation limitations on power, chime support, or storage. The Eufy E340 avoids this by providing a wealth of options both in installation and software configuration to meet just about any use case.
With a removable, rechargeable battery pack, onboard storage memory, support for various wired power options, optional Homebase integration and onboard AI processing, you’ll find a combination that works for your situation. Eufy has stepped up here and delivered a combination of features that overcomes the limitations of their previous models and exceeds the flexibility of most of the competition.
The E340 scores very well on video quality, motion detection, battery life, and package monitoring capabilities, and is a standout performer if securing deliveries is your main goal. Eufy’s Delivery Guard features are uniquely useful and are considerably boosted by the dedicated package monitoring camera and LED spotlights.
My primary issue with the E340 is the notification performance. Notifications when using thumbnails (which I consider essential for useful notifications) are quite slow to arrive. You will get them reliably, but not always in time to act on them. Nonetheless, the E340 is a great all-round performer that delivers a solid, reliable user experience that can be tailored to your specific needs. If privacy, local storage, package security, and no subscription fees are you focus, you can’t go wrong with this one.
Installation
Tech Specs
Power: Wired or battery
Removable Battery: Yes
Can Use Wired Chime: Yes
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz
Resolution: 2048 x 1536
Storage: 8GB internal
Weather Rating: IP65
Field of View: Unspecified
Compatibility: Alexa, Goolgle
Smart Detection: Yes
Notable Features:
- Second package camera
- Package pickup reminders
- Audo voice responses
- Top and bottom LED lighting
- Facial recognition
As is common with video doorbells now, the Eufy E340 comes with all the necessary fixings that you’ll need to install it on your home, including wall plugs, screws, and an optional 15-degree wedge plate.
I find the addition of extension leads and wire nuts for a wired installation a nice consideration. Sometimes existing doorbell wires just don’t have enough slack to reach out to where a video doorbell needs them attached, and these little add-ons alleviate that issue nicely.
Eufy has finally provided a removable battery with this model. This can be charged via USB-C, or spares purchased for quick swap outs. The doorbell still needs to be removed from the mount to access it, however. This is done easily with the included pin tool, which is magnetic for convenient storage. I’m sure these get misplaced all the time, so this little addition should help.
The mount itself is fairly solid and easy to install, but the screw holes are in the form of small risers that create a gap between the mount and the wall. Combined with only the two center-aligned holes would seem to make it more vulnerable to tampering than was necessary. The wedge plate slots over those risers and completely eliminates this issue, so if you can use that you’ll have a more secure installation.
The included paper manual steps you through the physical install for both wired and battery scenarios, but then directs you to the Eufy Security app for the rest. The app does a good job of stepping through the rest of the install process with clear instructions and diagrams, and I had no issue getting it set up with both power options.
It is notable, however, that Eufy has not been clear on the power requirements, with various conflicting specifications provided in marketing material and through their support community. The install instructions declare 16-24V 10VA as a requirement, but that 10VA is nonsense. Eufy says they use this because most video doorbell transformers are rated that way, but the reality is that you can get away with a wall adapter rated at only 600mA. Their support agents actually list such a transformer as one example option, and this specification is somewhat buried in the support pages. My test rig uses a 24V 1 Amp (24VA) wall adapter, and this worked fine right off the bat.
Chime Options
Eufy offers several options for indoor chimes. You optionally pair the E340 with one of Eufy’s Homebase products, either the Homebase 2 or 3 will work. Eufy also sells a separate miniBase chime specifically for doorbells, and you can use an existing wired mechanical chime if you have one through your doorbell wiring. You can also opt to use either Google or Alexa smart speakers and displays to provide both motion and ring alerts if you have those available.
Eufy E340 box contents
Charging the battery next to the wedge
Battery compartment and wired terminals
Camera Performance
The main camera is a 4:3 aspect 2K sensor which delivers decent video quality and provides good area coverage of the approach zone. The test chart was visible at a maximum distance of 6.7 meters (21ft), which was lower than I would expect for a 2K camera. Indeed, this fares only slightly better than the 1080p Ring Video Doorbell 4 which topped out at 6.5 meters.
The issue is Eufy’s somewhat aggressive compression in the video encoding which produces substantial video artifacts. These artifacts obscured fine detail significantly and reduced the distance the test chart could be read. Eufy provides three video quality settings in the app, but testing on all three didn’t yield any discernable difference in the compression.
The Eufy E340 offers two night vision options, plain black and white infra-red, or color night vision when used with the built-in LED lights on the top and bottom of the unit. The night vision test specifically focuses on infra-red performance, so color night vision was disabled for this test.
The IR LEDs provide a good range of illumination which allows for clear images in the near to middle distance. As expected in this mode, the limited infra-red output reduced the visible distance of the test chart down to 4.59 meters (15 ft). At this distance I wouldn’t expect to be using this mode for security monitoring a wider area, but it’s perfectly adequate for covering the area in front of the door.
Color night vision features typically employ the ambient light in the area to provide illumination for the low light camera, but Eufy has opted to boost this using both top and bottom LED lights on the doorbell. As with the S220 Dual Camera doorbell there are two LEDs on the bottom that illumionate the package zone and provide safety for approaching visitors. The E340 also includes a light bar on the top which is user adjustable in both brightness and color temperature.
Using both light sources reflects light off the floor, wall, and ceiling (if present) to provide a good level of ambient light for the camera. As such, the color night vision performs very well and is the better option to stick with unless you really don’t want to have the LED lights turning on when motion is detected.
The camera supports HDR (High Dynamic Range) and this is enabled by default. When I began testing this was an optional setting, but during the course of the test cycle this was removed in an update.
The camera was able to discern a respectable 9 out of 12 swatches on the dynamic range test chart. In practice this has meant I have observed no issues making out faces with strong backlighting (afternoon sun, for example), and no excessive contrast between light and shadow areas. Subjects in the brightly lit area, however, do tend to be overexposed if there is high contrast in the frame. This can be seen in the day video sample above.
This over exposure seems to have a significant impact on motion detection performance in backlit situations with the average recording start time dropping by around 60% between front lit and back lit approach tests when on battery. Battery power mode loses the pre-roll feature, which gives a better indication of when the motion is actually detected.
Audio Performance
Both the speaker and microphone on the E340 were more than adequate with normal speaking volume able to be clearly heard at 10m (30ft) for both the outdoor participant and the app user inside. Audibility, therefore, received a perfect score for both indoor and outdoor components.
The in-app talk experience was reasonable, with a clear audio stream from the doorbell. Outside, however, spoken responses experienced frequent skips in the audio. This wasn’t frequent or long enough to disrupt communications but was noticeably annoying for the visitor.
Both indoor and outdoor users noted a loss of dynamic range in the voices which suggests a lower audio sample size being used in the encoding of the audio stream. This is something I’ve noted with other Eufy cameras, but the Eufy E340 has a much less pronounced loss of quality, and there were no obvious audio artifacts during the conversation.
Audio recorded in the captured motion events performed somewhat better, with a higher quality audio stream being observed than in two-way talk. The recording still suffered from regular skipping/dropouts on the audio, repeating approximately every 3-5 seconds. Again, this is not significant enough to disrupt understanding, but I found it somewhat jarring over time.
Notification Performance
One of the biggest issues with the Eufy E340 is delivery of notifications. There is some nuance here, however, as the Eufy app provides three different options for this. You can have plain text notifications, full rich with thumbnails, or a mix of both. The latter is supposed to deliver the text version first, then a thumbnail later if available. In practice I found the full rich mode to deliver the best thumbnail performance with one being provided in 90% of detected events. The mixed option was fairly ineffective as thumbnail delivery dropped in half and didn’t actually improve the delivery speed of the notifications overall.
Given the importance of effective thumbnails to getting useful, actionable notifications I opted for the full rich setting for this test as it provided the best indication of notification performance. It is important to note, however, that text only notifications averaged a delivery time of only 5 seconds, where thumbnails blew that out to a concerning 13.9 seconds.
Useable thumbnails (where the subject is captured in the frame) where reliably produced from the approach tests both day and night but were frequently missed on the lateral tests on battery power. While thumbnails were consistently delivered for these events, the person triggering the notification had passed out of frame before the thumbnail was captured about 82% of the time.
On wired power and connected to a Homebase 2 for pre-roll recording, lateral thumbnails improved considerably to an 85% success rate as the doorbell was able to pull the subject from the pre-roll video instead of having to wait for the recording to start after the fact.
Motion Detection Performance
I found motion detection to be excellent, with only two tests yielding a miss over the course of the testing month for a detection rate of 95%. Night and day detection rates were equally good, and in fact there were no missed events recorded at night. The only time events were missed was during afternoon backlit tests. Either strong contrast or direct sunlight on the camera or PIR sensors has a definite negative impact on detection reliability.
Having a more conventional camera field of view rather than a wide-angle lens makes for a better image but reduces the time a subject will remain in the frame when moving across the view. On battery power, the shorter time in the frame impacted how much movement was captured by the time the camera woke up to begin recording. With a maximum on-screen width of 12.1cm and an average capture of 8.1cm, overall average capture time missed the first quarter of the events in this test.
The delay in detecting motion with direct sunlight on the doorbell further impacted this, resulting in the shortest capture times in the afternoon tests. Interestingly, the best results were achieved at night with an average of 10.9cm of the frame recorded using the color night vision feature. I expect this is due to the good ambient lighting provided by the built-in LEDs at the relatively close range of this test.
Using wired power and the pre-roll feature of the Homebase 2 improved the lateral crossing capture to an almost perfect 12.0cm. Having the pre-roll buffer available allowed the recorded clips to include the complete event even the the motion detection was delayed, so this was consistent regardless of time of day or lighting conditions.
Approach delay was significantly variable, again seeing a marked increase in the delay in the backlit tests. While the front lit tests yielded a very respectable average of 6.9m and numerous perfect 10m scores, the afternoon tests dropped off to an average of only 2.6m.
Night tests also suffered due to a lack of long-range IR and low light levels, with recording starting at an average of 3.8m from the camera.
Using wired power and the Homebase pre-roll feature again corrected for this by allowing the inclusion of video prior to the motion detection occurring, pushing the average up to 9.8m across all scenarios.
Smart Detection Performance
Eufy’s dual camera design and Delivery Guard features make package detection a standout feature of the Eufy E340. Having a dedicated 1600 x 1200 HD camera to watch the package drop zone means a far better chance of detecting a package regardless of where it is placed, including directly below the doorbell. This wasn’t perfect however, with 73% of packages detected successfully. Of the few packages that were missed, most were low-contrast situations where the package blended in with the floor, and where typically on the outer edge of the camera frame.
This is a respectable score and when combined with Delivery Guard’s extra notification features, including package collection, pickup reminders, and automated voice warnings when approached, the E340 gets a significant bump in the overall score.
Feature scoring:
✔ Visibility of the test package directly below doorbell.
✔ Visibility of porch area in front of the doorbell.
✔ More than 30 degrees off center visibility to the side.
✔ Presence of active package alerting feature.
✔ Presence of additional package alerts (Delivery Guard: pickup notifications, pickup reminders, audio warnings, live check assist).
It’s worth noting that I observed some rare false alerts. In one case I received a package collected notification when there was no package, and one two occasions the camera didn’t detect when I picked up the test package.
Delivery Guard settings page
Live Package Assist view
Beyond package detection, Eufy supports human detection and facial recognition for a small set of ‘familiar faces’. You can program these familiar faces in the app by selection from events containing a viable face and tagging it with a name, or by uploading your own photo to have it added to the pool. Eufy claims facial recognition is supposed to be done only on the local device and not use any cloud services, but I still have some ethical considerations around consent before adding someone to this feature.
The benefits of facial recognition are somewhat limited, however. The person will be noted in the even list when browsing video clips, so you can easily see those events with a recognized person. You’ll also get a special notification showing the face and name of the person detected for motion events. This can be useful for screening out those events that you don’t need to look into further.
Feature scoring:
✔ Custom motion zones.
✔ Person detection.
✘ Animal Detection.
✘ Vehicle Detection.
✔ Facial Recognition.
I found both human detection and facial recognition to work very well with human detection correctly flagging events 76% of the time. I can’t provide a percentage on facial recognition as there are too many variables that affect how well the face can be processed for a given event, but it did correctly identify my selected faces on all occasions where I felt the face was clearly visible, including many from the side.
Motion Detection settings
Familiar Faces setup
Battery Performance
While the Eufy E340 supports both wired and battery power options, most of the testing was performed on battery only in order to run the complete battery test cycle. Supplemental tests were then performed afterwards on wired power to determine the differences in certain performance scores, particularly where the 3 second pre-roll feature would provide benefits.
Overall, the E340 performed extremely well, ending the 30-day test cycle with 74% charge remaining under the significant extra load of daily test cycles. More than a 3-month run time under that load is excellent and I can easily see 6 months in a less vigorous motion environment.
App Experience
As all processing is done locally by the Eufy E340, Live view access over the local network (Wi-Fi) was extremely fast. I was able to achieve a very stable average of around 1 second to initiate the stream. Video quality was on par with recorded video events, but interestingly the audio glitching noted in the recorded audio test did not occur in the live view. Audio was clear and without artifacting, skipping, or narrow dynamic range.
From the Live View screen, there are controls to initiate recording, take a screenshot, play a pre-recorded voice response, and toggle the sound and LED lights on the doorbell. Three voice responses are included, and additional ones can be recorded if required.
The Eufy app provides most of the security and privacy features that I’m looking for. Device-based tokens are used for authentication which provides for security and quick access when events occur. Biometric authentication is on offer as an option, as is two-factor authentication. Unfortunately, the two-factor authentication is only via text messages and not an authenticator.
Individual cameras and doorbells can be shared with other Eufy account-holders, with access revocation available from the control panel menu. This is an important feature as it prevents password sharing between members and allows for shared cameras to be secured if the other party should no longer have access such as during relationship changes.
Firmware updates are delivered seamlessly, and these updates are quite frequent. Eufy has updated the E340 11 times during the test cycle. While the updates were completely invisible to me, the Eufy Security app provides an in-app notification and message log with details of what was updated, when, and why.
For privacy controls, privacy zones can be for the doorbell camera, and audio recording can be disabled if required. While the doorbell’s motion detection can be snoozed, there is no easy way to disable live view on a temporary basis.
Can We Trust Eufy?
Eufy has run into some controversy lately with the discovery of some fairly significant holes in their security design. Now, security is hard and all companies make mistakes. The important thing is that they are up front with their customers about it and fix them quickly when discovered. To be fair to Eufy they have indeed moved quickly to fix these issues, but the problem is that they openly lied about the existence of these flaws until the media dragged them to confess.
This is also not the first time Eufy has had security issues which have led some, such as myself, to question their competence in this area. There is nothing to suggest any malice on Eufy’s part, and as far as we can see they have responded correctly on the technical front. They’ve also pledged to engage third-party auditors and set up a bug-bounty program to encourage security researchers to find anything else that needs fixing over the longer term. Their muddled communication about this recent incident leaves some room for pause, however.
Personally, I’m satisfied they are going in the right direction and will be keeping my own Eufy cameras. That's a decision you'll have to make for yourself.
For the most part, the Eufy Security app is clean and well laid out. Eufy specific features, or features with specific caveats have those details displayed clearly with explanatory information on the feature pages, and new features include clear diagrams or animations to explain what they do.
In some cases, finding certain features can be difficult as they may be located under a submenu of the app’s main hamburger menu rather than under the device settings. There are a few things like smart home integration instructions that are not obvious without some digging. Settings up armed and disarmed behaviors can also only be done through a Homebase under a different section of the app, a feature I’ve seen others fail to find.
Support documentation is provided through the app, but only via a single Help menu, and is not easily accessible from the various feature pages.
Accessing recorded events is done by tapping the small number in the lower right corner of the device thumbnail. This isn’t obvious up front but is easily discoverable as the number of events increases. Once found it’s easy to access and provides a simple daily list view of recorded events. Each event is presented as a thumbnail with a time stamp, and some tags to indicate the nature of the even. These tags include if it was a human, the detected face if present, and if a delivery was left or picked up.
The selected day can be changed easily at the top of the list, and tapping on the date provides a calendar view to allow for quick jumps. Filters for event type, camera, and location are also provided. I found the event list to populate within 2 seconds most of the time but would occasionally fail to load and required a refresh (by pulling down and releasing on the screen). This occurred when using both the on-board memory and the Homebase storage. It’s not frequent enough to be of concern, but it can be frustrating if you are trying to quickly access an event.
When playing an event, I found scrubbing forwards and backwards awkward and often impractical. The player doesn’t respond smoothly or quickly to movements of the video position marker and often seems to just ignore where I moved it to, which made trying to zero in on part of the event to replay very frustrating. Depending on your recording length settings this may not be a big deal, but during longer events, such as a conversation using two-way talk, it’s much more of an issue.
The Eufy E340 on the home screen
Most settings are clearly arranged here
Events are provided in a simple list
Smart Home Features
The E340 purports to allow live view streaming to Alexa and Google smart displays. I was able to test with an Echo Show device and have motion and doorbell ring announcements come through within 5 seconds of an event. I was not ever able to get the video stream to play on the device or in the Alexa app, it would simply time out after a long wait. I don’t have a Google display to test, and the Google Home app doesn’t support video streaming, so I was unable to confirm on that platform.
Other Features
Power Manager provides good insight into the amount of activity the doorbell is processing, how long since the last charge, and the current battery level. You can also select 4 different power optimization levels which adjust record time and motion recording frequency.
Response Settings provide a number of pre-recorded auto responses for use with live view and doorbell rings. Additional responses can be created in the app, and another set of responses can be used for the Delivery Guard feature.
Alternatives
Ring Video Doorbell 4
If you don’t mind paying a modest subscription for cloud storage, the Ring Video Doorbell offers a much wider field of view, much faster notification performance, better audio quality and more privacy controls for a similar price. Don’t expect it to do package monitoring, though, as it’s 16:9 aspect ratio basically has no visibility of the package drop zone in front of the door.
WUUK Video Doorbell Pro
The WUUK Video Doorbell Pro provides an excellent video camera, fast motion detection response thanks to an onboard radar sensor, and some novel features like a voice changer for two-way talk. This is a great value video doorbell that also doesn’t require any subscription thanks to local recording on the included base station, which also acts as an indoor chime.
Aqara G4
The new Aqara G4 Video Doorbell provides a wealth of features including the only video doorbell to run on regular AA batteries. Wired power is also on offer, and the included indoor chime provides the ability to support Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video for those using the HomeKit smart home system.
Frequently Asked Questions
See our video doorbell guides to learn more about other models, features, and options.
Does the Eufy E340 require a Homebase?
No, the E340 can operate completely independently using its 8GB onboard storage and local AI processing. Existing mechanical chimes or smart speakers from Amazon and Google can be used for indoor chimes if required.
What are the drawbacks of Eufy?
Eufy has had a number of security fumbles. These appear to have been innocent mistakes, but tend to create the impression that their security competency isn’t as good as it should be. Eufy has responded quickly to these incidents, although not always in a completely transparent manner.
What is the resolution of the Eufy E340?
Being a dual camera video doorbell, there are two seperate resolutions at play. The main forward facing camera is a 2K HDR model with a resolution of 2048 x1536, while the downward facing package monitoring camera is an HD 1600 x 1200.
Can you turn off a Ring camera? Effectively yes, and here’s the simple steps to do it.