If you want to keep an eye on your pets and furniture while you’re away, the Eufy Pro N140 offers exceptional video quality, reach, and interactivity. The only thing you really need to take into account before buying is how your pet will react to the interactivity.
Eufy is a company with a sterling reputation for home security—clips are locally stored, which reduces privacy issues since nothing goes to the cloud. It also means you never need a subscription, and the quality of their cameras is unparalleled. They have two pet cameras, the slightly more petite D605 (currently on sale for $129.99 on Amazon) and the model I’m using, the N140 ($209.99, but 145.99 right now with a discount code on Eufy’s site). The N140 offers a little more range, with the ability to spin 360 degrees, and the D605 offers a little more control over one of the most fun features—the ability for the unit to toss treats at your pet.
Privacy vs. pets
The first thing to acknowledge is that a pet camera is just that—it’s for watching your pets. Even though you are getting delightfully good video quality, you are not going to hide this unit around your house to use as a security camera; this unit is large enough it has its own zip code. By having a pet camera, you have to forgo the privacy concerns—while the Eufy does an admirable job of distinguishing me from my dog using AI, it’s only a matter of time before it catches me running through the living room in my underwear. That said, the clips don’t make it to the cloud, and you can schedule when the camera is on and off.
A large part of the Eufy pet experience is sharing. Clips of your pet are easy to share across your major platforms, and you can even invite others to pitch treats to your dog, though I can’t imagine personally inviting anyone else into my living room. Each day you’re delivered a video summary, set to music, of all your dog’s activity condensed into a minute, that is, admittedly, quite charming and clearly for sharing.
Your pet’s comfort with the camera can affect the functionality
The advantage of a pet camera, or why you put up with the privacy issues, is that you can actually see what your pet is up to, talk to your pet, and even reward your pet with treats, if the Eufy doesn’t scare the living crap out of them—which in a quick survey of fellow dog owners, seemed to be a consistent issue, less about the brand than the nature of animals. A voice unattached to a human commanding them to sit, and then having treats launched at them from nowhere takes a little to warm up to, and Eufy offers a few tips on how to acclimate your pet to the camera. Still, if you didn’t ever use the treat dispenser or intercom feature, the camera itself is quiet as a mouse and your pet would be unlikely to notice the surveillance. That would be a shame, though, because the treat dispenser is an awful lot of fun for the humans. Load up the Eufy with dry kibble or small, dry treats, and via the app, you can pull a digital slingshot that will play a sound and then launch a treat about eight feet away.
Credit: Eufy Pet App
Modern and well-designed, if a bit hefty
As I noted before, you’re unlikely to hide this cam, but you also won’t want to—it’s modern and unobtrusive in shades of gray molded plastic. The heft is due to the storage bin, which holds the treats. It never clogged after weeks of use, which is unusual. It would reliably spit one, two, or three treats out to roughly the same spot, and the unit can run through the dishwasher, so you can easily clean it. It required almost no setup—you download the Eufy Pet app, and it found the camera on its own and guided me through a three-minute onboarding to connect to wifi. Eufy currently uses different apps for pet cameras, security cameras, and home appliances, which means if you have Eufy security cameras, the pet cam is completely disconnected from that system. Although Eufy assures me that they are moving to a unified app next year sometime, there’s no plan to integrate the pet cams into the home security realm.
Video quality
This is primarily a camera, and Eufy has a great one. With a wide-angle lens that manages to capture every single angle of an entire room, there are no blind spots. If your pet is in the room, Eufy will see them; it uses AI to recognize and track your pet. Even better, the app allows you to direct the camera left or right, and the entire camera spins 360 degrees, in case you’ve placed it in the middle of the room. You can zoom into the 2K high definition as much as 2.5x, which was detailed enough to read a box label. The camera doesn’t move quickly—you’re controlling it over wifi, so there’s a slight delay, which is why placing the camera along the wall, where it won’t need to swivel as much, might be smart. Even the night vision is superb.
Tracking your pet
Although I’m sure some people use the cameras to track their cats or ferrets or birds, this camera is primarily focused on dogs. Alerts can be set for when your dog barks, and you can choose a sensitivity level. However, my particularly barky dog didn’t trigger the Eufy when the television was on. Unlike, say, my Google Minis, the Eufy can’t distinguish a trigger like a bark from other noise. It also gives you activity alerts, and as I said, the AI was pretty accurate in catching the dog, and not me, in those alerts most of the time. Tuning the settings so you don’t get constant alerts is key. All of these alerts are aggregated to a diary you get notified of each day, and it allows you to review your pet’s activity and uses AI filters to let you see trends in that activity.
Lack of automation is a real drawback
After a few weeks of trying to remember to turn the camera on when I left the house and back off when I came home, what I really wanted was the ability to automate the on and off button through a trigger so the camera was only on when I wasn’t home. I suspect this is a common concern. You could use a door sensor instead of a voice trigger, but Eufy pet doesn’t offer those integrations—or any integrations, as best as I can see. So no Google Home or HomeKit support, and it works in only a very limited way with Alexa.
Bottom line: a great utility for the price
For less than $200, this is a great tool to have if you’re concerned about being able to check in on your pet, regardless of whether you take advantage of the bells and whistles (after three weeks, I was still discovering new utilities and cute features). Having this wide a range of vision, coupled with the ability to zoom in, day or night, and possibly stop your pet from damaging your stuff or hurt themselves, is well worth the money. One vet visit or couch repair would make $200 seem like peanuts.
