The affordable smart-home brand Eufy is introducing a new video doorbell that has not one but two cameras. This lets you see a detailed view of the face and body of whoever is at your doorstep, as well as any packages they have resting on the ground.
The Eufy Security Video Doorbell Dual (Battery) has a 2K camera with a 160-degree field of view at the top, while the lower-quality Full HD lens, offering a 120-degree field of view, sits on the angled base of the doorbell to capture the ground. Powered by a rechargeable battery, so there’s no need for existing doorbell wiring, it connects wirelessly to the HomeBase 2, which provides 16GB of storage space.
The Eufy Security Video Doorbell Dual (Battery) is priced at $259.99 / £229.99 / AU$449.99 and will go on sale on February 8 in the US and February 16 in the UK. The Australian on-sale date has yet to be confirmed.
Opinion: two cameras are better than one
There’s no denying that lost and stolen parcels are a big problem, no matter where you are in the world. According to the UK comparison site confused.com, more than 7.5 million parcels were stolen in the UK in 2020, even though many people were at home due to the global pandemic. In the US, lost and stolen parcels equate to a cost of $25 million, according to C+R Research.
So a video doorbell that can capture the full length of someone at your threshold, including any parcels they may have at their feet, can be a valuable tool when it comes to tracking down missing deliveries. Rival brands including Arlo, Google Nest and Ring have tackled this using a camera that records footage with an aspect ratio of 1:1. While this is ideal if the package has been placed on the ground right next to the person at your door, it doesn’t help if they've placed the package slightly to the right or left of them.
This is an issue I experience regularly. My front door opens outwards, so if a delivery person places the package next to them, they prevent the door from being opened fully. Instead, those that regularly deliver parcels to my home (and there’s quite a few as I’m a big fan of online shopping) tend to place them further to their left-hand side, which means they’re often not in the camera's range.
However, with the two cameras on the Eufy Security Video Doorbell Dual (Battery), this should no longer be a problem.
We’re big fans of Eufy's range of video doorbells and home-security cameras here at TechRadar as they use a base station with built-in storage space for footage – meaning you don’t need to subscribe to be able to review footage at a later date. In this case, the base station comes with 16GB of storage space, which Eufy says is enough for 90 days (although it didn't confirm how many detections a day this was based on). The Eufy Security Video Doorbell Dual (Battery) also builds on this by using AI to identify and alert you about packages in its field of view, in the same way that Arlo, Google Nest and Ring doorbells do, just without the need to subscribe to access the feature.
Missed deliveries are one of the most valuable reasons for investing in a video doorbell in the first place. As life starts to return to normal after the pandemic and more of us venture out of the house, Eufy’s dual-camera video doorbell could prove extremely useful for those who regularly get parcels dropped at their door.
