I have bought 3 Eufy cameras that were well reviewed and heavily advertised “no subscription fees, everything is local” as the main features.
The hardware itself is fine but the software is rubbish, pure and total waste of every byte used to run it. Not only does it not work half of the time when I try to view the footage or connect to the live feed, but it also often misses motion that it should not - I would often walk in from of my house during perfect weather day and it would just not record any motion. On top of that the mobile app’s primary purpose is to show you ads of Eufy cameras, and they are everywhere in the UI, constant; every other feature is secondary extra that developers spend minimal time in between adding ads. Between unreliability and ads it’s all just so incredibly annoying to use. When you complain about the ads they will turn it down a notch, but not fully, the official response is that “they needs ads to pay for the app”, which is incredibly dishonest - it’s just Eufy product ads - you buy a camera, install the app that is required to use it, and you’re bombarded with ads trying to upsell you more of what you just bought because you using their product costs them. So instead of a simple subscription fee you have adware product with dishonest and misleading messaging, and an app that takes half a gig of space so it can show you ads.
I also remember reporting a bug that there was a constant “new” badge next to their referral button in-app, despite me clicking on it and reading it (which I though it would make the “new” badge go away) - support kindly explained to me that they have new referral program every week, which is bonkers because the only thing that changes is the date.
I did look into alternatives but didn’t see anything I could easily trust more after Eufy, so I’m looking forward to the future where simple open source software will cover this part of market, because private companies so far seem to just give you crap for as my $$$ as they can extract.
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