Fed up with Eufy
Massive wall of text warning, TLDR at the bottom :)
I've been a Eufy customer for 3 years now and have been slowly swapping out all my equipment. I used to be a major fan, and have spent over $1K on Eufy equipment these past few years. But I have been having nothing but problems for the past year and have grown quite tired of it.
First of all the cameras are very slow to load, by far this was my biggest issue. It often takes 5+ minutes just to view a saved recording, live view is exactly the same. This makes the video doorbell entirely unusable for 2 way communication, by the time live view loads the person is already leaving.
I have a dedicated IOT network that I use for all my smart home gear that is set to 2.4ghz only, my primary network is 5ghz only, so there should be no overlap. I currently use a newer ASUS router (2025) and have a 2Gb fiber line for internet. So it's not my network that's the problem, all of my new cameras from another vendor load instantly and have no problems streaming over the internet. I use their Home Base 3, so it's not old equipment, all of my Eufy gear was bought new within the past 3 years. I had a Samsung SSD installed, so it's not a slow hard drive issue.
Second of all, their smart lock jams a lot. This has always been an issue. I've moved it around 3 different doors, one an exterior, the other two interior. You can hear it opening and towards the very end it stops, beeps, and then sends an alert that it jammed. I have to enter the code again and it magically works without changing anything else. When I put in a new smart lock from another vendor on the exterior door, it never had any issues. When I replaced it on the first interior door with yet another vendor's smart lock, that one never had any issues...
Next is the Smart Drop, that's now been discontinued so who knows how long it will be continued to be supported, I don't have high hopes there. That one has never been reliable to stay connected to my Home Base, I get maybe a couple hours a week where it actually remains connected and sends alerts. The rest of the time I relied on my Eufy doorbell to tell me when I got deliveries. Not to mention, it also jams quite frequently, half the time the delivery person ends up leaving my package on top of the drop because it won't open the first few times they hit the button. Completely defeats the purpose, my package is now even more visible than when they left it on the stairs. Never mind using a code, nobody ever followed the delivery instructions for that (that's not Eufy's fault, so no hard feelings there). Maybe it will be more reliable now that I'm selling the Home Base 3 and have since moved it onto my WiFi network.
Then there is the Eufy robot vacuum, used to work great for the first year - year and a half. Then it started having random issues where it floods the docking tray with water and generates an alert that the water level is abnormal, so it stops functioning. This went on for several months, no matter how many times we cleaned it, it still seemed to persist. That finally stopped on it's own. I don't know if it has any sort of laser sensor or not, if it does, it certainly never detects when anyone is in front of it. It ran into my ankles, my pets, random furniture, etc countless times, but that's not really a big deal. The past few months it's been randomly waking itself up to vacuum, don't know what that's all about, I even tried setting the parental lock in case my cats were messing with it, no luck. I have quiet time set overnight, yet it still randomly starts vacuuming at 3 AM. Last week it didn't go off for it's normal scheduled time once, I had to manually start it. Don't get me started on all the times it got tangled up, which is on me, but still something that it never detects (it doesn't sense when it's wheels get jammed up, it had some pretty gnarly tangles over the years that I certainly thought would have meant the end of it).
Lastly there was their fingerprint gun safe, almost forgot about that one because I got rid of it last year. The fingerprint sensor on that thing was a joke, I absolutely would not put my life on that thing working reliably. Given the nature of the product, I would say that's a pretty big issue. Trying different fingers or setting my prints up again and again never fixed it. It was a neat concept otherwise, I liked the interior lighting.
Don't get me wrong, I loved how Eufy didn't require a paid subscription (unless you want cloud backups, which isn't necessary). I liked how it felt like I was more in control over my data, since it was stored locally and yet still accessible on an app over the internet. Physically, their products felt pretty solid, they didn't feel like cheap garbage. My outdoor camera, doorbell, flood light, and solar panel all held up very well out in the elements this entire time. I just can't vouch for them anymore, it's just been nonstop frustration nowadays. I plan to keep the Smart Drop since there's no solid alternatives IMO, but that's it. I already replaced the doorbell and cameras, the only thing left to swap out is that damn lock.
TL;DR: After 3 years and $1K+ spent, I’m dumping the Eufy ecosystem due to relentless bugs, despite having a pretty solid network and newer equipment. I'll miss having local storage and no subscription costs, but I'd rather trade for better reliability:
Cameras/Doorbell: Take 5+ mins to load live view or recordings, making them completely useless for 2-way talk and frustrating to deal with.
Smart Lock & Smart Drop: Both have issues jamming, Smart Drop almost never remained connected to the Home Base.
Robot Vacuum: Used to constantly flood it's docking station, ignores its schedules, and randomly starts vacuuming on its own.
Gun Safe: Fingerprint scanner was a joke and completely unreliable.