ZDNET’s key takeaways
- The Eufy Security Video Doorbell E340 is normally available for $180 but is currently on sale.
- This doorbell features two cameras to give you complete visibility of the person at your door and any packages left on your porch, all with no monthly fees.
- Although the doorbell comes with 8GB of built-in local storage (enough for up to 60 days of event recordings), you need to add a Eufy Security HomeBase to get the most out of it.
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If you’re looking for a reliable video doorbell that can help protect your home and packages and offers local storage, let me introduce you to the Eufy Security Video Doorbell E340.
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This doorbell has two cameras: One gives you the traditional visibility of who’s at your front door, and another is pointed downwards to let you know when a package has been delivered.
The latest E340 video doorbell’s two cameras deliver real-time notifications to your mobile device when a person is detected and a package is delivered.
This doorbell camera will also send real-time motion notifications to your mobile device. It offers the option to use two-way talk to communicate with whoever is at the door from your mobile phone or quick replies to automatically respond when they ring the doorbell.
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The camera above the doorbell button records events in 2048 x 1536 resolution to deliver 2K footage that is clear and gives you a detailed view of whoever is at the door. The doorbell itself has two motion-activated lights, one at the top and a second one below — where the other camera is — to light the way in the dark, alert visitors or would-be intruders that the camera has been activated, and support the camera’s color night vision recording.
Maria Diaz/ZDNET
The biggest improvement I’ve seen after replacing my old Eufy Security video doorbell with this dual E340, aside from the package detection, is night vision recordings. The doorbell can correctly determine what motion is a person, animal, vehicle, or just the wind, with very few false alerts. For example, we put pirate skeletons all over the porch for Halloween, and the doorbell only had issues mistaking one for a person a few times.
Add the HomeBase 3 and the E340 dual doorbell, which can also confidently identify who’s at the door by name. This is powered by AI technology within the HomeBase 3 that allows users to name the faces the camera detects to let you know when “Maria” is detected at the front door instead of just “a person.”
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Eufy’s Delivery Guard technology notifies you when packages are delivered and picked up and lets you set up zone restrictions to avoid false alerts. You can also set up the Eufy video doorbell E340 to trigger an alarm — a siren or a voice response — when someone approaches a package at your door, with the option to activate it at custom times. I also have mine set to alert me each night of uncollected packages at the front door, reminding me to bring them in before bedtime.
On the left, both video doorbell cameras show a package was delivered. The activity history is on the right.
Maria Diaz/ZDNET
The doorbell’s local storage means you don’t have to pay cloud storage fees and can easily access your video recordings. With the addition of a HomeBase 3, you could expand that storage by 16GB and later add SSDs to expand that to 16TB if that’s more your speed.
ZDNET’s buying advice
You can get the Eufy Security Video Doorbell E340 for $150 at the time of writing. It features 2K-resolution video recording, 8GB of local storage, color night vision with a clear viewing distance of up to 16ft, and, my personal favorite, no monthly fees. The video doorbell E340 is perfect for anyone who wants a doorbell camera to be on the alert when any visitors arrive and one to help protect their packages.
This doorbell has helped alert us when a package arrives so we can bring it inside promptly. Most drivers don’t ring the doorbell during delivery, which we appreciate with three young kids and an excitable dog.
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Now, I get an alert on my phone or smartwatch when “A package was delivered,” which is much better than finding a heavy package when I’m in a hurry out the door. This video doorbell isn’t helpful for my situation but for anyone living in a place that porch pirates often target, as this can prevent packages from sitting out overnight and deter strangers from approaching it.
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