Eufy Video Doorbell E340 review

Eufy Video Doorbell E340 review: Introduction

• Type: Battery
• Connectivity: 2.4GHz Wi-Fi
• Ecosystems: Matter, Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, SmartThings etc

With the cost of individual Ring subscriptions having gone up, Eufy is here to capitilize, with another quality product that doesn’t require a subscription and offers local storage for your captured videos.

With its dual cameras, the Eufy Video Doorbell E340 gets a full view of your doorstep, and has smart features, including facial recognition built in.

If you want high-quality video without the subscription fees, then there’s currently nothing better than this model, which takes on the likes of the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro and the Blink Video Doorbell at the top-end of the wireless video doorbell market.

Read our full Eufy Video Doorbell E340 review to find out more.

Design and installation

• Ships with angle and straight mounts
• Can be trickle-charged via a doorbell transformer
• Tall, narrow and a little chunky

The Eufy Video Doorbell E340 is an update to the older Eufy Video Doorbell Dual E330, which came out just over two years ago. While the old version required a HomeBase, the new version is completely standalone.

As with many of Eufy’s security cameras, the E340 can be connected to a HomeBase if you have one, giving you a central place for storage, which can be expanded with a hard disk or SSD.

Without a HomeBase, you’re limited to using the doorbell’s integrated 8GB of storage, which should last for around a month or so, depending on how many recordings the doorbell has to make.

This particular model is taller and narrower than Ring’s doorbells, such as the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro. As such, it should fit on most doorframes using the standard adaptor.

Eufy also provides an angle adaptor, which gives some versatility. It’s also worth using this if the doorbell will sit next to a side wall that could reflect IR lights, obscuring night vision.

As a battery-powered product, the E340 is quite chunky thanks to its integrated battery. This can be removed for charging, although the terminals on the back allow you to use an existing doorbell transformer for trickle charging.

That’s handy, as you should never have to remove the doorbell, and it also means that you can use an existing wired chime, rather than relying on the doorbell’s speaker, optional Eufy wireless chimes and/or smart speakers.

Features

• Dual-cameras
• Package detection and facial recognition
• Subscription-free recordings

The doorbell’s dual cameras make it stand out from the competition. There’s a main, forward-facing camera at the front, which shoots video at a 2K resolution (2048 x 1536).

At the bottom of the doorbell, pointing towards the ground is a second camera that has a 1600 x 1200 resolution and points down to monitor the ground in front of your door.

Combined, the two cameras give you a fuller view of what’s happening outside of your door, but the bottom camera is also there to monitor packages using Delivery Guard. This gives you options for dealing with packages automatically.

The main feature is to send an alert when a package is delivered. Eufy says that this feature works best with larger packages (at least 10 inches on each side), and that’s true in my experience. Smaller boxes slipped through the net, and it was only bigger packages that triggered the system.

There are a couple of extra settings you can use. First, there’s Package Guarding, which can play an automated warning when someone approaches a box left on your front door.

Secondly, there’s Uncollected Package Alerts, which warn you at a time of your choosing if there are packages that still need to be brought inside.

All of the features rely on a package being detected, but once they are, Package Guarding is genuinely useful, particularly if you receive a lot of deliveries.

Outside of this, the doorbell operates like any other, including acting as a security camera. There’s standard motion detection on offer, and the radar-based detection that was available on the E330 (and the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro) has gone.

There’s a slider to adjust motion sensitivity and activity zones, but the more useful option to reduce the number of alerts you get is to use the Human Only motion detection.

That dramatically cut down the number of notifications I got, although I still found the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro better, as I could set it to ignore movement at a set distance.

There’s also facial recognition built-in. I’d used this feature on a HomeBase with other Eufy cameras, but had to start from scratch with this doorbell as it handles processing locally.

Once trained, recognised faces are added as a tag to recorded video. I found that the detection was reliable during the day and at night.

Footage is saved to the camera’s integrated storage, with clips available from the app’s Events tab. This shows a day at a time, and is filterable by device, event type and day.

The interface is a little basic, but it’s relatively easy to find a specific clip. Every clip can be watched in-app, or downloaded to your phone’s photo album.

Calls from visitors pushing the doorbell button are sent to your phone. I found that calls normally arrive in a few seconds, and the Eufy Video Doorbell E340 was quick to initialise its video feed when answering.

Similar to the competition, the Eufy Video Doorbell E340 can send quick replies, such as, “We’ll be right there.”. There’s also a button to answer a call and have a chat with whoever’s at the door. Audio quality is clear, and callers are easy to chat with.

Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant support are available, with smart speakers able to act as wireless chimes. I could stream footage to my Echo Show, but there’s no option to answer a call from a smart display.

There’s also no support for other smart home systems, such as IFTTT, Apple Home or SmartThings.

Performance

• High resolution video
• Stream has both camera feeds
• Colour night vision

Video from both cameras is captured and saved into the same clip. Unlike with Eufy’s other dual-lens cameras, such as the Eufy SoloCam S340, the E340’s video resolution isn’t reduced to capture both feeds.

Very sharp video that’s nicely exposed is the hallmark of this camera, and with daytime footage it’s very easy to see exactly what’s going on.

At night, the default option is to turn on the InfraRed lights and shoot video in black and white.

Video quality is pretty good, with the 2K camera helping maintain a good level of sharpness and the camera picking up the video a decent way into the background.

There’s also an option to use full-colour night vision. This turns on the dual LED spotlights when motion is detected.

It’s a system that works surprisingly well, and close to the doorbell, people look as good as when shot during daylight.

Final thoughts

If you don’t want to pay a monthly subscription fee but you don’t want to lose out on features, the Eufy Video Doorbell E340 is an excellent alternative to the main competition.

Its high-quality video, clever package tracking and facial recognition make it a brilliant high-end doorbell.

How we test

When we publish our reviews, you can rest assured that they are the result of “living with” long term tests.

Smart video doorbells usually live within an ecosystem, or a range of products that – supposedly – all work in harmony. Therefore, it’s impossible to use a security camera for a week and deliver a verdict.

Because we’re testing smart home kit all day, everyday, we know what matters and how a particular video doorbell compares to alternatives that you might also be considering.

Our reviews are comprehensive, objective and fair and, of course, we are never paid directly to review a device.

Read our guide on our review process for a video doorbell to learn more.