3. Camera – Eufy Indoor Cam 2K
Price: $39
Cameras used to be HomeKit biggest gap with most selling in the $150-$250 range. However, thanks to recent new releases from Eufy and Aqara, that is no longer the case. The entry level Eufy Indoor Cam 2K is everything you will want from a basic home camera and in my opinion it performs better than some more expensive models from Logitech and Arlo.
It comes with a really solid 2K chip, excellent night vision, sound/motion detection and local recording. You can choose to store your recordings on an SD card or leverage RSTP protocol for external recording devices (e.g., Synology NAS). HomeKit support was added only recently, but in my 2+ months of testing, I have not encountered any issues. The camera is responsive, event notifications work well and it is possible to have multiple people streaming at the same time. Eufy also supports HomeKit Secure Video if you want to pay for the extra level of privacy. The only issue I have encountered so far was when I tried to ban the camera from accessing external networks – for some reason, the camera still tried to contact Eufy servers and keeps rebooting, but it looks more like a bug that should be easy to fix. I would also like to see 2FA authentication in the Eufy app for extra security. But these are just two small incremental issues that will very likely get fixed by a software update.
