EufyCam 3 vs. 3C [Any Noteworthy Differences?]

Eufy is a name that you might have seen in the news recently. Despite the recent bad press about the company’s privacy policy and “local storage only” claims, Eufy has been a reliable brand for home security cameras for a number of years and does not seem to be showing signs of slowing down anytime soon.

They have a wide range of cameras from floodlight cameras, to wired cams, to home security systems that can monitor multiple cameras at once.

In this article, we will be covering a very wide range of what these products — the Eufycam 3 and the Eufycam 3C — can do. We won’t just discuss video quality and audio quality, but how well you can perceive both from a distance.

We will give you information on the storage space and its limitations as well. Finally, we will discuss the features and what may be missing from either product.

Both of these products are identical in a number of categories. If you want to know the differences exclusively; you may want to skip down to features.


Quick Comparison

The Eufycam 3 is the more expensive product (in the mid $500s for a 2-camera setup), though it feels like the more intelligent purchase. It exclusively contains a larger battery, a built-in solar panel, anti-theft detection, and better water resistance.

Its video quality is spectacular and you can hear the audio well despite the two-way communication being a bit rudimentary. It isn’t a cheap product, though I would argue when it comes to home security looking for a deal isn’t the best move.

The Eufycam 3C is not a bad camera for the $400’s (at MSRP), it simply is insufficient by comparison. It offers 4k video like its counterpart and contains an admirable amount of storage space (which is upgradable), though it lacks the longevity of the Eufycam 3.

If you aren’t worried about anti-theft or the larger battery, you could get this with a separate solar panel to save a few bucks. Otherwise, we would recommend saving up for the Eufycam 3 instead.


~~~ Check Price: Eufycam 3 ~~~

~~~ Check Price: Eufycam 3C ~~~


Installation

If these speakers bear a resemblance, it is because they are very similar. The installation process for both is identical and relatively simplistic. Eufy has done a good job making the setup fairly painless and we will go through it step by step to ensure that there is no frustration on your end if you do have or plan to get one of these devices.

Initial Setup

  1. Both products will have S380 Homebase in their box. Plug it into an outlet and wait for the blue light on the front of the device to turn on.
  2. While the light device is turning on, download the Eufy Security app for your mobile device.
  3. The app will direct you through a series of instructions to connect your Homebase and camera.
  4. Make sure the camera is fully charged before the mounting process.

Mounting The Camera

Before mounting your camera, there are a few tips that may prove helpful. If possible, try to mount the camera 7 – 10 feet from the ground for the best coverage.

You should also make sure it is reserved for the most vulnerable areas of your home. An example would be if you have bay windows or an easily accessed backyard, these would be good spots to monitor.

If you are using the Eufycam 3 or the 3C with an accompanying solar panel (not included), make sure the area receives a good bit of light throughout the day. You should also try to get an idea of how the video feed looks (found in the app) prior to installing anchors and mounting brackets.

The following steps will require a drill, a 6mm drill bit, and about thirty minutes or less of your time.

  1. Twist off the outer layer of the mounting bracket to separate it.
  2. Create holes with the 6mm drill bit and include the anchors if you are mounting the device on a resilient surface. This could include brick, concrete, or metal.
  3. Screw the inner mounting bracket into the desired location.
  4. On the back of your camera will be a hole to insert the outer mounting bracket. Twist it into place until it’s firmly in the camera.
  5. You can now reconnect the two mounting bracket pieces via the knob until it is nice and snug.

The beauty of using cameras that require a battery is you have a lot less to fuss with when it comes to wires and installation requirements. Once you have completed all the previous steps your device should be up and running!


Video & Audio

A camera that can’t decipher what it is seeing or hearing is a useless purchase. Thankfully, this is not a concern for either of these cameras. While they are identical in terms of their video and audio quality, we will still go over what they bring to the table.

This is not a sign of things to come and the differences start to become very noticeable as you get into the features and batteries of these products.

These cameras have a solid picture quality that will be as close to crystal as you will get for this price range. They film in 4k resolution (3840 x 2160) and record at 15 frames per second. They both capture a 135-degree field of view which is more than competent for most spaces you need to monitor.

At 15 frames per second, playback will be noticeably choppy. This may affect the smoothness of video recordings, though you won’t miss anything important. It may make it slightly more difficult to capture high-speed targets at distance, however.

They both come with proficient facial recognition that extends to household pets and vehicles. It seems to detect most moving objects at around thirty feet. If you are placing it near a sidewalk or high-traffic road, it might prove useful to be wary of that.

When using the zoom feature when looking through video recordings, most fine details can be made out as far as thirty-five feet. Past that, things like shirt logos, license plates, and other smaller targets may be harder to distinguish. Vehicles and people will almost always be able to be made out clearly, however.

The 3C also captures objects in motion very clearly and minute features come through crystal clear when pausing a frame.

Concerning the night vision with the included 100lm spotlight, it works fairly well and will bring a decent amount of clarity. Under twenty feet from the camera, you will spot most things easily and with a fairly clear image. While you can still make out lesser details past that, the target will fade from view fairly quickly past forty feet.

There is also a black-and-white mode which produces a fairly clear image, though facial features will be a bit more difficult to discern. The same rules that apply to color night vision apply here as well – twenty feet and under is the sweet spot. Past that, it leans more into shaded figures and silhouettes.

The audio on these cameras is not excellent, though it picks up voices very well. They sound a bit canned and compressed, though they are loud and typically audible. The two-way communication works well though the person closest to the speaker may have some issue hearing you. While the person in front of the camera sounds fairly good, the person speaking into it can be hard to hear at times.

Be wary of loud noises nearby like lawnmowers, engines, or airplanes as they may drown out the more pertinent noise.


Storage Space

Cameras have evolved dramatically over the last couple of decades. You no longer need a storage closet full of poorly labeled VHS tapes to keep a record of who has passed by your yard. With local or cloud storage you can reliably save video and audio. The size of these recordings varies massively depending on resolution, audio, and more, however.

Both devices come with 16 gigabytes of local storage. This can be backed up with a USB and can also be modified with a compatible hard drive. The hard drive can be swapped in the Homebase hub which will store all of the local storage and gives you the potential to have 16 terabytes of space.

While this doesn’t seem like a lot, it is actually incredibly nice for those that don’t want subscription fees. Several cameras from a broad number of companies contain additional cloud storage for a monthly fee, which can prove frustrating.

The option to improve the storage capacity on your own terms is a feature we would like to see in more devices. So if you are someone who gets irate at the mention of premium plans, these are both good options.


Features

At the risk of spoiling all the fun, the Eufycam 3 is the better camera. It possesses more features, superior battery life, and a built-in solar panel. In fact, there are no features the 3C has that the Eufycam 3 doesn’t. Because of this, we are going to cover their shared features, where they differ, and cover an exclusive feature or two.

Both devices have two USB ports and a SATA port.

2.4 GHz Compatibility

The Wi-Fi on both devices is listed to connect at 200 meters out, which is likely possible because of the 2.4 GHz connection. While 5.0 is notably faster, it gives a more limited connection distance. So while 2.4 won’t be as quick, you have more wiggle room.

The notifications still appear fairly quickly, however. When testing out how quickly you could get a response from motion detection, it took a little under 2 – 3 seconds for it to reach my phone. This doesn’t excuse the fact that Eufy has an entire catalog limited to one type of connection, which feels very limited.

Battery Life

The battery is one of the few things that makes the Eufycam 3 a far more appealing purchase with a marketed battery life of one calendar year. This is assuming that the camera is recording around five minutes of footage each day.

This also doesn’t take into account the fact that this camera has a built-in solar panel. Under the right amount of sunlight, you could arguably never have to worry about it much.

The Eufycam 3 has a battery capacity of 13400mAH or milliampere-hour.

The Eufycam 3C does not give you as much in terms of longevity. It has a marketed battery life of around 6 months if you were to record five minutes of video every day. While you can get an accompanying solar panel, it doesn’t come with the device and will need to be purchased separately.  The battery capacity of the 3C is 10000mAH.

BionicMind Facial Recognition

One of Eufy’s newest features is its impressive self-learning AI that is designed to familiarize itself with faces over time and notify you when strangers approach your home or business. While the source of this claim is from Eufy itself, over time the technology is estimated to perform with 99% accuracy.

It also has the ability to recognize familiar pets and vehicles, so you don’t have to call the cops on your dachshund. Admittedly, this feature is less appealing in light of the recent privacy concerns that have been acknowledged by Eufy.

The feature that is potentially the most convenient is that it will organize video clips under the person that is being recorded. If you give the software an image and a name, it will then put all footage of that person into one spot. So if you have a lot of footage of your significant other doing yard work, you can find all of their effort under one category.

This will also help minimize false alarms and notifications, keeping your mind at ease and your phone screen far less cluttered.

Ingress Protection Rating (Water and Dust Resistance)

Most electronics that will be used outdoors typically come with some amount of weather resistance. Considering both of these products will be vulnerable to rain, snow, and much more – you will want them to be fairly weatherproof. Thankfully, even though one possesses a bit more; both should prove to be safe year-round.

The Eufycam 3 comes with an IP67 rating while the Eufycam 3C has an IP65 rating. The biggest difference between these two is that while both are resistant to water, only the Eufycam 3 can survive being dunked underwater.

While we certainly don’t recommend you test this claim, it should still be working if submerged for ten minutes or less. They are both resistant to small particles getting into the device such as dirt, dust, and pollen.

Customizable Activity Zones

If you do find that you can’t avoid putting a camera in a high-traffic area, you can lessen the notifications by adjusting the activity zone also known as geofencing.

The activity zone is essentially the area of interest that your camera will monitor. So if you want a Eufy camera above your front door but don’t want notifications every time a car passes, you can refine it to just under where your yard meets the road.

This is really nice for folks who live in crowded subdivisions, active city streets, or even people living off highways. While it is nice to monitor your home and have peace of mind while away, it is nothing short of infuriating getting a notification every other minute. With a customizable activity zone, this is far less of a concern.

Voice Assistants

If you want to connect your cameras to a smart home assistant, you’re in luck! At the time of this article, both cameras are compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant. Unfortunately, folks that utilize products such as Apple’s Siri or Samsung’s Bixby are out of luck.

Some of the more general commands are fairly straightforward. You can see the live feeds of different devices, switch between cameras, and command it to stop watching a specific camera. This can get pretty absurd with the inclusion of other devices, making most parts of your home automated or voice-activated.

Two-Way Audio

The addition of including your own voice in cameras makes it much easier to communicate with those at your door when you are incapable of coming to your door.

The voice of the person in front of the camera will sound relatively clear if not a bit compressed. The person speaking into the camera will be a bit harder to hear as the sound can get a bit muffled and staticky coming through the Eufycams.

8x Zoom

This can only be done when viewing recordings and will not work when observing live video. With that said, the zoom feature is very competent and easy to use. The magnification is far more clear than you would expect and will benefit those trying to get a more detailed look at something on a recording.

It works a lot like zooming in on a webpage through a smartphone; put two fingers where you want to zoom in and pull them apart to bring the image closer. With the competent 4k resolution of both of these devices, most objects in the daytime will be easily discernable. Nighttime may be a bit more limited, however.

Siren

Whether you want to keep out unwanted guests or horrify your family members as they get home – the siren feature allows for both. You can activate this manually or have it set to go off whenever it detects motion.

The sound these alarms make is uniquely unpleasant and sure to grab the attention of anyone within earshot. It also flashes a very bright, almost disorienting light to bring more attention to your house.

Eufy Security (Mobile App)

The Eufy Security app sits at a cozy 4.7 average rating on both app stores.

This is a welcome relief because it is required in the setup process. With that said, there are some notable drawbacks to the app.

The first one is that the app includes a full-screen advertisement, which you will have to exit out of. This is an app that is required to utilize Eufy products and it feels very inappropriate to force ads on your consumers.

The geofencing can be buggy and hard to work with for some, often giving notifications for seemingly nothing. Finally, the app may be a bit slow to respond when you are far from home.

The app is not without its positives, however. The most interesting feature is the addition of facial recognition that extends to your pet and car. Simply upload an image of yourself or a family member to the app and it will categorize all footage of you under one folder.

Video recordings are almost always a long series of numbers and hard-to-decipher thumbnails – a little organization goes a long way.

The user interface outside of the initial ad is actually really pleasant and simplistic. It keeps track of multiple Homebase products as well as any and all compatible Eufy cameras you use. You can also get a detailed security report that goes into all the events that took place that day. It shows you a timeline of events as well as how much activity was monitored on a specific camera.

As previously discussed, two-way communication can be done through the app and you also get a live feed of any camera you choose to observe. Through vocal assistants like Alexa, this can be done with vocal commands.

Anti-theft Alert (Exclusive to Eufycam 3)

The Eufycam 3 has a mechanism inside of it that can detect when the device itself is being moved. While many would expect a burglar to try and steal their possessions, few expect the burglar to steal the camera.

Eufy has considered this, however, and found a clever workaround that can detect when a camera is moved. So while a strong gust of wind probably won’t set this feature off, your cousin Chet pulling on the camera very well might.

If Chet does indeed pull too hard, he will trigger the siren. The siren will blare a shrill alarm and start flashing a bright white light to bring everyone’s attention to the person pulling the camera. If someone does decide to steal the device regardless, they will be doing so to a 100-decibel siren. This feature is made possible due to a built-in accelerometer that can detect movement within the device.


Final Thoughts

For those still on the fence, let me offer a final statement.

While the Eufycam 3C is a fine camera that few people would gripe with, it lacks some key features that increase battery longevity as well as home security.

The improved battery life, solar panel, and anti-theft detection of the Eufycam 3 make it a hard device to pass on.

If you aren’t worried about anti-theft detection and lesser battery, you could purchase a compatible solar panel from Eufy. Additionally, if you plan to put the camera in an area where there won’t be sunlight – there really is little reason not to purchase the 3C.

Outside of the differences mentioned, these are objectively the same camera. If you want to check out other Eufy cameras and how they stack up, we have a number of articles going into more detail on a wide range of their products.

~~~ Check Price: Eufycam 3 ~~~

~~~ Check Price: Eufycam 3C ~~~