V3 Starlight lens vs Eufy 2K resolution vs V2 - picture comparison side-by-side

[carverofchoice]

For months I’ve had a V2 side-by-side with an Eufy Indoor 2K, both watching my front porch through a window (for failsafe redundancy). Now I got a V3 and decided to put it where the V2 was to compare the V3 picture quality to the Eufy (and the V2 too I guess). I will eventually move the V3 outside so there is no window glare.

So, the V3 has a Starlight lens, but is only 1080p compared to Eufy’s 2K, so I thought, in theory, it might bring in more light, but be half the resolution and so not look quite as good in some ways. Will the V3 be hard to see around light sources (white-washed out with over exposure), making eufy better, or will the starlight lens take the win overall? Of course, this comparison has both of them looking through a window, so there will be some glare. Let’s also post an image from the V2 (just before I traded it out for the V3) in there for reference too.

All 3 with the room light on but curtain closed (Top=V2, Middle=V3, Bottom=Eufy2K)

…
All 3 with the room light off and curtain closed (Top=V2, Middle=V3, Bottom=Eufy2K)

In my opinion, the 2K on the eufy doesn’t make it appear significantly better than the V3 at night with the V3’s superior Starlight sensor. I was also surprised that the whitewashing wasn’t better on the Eufy. The V2 looks significantly worse than the Eufy 2K, but the V3 looks better than the Eufy, and for half the cost, I award the points as follows:

• 1 pt Eufy = Free local/edge person & pet detection
• 1 pt Eufy = No notification cooldown without a subscription
• 1 pt V3 = Less glare than the Eufy 2K through a window watching my Front porch
• 1 pt V3 = Easier to see farther away even though it’s half the resolution. (less glare, not whitewashed more than the Eufy 2K either)
• 1 pt V3 = Base cost is Half the base cost of the Eufy 2K and same cost as the V2
• 1 pt V3 = I got my 1 year Cam Plus subscription for this cam for free anyway because of how I worked out the Black Friday deal, so I have no notification cooldown, and will have person, pet, package, face and other AI detection benefits, plus cloud storage and more for the first year for free. That’s probably worth more than 1 point.
• -1 pt Eufy = eufy’s local storage is funky. it stores all events (motion, person, pet, crying, etc) in a separate location from all nonevent recordings, then when it gets full it starts to struggle to show one or the other in the timeline unless I reformat the card (I have used other cards). It’s not consistently like that, but it has happened at least a dozen times over the last several months

V2 = 0 points (compared to the other 2)
Eufy = 1 point (due to it’s annoying negative point)
V3 = 4 points.

The V3 slaughters the other 2 in this comparison. Despite the V3 being half the resolution of the Eufy 2K and susceptible to 20X the light intake, thus at risk for white-washing around light sources, it still provides a much more clear picture at night overlooking these same conditions. V3 beats the Eufy in this particular round.

Perhaps I’ll do a round 2 sometime later in the daytime where the V3’s night advantage might slip a little to the Eufy’s 2K resolution. Also, each of the above were given the same amount of points, but some of them may be weighted more strongly than others in actuality.

What are your thoughts on the comparison?

[raym64]

I personally think the bottom pictures are a little better than the middle. Better contrast and detail in the leaves on the ground, the branches in the bushes, etc. I also ow all 3, the V2, V3, And the Eufy 2k

[cf7]

Thx for posting the images.
I like to suggest that all three cams be moved to outside and not behind glass as the glass reflection does make a lot of wash from outside.

Also turn off porch light.

[carverofchoice]

@raym64 I can certainly see that perspective. Yes, the contrast is kind of nice in many ways. Interesting that the images are so different. I think the 2K would have a significant advantage when it comes to zooming in though. Perhaps I’ll do some other tests in the future too.

@cf7 Absolutely. The main reason I did it this way for now is because it was already set up this way (so I wanted to see how the V3 performed under the same conditions I’ve had set up for months on end already. I do kind of like having a cam behind the window (harder to steal or mess with quickly), but it does have some downsides such as a reflection issue. I have tried without the porch light in past, and don’t like it at night. I can’t use IR through a window, and it is extremely difficult to see clearly without the porch on. But if they were all outside, yes, that could be something worth trying. Perhaps another night I will try all 3 outside with and without the porch light on, and during the daytime too. I do plan to eventually permanently keep my V3 outside watching the porch and keep the Eufy inside, though if I’m getting a video doorbell, maybe there’s no significant reason to have it outside anymore…we’ll see.

I just realized that the V2 probably should’ve gotten 1 point for having the best beta detection zone, though hopefully the V3 will get that eventually. The Eufy has a cool detection zone that allows you to set up 2 separate 6-pointed flexible zones, but I still like Wyze’s upcoming beta grid better for the most part.

[kjay]

Weather resistance might merit a point unless both cameras will always stay inside. Thanks for the comparison!

[carverofchoice]

Good point. I might need to add a lot more points in different places. I start thinking about several things the more this post is up. Everything has its own advantages, and like I said, I like having redundancy backup for critical areas like this front door, so I’ll still keep the eufy (plus it is nice to zoom in sometimes like when my neighbor’s house got broken into, I could zoom in closer to try to look for any video evidence around that time for them, but the Wyze cam was too low res for that. We’ll see what I notice after it’s been up and running side-by-side for more than just a few minutes

[kjay]

I saw a zoom comparison someone did with the eufy outdoor battery 2k cameras vs the eufy outdoor battery 1080p cameras and the differences were very minor. This users final conclusion was that the 2k was not worth the extra cost unless there was a sale to bring the price closer to the 1080p version. If I were going to try a zoom comparison I’d position some text at various distances and zoom in to see how each camera performed. Sadly I do not have either the V3 or a 2k camera to compare at the moment. I’m curious to see how a V3 would stack up!

[Customer]

Great comparison and thank you for it. In my opinion your Eufy pictures are better in every way. Better detail, better lighting, and less washed out. I’m surprised that you concluded the V3 performed better…

[carverofchoice]

Interesting, I’ve tried re-analyzing the photos multiple times due to comments…but on the Eufy, I can’t even make out the sidewalk at the end of my property, at least not easily, nor really make out the houses on the other side of the street, but I can with the V3. The eufy has more blurry spots that the V3 can see clearly (those farther away places). I can also make out some of the plants better that I just can’t see on the eufy. Though, I guess I know what to look for, so it may not be as apparent to others (usually the front is full of flowers and other such plants, rather than grass, but the whole thing all looks dead by late fall like this).

I can see how people would prefer up close with the eufy (I think I still prefer the V3 slightly), and I certainly intend to keep it there, but after multiple time analyzing them, I still think V3 has a slight edge overall in this particular circumstance (not necessarily if they weren’t behind a window and especially during the day time when 2K has a bigger advantage though).

[cf7]

Window glass has lots of distortions and dirt.
My comments still stand.

[carverofchoice]

Yes, it does, but it should affect them both equally, so it’s still a fair comparison, at least for those who want to point them out a window (lots of people do this because they can’t be stolen or tampered with easily).

But I agree, your comment is a good one to make a good test. I was a too busy today to try it yet though.

[Customer]

@carverofchoice

nor really make out the houses on the other side of the street, but I can with the V3.

You know your view best but I’m still seeing the opposite of what you’re saying. I zoomed in on a house across the street. The Eufy image looks much better detailed to me?

V3

Eufy

Of course in total darkness I expect the V3 to blow anything else away.

[bayarnd]

I agree. The Eufy image looks clearly better to me.

[cf7]

Nice Dark night tonite.

[jjfacejj]

If you want to say it is better for you that is fine. But for others it won’t be.

The V3 is a vast improvement over the V2 and catches up to the eufy in a few places and even surpasses it in a couple of areas. But the Eufy still holds its own in many areas. I would give the edge to the Eufy in the images above. Things like homekit support, rtsp/nas support, fast and reliable app, fast notifications are all key areas the eufy beats the V3.

The V3 for me is better for outdoor use of course, for viewing multiple cameras at once since the eufy app can’t do that, for price, for out a window use since the v3 can turn off the ir lights but keep the ir filter, for two way talk since the eufy is only push to talk (though the Eufy has better sound). The v3 also does things like time lapse and ifttt support. As well as the ability to pull the sd card and save the clips or view them on a computer (the eufy is more secure but is hard to save clips. And of course the wyze comes with free cloud storage though the eufy has AI person etc detection, no cool off and no max recording time all for free.

[unclerobmac]

I have 4 units now, 3 v2s and a new V3. Most looking through windows. I found that the trick is camera must be close against the window. I use the 3m command clear thin tape to attach camera directly to window. I position cam on window watching on my phone to get best position and mark position. The wipe with alcohol to clean and degrease window. I place two strips at 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock on cam case not over lense. Of course still can’t use IRbut new V3 starlight sensor means I don’t need.

[nycjoker]

One big advantage of the Eufy is if you are doing continuous recordings to sd card and don’t use cloud storage you can see all recorded events on your Events tab. With Wyze you can’t do that. If you disable cloud storage and keep local then you’re forced to view events on the timeline. Wyze’s timeline view is clumsy to use. Especially, with continuous recording. Eufy has fast forward up to 16x and clear markers where motion events were recorded.

[carverofchoice]

That is a good insight. although, my eufy OFTEN has problems when the SD fills up. It will frequently not show any events in the timeline anymore until I reformat the card (but it eventually goes back to having this issue after a few weeks). It will only show non-events and have black holes where events should be and just skips over them. Once in a great while it will do the reverse and only show events in the timeline but not non-events. This is super annoying. This problem happens because they don’t store all videos in the same location or the same way, and so stitching them back together in the timeline is a mess. It would be much better if they programmed it so that all videos were stored the exact same way, just tagged somehow, then it work flawlessly, but the devs really screwed up their video capturing and timeline stuff in those ways. Not totally sure what the bug is (am I letting too many notifications build up? Are event overwrites having issues when the card fills up, but not non-events?, what’s the issue exactly?), but it is really annoying and they haven’t fixed it for months (I’ve swapped SD cards, reset the cam, etc). I’m not sure how often it happens on my other 2 Eufy cams (I don’t actually use their timelines very often), but I have had it happen on the other 2 sometimes too, and it always requires me to reformat the card so it will start working normally again. It’s also frustrating that I never know when it stops giving access to events until there is one I want to view and suddenly can’t view them…then I have to go do the manual reformat maintenance again…That stopped me from switching to Eufy…Wyze has issues too, but that Eufy issue, and happening on multiple cams made me give up on using them as a fully reliable alternative, especially when they cost more.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the cams, I am keeping them, I use them as a backup to my Wyze Cams, and their notifications are basically 100% accurate…but they also have reliability issues…so watching something at 16X speed can be pointless if it won’t include any events in the timeline I am trying to review…that’s happened to me several times. At least with Wyze I can remove the SD card and plug the folder into VLC and watch everything at whatever speed I want, 16X if desired…can’t remove the eufy card to find events, they’re just locked up and unviewable when this happens.

[franknozly]

I’m very surprised people seem to be saying they think the v3 cam is better than 2k resolution. It’s very obvious unless you have really poor eyesight that the details on the 2k resolution are way better.

Even disregarding the further away houses where you can see the actual lines of the houses much better… if you look at the plants, it’s a blur in the v3 and very detailed on the eufy cam.

You’re probably thinking, why do fine details matter? Well it’s the difference between being able to read the license plate of the guy who dinged your bumper and drove off or just reading a blob.

Low light, v3 cam wins. Details obviously the 2k cam wins. And also the images are 1480 x 720 so the actual details are being lost because the images were screenshots using the phone’s resolution rather than the native image from the cam. The native full 2k resolution image would be waaaay more detailed.

[nycjoker]

I agree with you. I think people are also mislead by comparing live footage where the bitrate is variable and WiFi quality plays a role. To compare apples to apples you have to compare actual recordings. From my personal experience Eufy quality overall is better. To each their own… Competition is good for all of us