With most services now charging a monthly fee, cutting back on fees wherever I can has become necessary. Eufy’s one-time purchase structure became one of its biggest selling points for me when choosing my security cameras, but it doesn’t come without trade-offs. Right now, you can get the Floodlight Cam E221 for $99.99 (normally $219.99) on Amazon. This is the cheapest price it’s ever hit, according to Camelcamelcamel’s price history. You can read PCMag’s full review here.
Here’s what you get with the Eufy Floodlight Cam E221
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As with any smart floodlight, you’ll get to keep tabs on your property remotely with 1080p footage, motion detection, and bright LED lights. Arguably, the best thing you get from this floodlight camera (and any Eufy security camera) is the absence of monthly service fees, which can easily save you hundreds of dollars a year. However, a trade-off that can be good or bad, depending on your preferences, is that the lack of a monthly service means the device saves its footage on local storage rather than the cloud, which most of the competition uses. It has 4GB of eMMC memory, which can store up to 14 days of video. If that doesn’t seem like enough to you, know that you can expand the storage to 30 days for one device by signing up for their $2.99-per-month Basic Plan (which defeats the purpose of having no monthly fees).
The Floodlight Cam E221 works with Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands, allowing you to set up routines and cast videos to Amazon or Google devices (you must talk to the smart speakers, not the floodlight camera). However, it doesn’t support any other platforms like IFTTT or even other Eufy devices. It is very much a standalone product, but it allows you to connect to your home’s wifi and control it with the Eufy mobile app. And since it’s wired, there’s no need to recharge it.