Eufy E340 Wireless Video Doorbell

The E340 wireless video doorbell gets off to a good start by offering dual cameras – a front-facing 2K one for people and vehicles, plus a slightly lower-specified 1080p downwards-facing one for parcels. Colour Night Vision is also on the features list, with bright built-in lights at the top and bottom of the doorbell enhancing visibility in low-light.

Most people will use the removeable, rechargeable battery supplied (there’s a USB-C cable in the box) but hard-wired connection is also an option, useful if you’re replacing a traditional wired door bell.

With 8Gb of storage onboard, most people will find there’s plenty of room for their video recordings but you can supersize your storage options by adding a Homebase 3 base station. This offers 16Gb but is capable of being further expanded with extra portable hard drives, giving a colossal maximum of 16TB of video storage.

For a subscription-free device, this is an unusually well-featured option. Take, for instance, its facial recognition technology. Globally, its use, especially in public places, is a hugely sensitive subject – Ring, for instance, point-blank refuses to have any truck with it. But hand on heart, in the context of a domestic video doorbell, at least, I find it really useful to have familiar faces visiting the house instantly flagged up and named.

Partner this doorbell with other current Eufy security cameras, such as the £179.99 S340 that I’ve previously tested, and you can perform another neat trick: Cross-Camera tracking. Essentially, this stitches together the captured video of tracked visitors – from all of your cameras – to create a single, piece of video footage. It’s quite obvious that it’s still a work in progress but boy, is it clever.

And all of the above ingenuity is marshalled by a thoughtfully laid out app that’s supremely easy to navigate and live with. Alerts are pretty instant and 2-way conversations with visitors are relatively clear, thanks to a sensitive microphone and decent quality speaker.

In individual aspects, it’s true, the Eufy can be marginally bettered, video quality being the most obvious. But where wireless video doorbell cameras are concerned, it’s important to take a broad view, balancing performance, features, usability and value for money. That’s where this model scores a clear home run.

Eufy’s E340 doorbell may not stomp all over its competitors in quite the same all-conquering fashion as the complementing S340 outdoor camera does; its margin of superiority is much slimmer. As an overall package, however, it’s still ranks as the best subscription-free, wireless video doorbell I’ve yet tested. No mean feat.