eufy SoloCam S340 Review: a no-subscription solar camera that mostly gets it right

I’ve been using the eufy SoloCam S340 for a little while now on the front of my house, and overall it does what I wanted: it records people coming to the door, I can check live view from my phone, and I don’t have to pay a monthly fee. That was my main goal: no subscriptions, no cables, and something I could just bolt to the wall and forget about. On those points, it’s pretty solid.

In day-to-day use, the camera feels like a mix of very smart features and a few annoying details. The dual camera and the 3K image are genuinely useful when you zoom in, and the pan/tilt really does cover a wide area. But it’s not magic: motion detection has limits, especially at night, and you have to spend a bit of time tweaking sensitivity and zones if you don’t want constant alerts for every car or cat that passes by.

What surprised me most is the battery and solar combo. I was expecting to have to climb up there every month to recharge it, but with decent sunlight it pretty much stays topped up. If you live somewhere very cloudy or you put it in the shade, you’ll probably need to plug it in from time to time, but in normal conditions it’s close to “install and forget”. That part I really liked.

It’s not perfect though. The app is good, but some choices are a bit annoying, like the forced timeout in live view and the fact that local video retention is limited unless you add more storage or a HomeBase. Overall, I’d say it’s a good fit if you want a flexible, wireless camera with no ongoing fees and you’re okay with spending 20–30 minutes in the app to tune everything properly.

In terms of value, I think the SoloCam S340 sits in a pretty reasonable spot. It’s not the cheapest camera out there, especially compared to basic Blink or Wyze units, but you’re paying for a few specific things: pan/tilt, dual camera with higher resolution, built-in battery, and solar power. On top of that, you avoid subscription fees, which, over a couple of years, easily catch up to the price difference with cheaper cameras that lock key features behind a paywall.

Compared to something like a Blink camera I used before, the eufy is clearly more capable. The image is sharper, the pan/tilt lets you cover a whole area instead of just one fixed frame, and the local storage means you’re not at the mercy of a cloud plan. On the flip side, those cheaper systems are simpler and sometimes lighter on the app side, so if you only need a basic fixed view of a door, this might be overkill.

Where the value can feel a bit less great is if you start adding extras. If you decide you want longer storage, more cameras, and a HomeBase S380, the cost climbs quickly. At that point, you’re moving into the price range of more complete systems, and you should think carefully about your actual needs. For a single or a couple of cameras, though, the one-time purchase with no ongoing fee is quite appealing. You get a lot of features without being locked into a monthly bill.

I’d say the SoloCam S340 is good value if you specifically want: 1) no subscription, 2) solar + battery, and 3) 360° coverage from a single device. If you only care about one small area and don’t mind running a cable or paying a small monthly fee, you can find cheaper options that will also get the job done. So it’s good value, but mainly for people who will actually use the extra flexibility it offers.

Physically, the SoloCam S340 is not tiny, but it’s compact enough for what it does. It’s a dome-style camera (about 3.4 x 3.4 x 4.7 inches, ~630 g) with a white body and a black camera module that rotates inside. It looks like typical eufy gear: simple, modern, and not too flashy. On my wall, it’s noticeable but not ugly. If you’re hoping for something super discreet, this isn’t it, but as a visible deterrent, it’s actually not a bad thing that people can clearly see there’s a camera.

The 360° pan and tilt mechanism feels quite solid. When you move it from the app, it rotates smoothly and doesn’t sound cheap or flimsy. I moved it around a lot when setting up zones and it never felt like it was struggling. The IP65 rating is also reassuring: mine has taken rain and wind without any issue so far. No water ingress, no fogging behind the lens. One thing to keep in mind: because of the pan/tilt, you want to mount it where it has room to rotate without hitting eaves or a wall corner.

The removable solar panel is the other key part of the design. It’s not integrated into the top of the camera; it’s a separate small panel that you can angle and position slightly differently from the camera itself. That’s useful if the ideal viewing angle isn’t the best for sunlight. I mounted the panel just above the camera, angled towards the sun, and it looks clean enough. The cable between the panel and the camera is short but workable. If you hate visible cables, you might find it a bit ugly, but that’s the trade-off with solar.

Overall, I’d describe the design as practical rather than pretty. It looks like what it is: a functional outdoor camera with moving parts and a solar panel. The mounting bracket is basic but does the job, and once you tighten everything, it stays put. No fancy finishes, no ultra-slim body, but it feels like it can handle being outside year-round, which is what matters here.

The battery and solar part was one of my biggest concerns before buying. I didn’t want to be climbing a ladder every two weeks. The SoloCam S340 has a 10,000 mAh built-in battery and comes with a 5 W solar panel. In practice, with a normal amount of daily motion and a few live views per day, the combo works well. On sunny days, the battery level in the app basically stays flat or even goes up slightly, which is exactly what you want. On cloudy days, it might drop a bit, but then recover when the sun returns.

Some Amazon users mentioned needing to recharge every few days, but when you read closely, that’s often in two cases: either the camera is in a very shaded spot with almost no sun, or the person is hammering the live view and constantly moving the camera around. If you treat it like a CCTV monitor that’s on all day, you’ll definitely drain the battery faster. The app does let you see power usage and solar input, which is handy to understand what’s going on instead of just guessing.

In my setup (moderate motion, decent sun, occasional live view), the camera hasn’t needed a manual recharge so far. I did a test early on by turning off the solar panel for a bit: the battery easily lasted over a week with normal usage before dropping to around 30–40%. So if worst comes to worst and you have a long stretch of bad weather, you’re not suddenly offline after just one day. Recharging via USB is straightforward, but obviously it means taking the camera down if you didn’t install it in easy reach.

One thing to keep in mind: the pan/tilt and tracking features do consume more power than a fixed camera, and long live view sessions also hit the battery. If you want maximum autonomy, use activity zones, dial down sensitivity, and don’t leave live view open all the time. Overall, I’d say the battery and solar performance is one of the strong points of this product, as long as you give the panel decent sun and don’t abuse live streaming.

Build-wise, the SoloCam S340 feels solid enough for an outdoor device. The plastic is thick, the dome and housing don’t flex when you press on them, and the moving parts don’t feel loose. The IP65 rating means it’s protected against dust and low-pressure water jets, which covers rain and general outdoor conditions. Mine has been through several heavy rain days and a couple of windy nights, and there’s been no sign of water getting inside or any condensation on the lenses.

One thing I was slightly worried about was the pan/tilt mechanism over time. Anything with moving parts outdoors is always a bit of a question mark. So far, it still moves smoothly, no grinding sounds or stuttering when I control it from the app. I did make sure not to mount it in a spot where it could hit something when it rotates, because that’s an easy way to stress the motor. If you mount it flush in a corner, you’re asking for trouble; give it some clearance.

The solar panel also seems sturdy enough. The frame doesn’t feel brittle, and the cable connection to the camera is firm. I wouldn’t pull on it constantly, but once installed and left alone, it shouldn’t be a problem. UV and long-term sun exposure might fade the plastic over a few years, but that’s the same with any outdoor gear. The mounting bracket is metal and feels solid once screwed in properly; the camera hasn’t shifted position even with some wind.

Realistically, durability will show after one or two full seasons. From what I’ve seen and from other user reviews, it handles normal outdoor life fine. If you’re in very harsh environments (extreme heat/cold or salty air near the sea), you might see wear faster, but for a regular house in a temperate or warm climate, it looks like it can last without babying it. It doesn’t feel fragile or like a cheap gadget that will crack after the first storm.

On the performance side, the SoloCam S340 is mostly solid, with a few quirks. In daylight, the 3K image is sharp enough that you can easily see faces, read license plates at short to medium distance, and zoom in up to around 8x without the picture turning into pure mush. The dual-camera system does help when you zoom: instead of just enlarging the same blurry pixels, it switches to the telephoto lens. I wouldn’t call it crystal clear at maximum zoom, but it’s good enough to recognize who’s at the gate or what car is parked outside.

At night, things are a bit more mixed. The night vision itself is decent: the IR range is around 6 meters, which matches the spec. Within that distance, people are clearly visible, and you can see basic details like clothing color and general build. Beyond that, it gets grainy and you won’t get much detail. More important than the image is the motion detection: as some Amazon reviews mention, detection range drops at night. During the day, it picks up people around 30–40 feet away; at night, you sometimes have to be a bit closer for it to trigger reliably.

Motion detection accuracy is pretty good once you tweak it. I set it to detect people and cars only, and it drastically reduced false alerts from trees and cats. The AI is not perfect, but it’s far from useless. When I had “all motion” turned on, it was too chatty. With smarter filters, it became manageable. One user mentioned that mounting angle matters, and I agree: if you point it straight out, head-on, it can miss people coming directly towards it, especially if they appear suddenly. Mounting it slightly above and angled down gave better results in my case.

The app experience is one of the strong points. Live view loads fairly quickly on my 2.4 GHz Wi‑Fi, and scrubbing through event clips is simple. I like the checkbox-style detection options (people, cars, all motion). The annoying bit is the live view timeout pop-up, which keeps asking you to confirm if you want to keep watching. If you like to leave live view on a tablet or phone while working, this gets old fast. It’s clearly there to save battery, but I’d like an option to disable it and manage battery myself. Overall, performance is good for home use, but don’t expect professional-level surveillance or perfect detection in every scenario.

On paper, the SoloCam S340 is a wireless, solar-powered outdoor camera with 360° pan and tilt, local storage, and no mandatory subscription. In practice, that means you screw it into your wall, connect it to 2.4 GHz Wi‑Fi, pair it with the eufy app, and then it records events when it detects motion. It has two lenses: one for a wide view and one for zoom, and it can track people automatically in some modes. The resolution is 3K in general use, and up to 4K when you use AI tracking or dual views, which is honestly more than enough for a front yard or driveway.

The camera records clips locally on internal storage (or via HomeBase S380 if you have it). One thing that’s not always clear when you just skim the listing: by default, the camera doesn’t store footage forever. Depending on your settings, clips can be cleared after a certain time or when storage fills up. One Amazon reviewer mentioned 24-hour retention for motion events; in my case, with default settings and not too much activity, I had several days of clips before older ones started dropping off. If you want long-term storage, you either download important clips or pair with a HomeBase for more space.

In terms of features, you get AI detection (people, cars, general motion), notifications on your phone, two-way audio, night vision, and full pan/tilt control from the app. You can set a default viewing angle and also save multiple preset positions (like “driveway”, “front door”, “street”). The annoying part: it can’t automatically patrol between these views on a schedule yet. You have to switch manually or rely on tracking. Several users mentioned this, and I agree: an auto-scan mode would make a lot of sense for a 360° camera.

So overall, the presentation matches reality pretty well: it’s a fairly advanced camera for home use, with a strong focus on local storage and no monthly costs. But you still need to understand its limits: motion detection distance, night performance, and how long clips are kept. If you expect a full CCTV system out of one little solar dome, you’ll be disappointed. If you want a flexible, subscription-free camera to cover a zone around your house, it gets the job done.