Smart Home

Review: Eve Cam HomeKit camera with Secure Video is a smart choice

Review: The Eve Cam HomeKit camera is a nice security camera where privacy is important. The camera works exclusively with HomeKit and HomeKit Secure Video.

In this review, we discuss the Eve Cam, the smart indoor security camera from the HomeKit brand Eve. The camera is designed exclusively for HomeKit and supports HomeKit Secure Video. How do you like this smart camera?

These are the main features of the Eve Cam in brief:

  • Indoor security camera, exclusive to HomeKit and HomeKit Secure Video
  • 1080p resolution
  • Viewing angle of 150 degrees
  • With night vision up to five meters
  • Infrared sensor for motion detection
  • Put down or hang up
  • With microphone and speaker to communicate with
  • Status light indicates operation
  • Available for around € 150

In this review, we discuss the Eve Cam, the smart indoor security camera from the HomeKit brand Eve. The camera is designed exclusively for HomeKit and supports HomeKit Secure Video. How do you like this smart camera?

Review Eve Cam

The range of HomeKit cameras is still growing. One of the newest models is the Eve Cam. You may already know the Eve products from the previous plugs, motion sensor and various temperature sensors. These often work with Bluetooth, which makes us less charmed by the operation of these devices. The camera is a completely different type of product and therefore uses WiFi. Is the Eve Cam with HomeKit Secure Video more popular ? The Eve Cam is available for around € 150 and in this Eve Cam review you can read whether it is worth the money.

Eve Cam in short

The Eve Cam is only available in a black version. The camera itself is made of plastic, but it definitely doesn’t feel cheap. The camera is very similar in design to the Nest Cam Indoor. You can turn the camera and tilt it forwards and backwards. Thanks to this system, you can also mount the camera on the wall thanks to the included mounting materials. You are therefore quite free in where you place the camera, unlike cameras such as the Netatmo Welcome, which cannot be adjusted very precisely. Unfortunately, you cannot tilt the camera remotely or have it look in a different direction, because that has to be done manually.

The camera comes with a two meter USB cable and a power adapter. One end of the cable has a USB-A connection and the other end for the camera is Micro USB. Unfortunately, there is no USB-C. The power adapter also comes with a set of universal plugs, so you don’t need a separate plug if you want to put the camera in your holiday home abroad, for example.

Set up Eve Cam HomeKit camera

As with all Eve accessories, setup is pretty quick. Eve recommends using the Eve app for this, although it can also be done directly via the Home app. We decided to install the Eve Cam via the manufacturer’s app, because then we can immediately examine the possibilities of the camera in the Eve app. After scanning the HomeKit code on the bottom of the camera, it will connect to your WiFi network (also 5GHz!) And it will be added to your home. Initially, the addition did not work immediately. After resetting the camera with a small button on the back, adding it succeeds immediately. You immediately notice that you are dealing with a real HomeKit camera: you do not need to create a separate account. That is a big advantage of the Eve accessories, because they are directly integrated into HomeKit.

After scanning the HomeKit code, determine the settings for HomeKit Secure Video. You can choose what the camera should do when you are at home and what it should do when you are away. These are the standard options of HomeKit Secure Video, so the Eve app offers no extra options in that regard. After going through the steps you will get a summary of the camera you have just set up. If you have HomePass on your device (a handy app for storing HomeKit codes), you can add the camera’s code directly from here.

The camera images can be viewed immediately via the Home app after setting. The Eve Cam is also a motion sensor, which you can use to set all kinds of automations. Think of switching on a light when the camera detects movement.

Image quality Eve Cam

The Eve Cam has a resolution of 1080p, which is more than fine in our case. There are cameras with 2K resolution, but to be honest, we don’t really notice the difference indoors. With a lot of light, the camera can sometimes be a bit dull, but in general we are satisfied with the image quality. The camera has a viewing angle of 150 degrees and is therefore slightly wider than most other HomeKit cameras. In an average living room you can easily visualize everything. On the sides you do have the well-known fisheye effect, but that doesn’t really bother you.

Eve Cam also has a night mode. Thanks to infrared, the camera retains a view of about five meters. If you put it on a cupboard (as we did), you have to make sure that the camera points upwards enough because otherwise you will be bothered too much by a large white of the background on which the camera is placed. The camera itself does not have a lamp to illuminate the room, so the images are in black and white.

Speaker and microphone in the Eve Cam

Like many cameras, the Eve Cam also has a speaker and a microphone. This allows you to communicate with the person in the room via the camera and your iPhone . Both the speaker and the microphone are of a nice quality. We are not blown away, because advanced features such as noise cancellation for the microphone are missing. You can use the speaker and microphone to scare off a burglar or to communicate remotely with someone who is at home, but in practice you actually use this little.

Moreover, it is not possible to talk and listen at the same time. It therefore works more like a kind of walkie-talkie, where you take turns talking to each other. That is the case with most security cameras.

Eve Cam with HomeKit Secure Video

The Eve Cam works exclusively with HomeKit and Secure Video. You are therefore dependent on the options that Apple offers with HomeKit for the possibilities. Some cameras offer additional functions such as cloud storage or local storage with an SD card and advanced AI functions for recognizing people, but that is not possible with the Eve Cam.

Eve Cam review 2.

You can view the live images from the camera via the Home app, but you can also do that in the Eve app. Strangely enough, we cannot view the live camera images via the Home app on the Apple Watch . There the camera only shows recent snapshots. It works with other cameras. We have asked Eve why this is not possible, but have not heard back yet.

Recordings that the camera makes as soon as movement is detected, you must review via Apple’s own Home app. It is not possible to view this via the Eve app. The sad thing about HomeKit Secure Video is that you can only set this to allow the camera to record when motion is detected. For example, you cannot always make recordings, so that you can watch all the images. There is also no possibility to set a time schedule, for example to make recordings every night when you are at home. You can only choose to make recordings when you are at home (during movement) or when you are absent (during movement).

Thanks to HomeKit Secure Video, the camera recognizes people, animals and vehicles. You can indicate that recordings should only be made when people or vehicles are detected and, for example, not when animals are detected. Handy if you have a dog or cat at home. Unfortunately HomeKit does not offer the possibility to start recording based on the detection of sound. With the recordings you also see with an icon whether a person, animal or other movement has been recognized.

For Secure Video you do need an iCloud storage subscription of at least € 2.99 per month. It is good to know that the recordings are not part of the available storage space, so you can make so many recordings without affecting your storage. HomeKit Secure Video saves recordings for ten days by default. If you want to keep them longer, you have to export the images to, for example, iCloud Drive.

Unfortunately, the possibilities of the camera are quite limited if you do not have a suitable storage subscription. You can then only view live images, communicate via the speaker and microphone and receive notifications in case of movement. The camera cannot distinguish between people and animals. If you want to get the most out of the Eve Cam, we recommend using Secure Video. You also immediately get extra storage space, which you can even share with your family.

In iOS 14 , HomeKit Secure Video gets a number of extra options. For example, facial recognition and activity zones will be introduced . These features also work with the Eve Cam. But Eve is therefore dependent on the developments at HomeKit.

Compared to the Home app, the Eve app does offer one small extra option. The Eve app shows in a graph when all movement has been registered. You can see exactly when the movement was detected per time, which can be useful if you want to find out important information. It is not clear exactly how long this information will be stored, but you can look back at least two weeks.

Privacy of the Eve Cam

Because the Eve Cam is dependent on HomeKit, all images remain safe within the Apple ecosystem. That means images of your home will not leave your Apple account. People, animals and vehicles are recognized through your HomeKit home hub , so nothing is sent to a server. The recordings are also stored in your own iCloud and not stored anywhere externally.

Unfortunately, the possibilities of the camera are quite limited if you do not have a suitable storage subscription. You can then only view live images, communicate via the speaker and microphone and receive notifications in case of movement. The camera cannot distinguish between people and animals. If you want to get the most out of the Eve Cam, we recommend using Secure Video. You also immediately get extra storage space, which you can even share with your family.

In iOS 14 , HomeKit Secure Video gets a number of extra options. For example, facial recognition and activity zones will be introduced . These features also work with the Eve Cam. But Eve is therefore dependent on the developments at HomeKit.

Compared to the Home app, the Eve app does offer one small extra option. The Eve app shows in a graph when all movement has been registered. You can see exactly when the movement was detected per time, which can be useful if you want to find out important information. It is not clear exactly how long this information will be stored, but you can look back at least two weeks.

Privacy of the Eve Cam HomeKit camera

Because the Eve Cam is dependent on HomeKit, all images remain safe within the Apple ecosystem. That means images of your home will not leave your Apple account. People, animals and vehicles are recognized through your HomeKit home hub , so nothing is sent to a server. The recordings are also stored in your own iCloud and not stored anywhere externally.

The Eve Cam also has an indicator light. It lights solid blue when the camera is streaming images and turns red when someone is watching the stream. When you are at home and the light suddenly turns red, you know that someone else in your family who has access to the camera is watching. You can also turn off the light via the HomeKit settings to prevent burglars from seeing that you have a camera in your house.

One feature that is missing is a privacy button. The Logitech Circle View has a button on the back, with which you can easily turn the camera off and on. Think, for example, if you have visitors where you prefer not to have the camera streaming. For a camera that is so focused on your privacy, a quick button on the back would not have been an unnecessary luxury. You can now quickly tilt the camera down or back, so that it only sees the floor or ceiling.

Conclusion Eve Cam HomeKit camera

The Eve Cam HomeKit camera is a nice security camera where privacy is important. The camera works exclusively with HomeKit and HomeKit Secure Video. This offers a number of advantages. This way you do not have to create an account and you can be sure that the images do not leave the Apple ecosystem. This applies to both recordings and the live streams. A disadvantage of the HomeKit exclusivity is that the camera is also somewhat limited in terms of functions. Where other HomeKit cameras sometimes offer additional options in their own app, this is missing for the Eve Cam.

The images that the camera takes are sharp and the night vision is nice. The camera has good build quality and setup was a piece of cake. The Eve Cam is recommended for Apple users who work exclusively with HomeKit. If you want extra features through the camera maker’s app, there are tons of other cameras that also work with HomeKit Secure Video .

Do you want to buy the Eve Cam? This is available from Apple for around € 150 , as well as from various other retailers.