Performance

As the product name implies, the eufy security S100 Wired Wall Light Cam has two different main functions. It is an outside light and then it is a security camera and while both help complement each other the performance of the two are independent of each other. Starting with the lighting I was surprised with how much I liked the lighting performance. To start things off you have the option to flip the lighting around to face the wall which gives a more diffused light or out for a standard light. You can also do both with one and one. As you would expect having them face out does give more overall light but facing the lighting against the wall looked better to me. It also helps complement the more modern look of the fixture itself. With 120 lumens of total output the light does put out more than our normal smart bulbs that I run in other light fixtures, those are rated at 1100 lumens for the model I now use. I do however wish I could control the top and bottom lighting independently. Being able to set them to two different colors would be nice and even having the option to keep one set to an accent color and one to turn on later when motion is picked up. You do at least have flexibility with the overall brightness and you can see in the second picture below I have the brightness turned down but it still works well.

For the color lighting, you can integrate this into holiday lighting which is why I have been using smart bulbs for years now paired up with landscape lighting. Not only does it work well for Christmas time which is the most obvious time. You can do team colors to support a team on game day, green for St. Patrick's Day, pink for breast cancer awareness, orange/purple/green for Halloween, red/white/blue for the fourth of July, and so on. You can also tie the lighting effects in with this as well to have it rotate through the colors but I would avoid the party mode effect with its fast transitions unless you want to drive neighbors crazy. But like I said having the option to run more than one color at the same time would be a nice addition to a future model. I was also a big fan of having the motion integrated into the light, with our other lights once you pick a color that is what you get which can cut down on visibility when outside. Being able to turn on white lights or even just make the lights brighter when it picks up motion is useful.

Then beyond the lighting performance, we have the camera performance. The camera that the S100 uses is the same setup that we have seen across the entire eufy lineup really from their doorbell, floodlights, and even inside cameras. So its performance was about what I expected going on. They list it as a 2K which when I think of 2K 1440p or 2560x1440 is the resolution that comes to mind. Eufys camera is a little different however with a resolution of 2048×1536. It still is technically 2K but 2K with a 4:3 aspect ratio not 16:9 like 1440p and 1080p would be. So keep that in mind when going in and for comparison with some other cameras, this would be a 3.1 MP camera.

For testing I put together some test footage, this is a view of what we call the back porch area which is a bit of a mess from the winter and from an unfinished landscaping project from the fall as well. I did what I call the Text Test which is a standard sheet of paper with text of different sizes shown at different distances. We did this in the daylight, then at night with the night vision infrared as well as with the light on. In the daylight, even with snow not helping things with the bit-rate you can read the largest text at 20 feet but not up on the back porch itself. Then at 15 feet the second text is readable and at 10 feet three of them are readable. With the infrared, it isn’t until 15 feet that the largest text is visible but getting over to the left where there is less ambient light and less infrared from the camera it is harder to see but still visible. Turning the light on helped a lot in this situation, especially when it comes to being able to see details on my wife who is holding the paper. With the infrared, it looks like a white jacket and pants but with the light on we can see it’s a black jacket and blue pants. You can even see her displeasure with being out in the cold better with the light on lol. That said you can’t see the text any better but at the farthest distance you can at least tell there is text.

I also included a few action shots showing the snow with the light on and with the infrared and footage picked up from the motion sensor that picked up my wife coming and going. What didn’t happen however that the lower mounted eufy Video Smart Lock does was motion would pick up animals when set to pick up any motion. All animal footage here was picked up manually. But remember our light is mounted higher than suggested, so this might just be because of that. Overall the footage isn’t perfect but doesn’t have any weird bitrate issues even when having snow and other movement. The field of view is spot on for what I would hope for as well. You can see how I have the S100 tilted to the side and even see it move in the middle of the footage from me moving the light around. Without two it's hard to know for sure, but it does seem that if both are turned to face away from the door you could get away with one on each side of the door and cover a wide area which going in was a concern. Having the light helps with clarity in nighttime footage and because it looks like a light it turning on isn’t going to be weird whereas a camera with LEDs might look strange when turning on for smaller motion. The footage also has the audio intact and you can hear that it picks up most sounds, coughs, sniffles, and of course any talking. When you get heavy wind you will also get that as well but that is to be expected.