I follow a lot of tech blogs and discount sites like slickdeals.net and have watched the gradual evolution of home security cameras over the years. I caved in this week-purchasing a Eufy 2k indoor cam for under $30 and added a SanDisk 64GB high-endurance microSD card  to my order for another $14.

The Eufy 2k indoor reminds of an updated webcam from the 90s. Regardless of it’s small, unimposing footprint, this is a full-featured security camera for a price point that doesn’t sting.

Prior to my purchase, I looked around my place and decided where I’d place a camera (and run the power cord) if I ever got one. After some research I realized a cam that doesn’t require batteries was going to be my best bet. For full functionality, these are rather power hungry.

I’ve been happy with my Anker products so I had no problem trusting their sister brand Eufy (home automation products) as well. I’ve seen my share of Black Mirror episodes and am well-aware of things that can go terribly wrong over the internet of things (IoT). It was important for me to go with a brand that has a reputation at stake rather than trying to chase the cheapest camera on the market.

Getting the camera operational was a simple process with their iOS app. There are literally software settings for everything you can possibly think of in a security cam-which is exactly how it should be.

Image quality is quite good (night or day). I’m not shooting a movie with this thing, so mostly I just want to be notified if someone is in my place and obviously what they look like. From what I’ve seen the tiny Eufy 2k does everything it needs to do to work exactly as claimed.

The Eufy does have one setting default that I’m not a fan of at all: the siren is set to go off. My unit’s loud alarm went off in my kitchen when it sensed my motion (while in Home mode) and I had to rush to turn it off before it disturbed all my neighbors in the building! Of course there will be motion while I’m home-why should the blaring siren be armed?

There are a few ways to keep the siren off (or low volume). But there are settings/functions buttons all over the app and making sense of it all isn’t intuitive, especially when you’re first setting it up. Ideally, I’d prefer every setting be on a single settings page, and the video clips playback page on another.

In other words, the settings themselves are easily understandable but navigating the various icons in the menus is frustrating. I don’t find that to be a dealbreaker at all and would still thoroughly recommend this cam to anyone in the market. The cam settings can always be tweaked, but once set up to taste-you might not have to touch them again.

I did use an old, slim cell phone “wall wort” instead of the power adapter they included in the box. I had a right-angle power plug (5v, 1amp) sitting around so my power cord plugs into the bottom of the adapter which cleans up a lot of room at the electrical outlet for me.

A colored indicator light shows the status of the Eufy and several other (dim) red leds on the face of the camera give the nighttime IR camera enough light to see with-it’s quite impressive. Oddly, if you have the software security setting to disarmed the camera status lights show it still actively working but detection and notifications are disabled. It’s not until you use the camera on-off toggle (in the app) or unplug the unit to truly shut it down when you’re home and don’t want it on.

I have my “security” setting to use the geofencing option. It uses the GPS on my iPhone to arm the camera when I’m away from home. Absolutely brilliant!

I’m pretty basic so I didn’t feel the need to get a pan-and-tilt model of this unit. In my world, that’s just another moving part that can break. Besides, my stationary camera has a wide enough field-of-view to cover everything in its site without the need to rotate at all.

I don’t think my camera will get bumped around, or dropped, or hot, or anything to damage it-so I fully expect the camera will last  many years in the indoor environment. However, it’s entirely reliant on the (free) phone app to function so it’s critical that the cam stays supported by the Eufy Security app in future versions.

For indoor use, a few well-positioned Eufy 2k’s are all anyone would likely need for home security. The hardware and software is well-developed and I believe changes in this product line will be incremental since there are not any major flaws or missing features I can find in the platform. They’ve thought of everything!

I purchased this camera with my own money and have not been compensated in any way for the review.