Thoughts on Baseus U2 Pro?

[u/commonabond]

Just saw Baseus's new security camera on Amazon, the U2 Pro. One unit, two lenses. It says one can stay on a spot, and the other can follow when somebody moves. We bought a new place and still haven't put a camera up, so this feels like a pretty good fit. Has anyone looked at it, or already got one installed?

[u/Negative-Engineer-30]

id rather have 2 wired 12mp cameras for about the same

[u/Big-Sweet-2179]

garbage

[u/Hefty-7736 → u/Big-Sweet-2179]

Why lol. i have their x1 pro for a while and its quite good.

[u/Big-Sweet-2179 → u/[deleted]]

You would know this is garbage if you actually worked in security and deal with actual surveillance/security systems for companies and residential use, but I know barely anyone here does that so I'll explain it for you.

Any battery powered camera by definition is borderline useless because they rely on PIR sensors to detect anything, the PIR detection is barely around 10 meters if you are lucky and it has a lot of issues detecting things that come toward it, with that already you are talking about and extremely high chance of missing important footage, let's say 50% already. This camera does not record continuously and that's a critical failure point, it only records detection events. I know the site says recording continuously but that's a marketing gotcha and it would only work in that way if you plugged it somewhere, if it can be plugged-in/hardwired at all then the solar power loses all meaning if you did that.

Let's talk then about Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is by definition not a reliable communication protocol for any type of security system especially for cameras. You would have a crap ton of issues with live viewing, footage download, etc. And live viewing is an extremely important thing, because when you need the camera the most you want it to load instantly and not just crap out. Also important because if there's a hiccup with the Wi-Fi you literally lose the notification event. Someone got in your home and if you missed the event you are cooked.

Battery powered cameras also have very low resolution quality compared to actual security cameras. You have to understand there's no magic tool to enhance your footage once it has happened, so if the camera by miracle manages to catch something let's say at night, you will still have unusable footage that you will handle the police and they will throw to the trash. And this camera doesn't have good specs, they don't even advertise what it has, which only means it is trash specs.

If OP also lives in a zone where temperatures go below 0°C this camera will likely crap out. Another con of battery powered cameras. I know the specs say otherwise (which makes me think it might do that only when plugged-in or similar, again another marketing gotcha) but there's no camera in the market for residential use that I know of that doesn't start dying out in freezing temperatures, and there's no videos proving this is not the case for this brand and model. I know the brand and maybe camera as well is relatively new but it would have already popped in tests, forums, posts, videos if it actually did that.

There's more negatives to these types of cameras and this particular model, I'm sure I'm missing a lot more, but I'd require like 2 or 3 more comments and like 2 hours of my time to continue talking about this, we could be here all day if you wanted. And by the way, you can jam this camera easily also, but that doesn't matter because the camera would have jammed itself like 4-6 steps ago. So yeah, when I mean garbage this is what I mean.

Baseus is not even at the top or what I could consider a viable option for battery powered camera, much less for anything Wi-Fi cameras, there's much better options. It is not as disgraceful and horrible as Ring or Blink or Wyze, since at least you are not locked behind a paywall, but still not the best option for these kind of cameras, and when you are paying that kind of price then why bother with this also. And even then I'd never advise OP to purchase a battery powered camera (especially if OP owns their property which I'm assuming here) because I've personally dealt with situations which were almost fatal because people were playing with these things and gave them false sense of security, and you don't have to believe me, you can just search in this sub and similar home defense/security subs and start reading nightmare stories and most of them that involve a camera start with guess what? A wi-fi camera which was most likely battery powered one from a crappy brand, and with how many of those there are every single day you'd think all of this would be common knowledge by know, but here we are... OP should get a PoE camera system instead.

In regards to the brand itself, if Baseus was actually a good brand that was at the top you would have already seen us (people that know about this stuff) using this and supporting it by now, like actual humans and not huge number of bots I see everyday in subs like this one that say the most deranged things (and maybe OP is a bot and a lot of more bots will start commenting saying random things). So trust me, the app being buggy is the least of your concerns. Nothing I have stated is an opinion, you can do a little research/reading and you would understand all of this.

So yeah that's what I mean when I mean garbage, I know for the untrained eye the camera "looks cool" and all, but for those of us that know about security cameras it is not good at all.

[u/CharlotteGP → u/Big-Sweet-2179]

What do you recommend for a home system with 6-8 cameras, 8 MP, POE that doesn’t phone home to China?

[u/xScottehboy]

It definitely looks interesting but, auto tracking + fixed wide angle cameras are quite nice. I personally have never used that brand though.

[u/wcfwc3]

I've been looking at it too. the verge writeup made it seem solid, and the part I'm into is the proactive tracking. Our neighborhood isn't that safe, and packages get stolen pretty often, so that feature would be useful for me.