The eufy E21 is a premium 4K baby monitor that pairs the sharpest video and night vision that we’ve tested with a rare selling point: a full feature set that works without a subscription. The camera’s picture quality is stunning and helps justify its steep price tag, but we’d have liked a better way to turn off WiFi.

• Subscription free access to all features
• 4K resolution and 8x zoom gives excellent coverage
• Privacy shutter offers extra security protection

• WiFi can only be switched off from the camera itself, not from the parent unit
• Parent unit volume is a little bit quiet
• Cry and motion detect notifications are hit-and-miss

• 

• 4K UHD resolution: plus 330° pan, 60° tilt, and 8× zoom gives total control

• No subscription required: full feature access, no paywall

• 5000mAh camera battery: up to 10 hours of battery life for peace of mind while travelling or during power cuts

As a new parent, I underestimated how often I’d want to check that my baby was still breathing. I’d heard my parents talk about it – and how many times my own father had woken me up by just giving me a quick poke and prod – but I didn’t think I’d fall into that trap. Fortunately for me, technology has moved on so much since then and we have ultra high definition cameras that can do the heavy lifting for us. 

It’s why the Eufy E21 baby monitor jumped out at me. Marketed as the world’s first 4K hybrid baby monitor, the E21 allows you to watch your baby’s chest rise and fall as they sleep, as well as keep a close eye on them and their environment day-to-day. 

But can it stake a claim as one of the best baby monitors? I put it to the test to find out. 

Design and features

• Camera and monitor
• Mounting kit in the box

The Eufy E21 comes with a single camera and parent unit, as well as three plugs, two cables, a charging base for the parent unit, and a comprehensive mounting kit, which gives you the option to mount your baby camera on the wall, on the crib, or on a shelf.

Setting up the camera is fairly easy and takes no longer than five minutes – you just need to plug in the camera via USB-C cable, turn on the parent unit, and then download the Eufy Baby app on your phone. Here, you’ll need to sign up for an account, set a custom (and secure) password, and then get to adding your device. 

From a security standpoint, the process is fairly straightforward. Once you’ve selected the add device option and opened up pairing, you’ll need to scan the physical QR code on the bottom of the camera, turn the Wi-Fi switch on, and then press and hold the sync button for two seconds. From here, you’ll need to sync it up with your home Wi-Fi by entering your password. Once this is done, the camera is ready to use both locally and via Wi-Fi. 

You’ll get mounting advice and tutorials on how best to mount your camera straight after, which is very handy – particularly if you’re looking to use the gooseneck mount on the side of your crib. I opted to place mine on a nearby shelf, but I’ll probably move to the crib mount once my baby gets a bit older. During the mounting process, you’ll also get the chance to check the camera’s signal strength before committing to a mounting position, which I found to be a genuinely helpful consideration. 

While the camera is quite large, I didn’t find it obtrusive during the testing period. The only thing I did find was that its outer shell was incredibly slippy – so much so that I dropped it while moving it to another location. Its larger shell is likely due to the fact that it houses a 4K camera with a 330° pan, 60° tilt, 8x zoom, and 5000mAH battery. 

It’s an impressive camera and one that’ll give you a full view of your nursery. An auto-focus button, which can be triggered from the parent unit or camera, seeks out human faces and zooms in on them. This can be a little bit janky if there are multiple people in the room, but I’ve found it to be quite reliable to track and zoom in on the baby when asleep. 

It also comes with active noise reduction, helping filter unwanted sounds out – giving you less interruptions from the live feed. Although this works, it does lessen the impact of alerts – something I’ll talk about a bit later. 

The parent unit itself is quite feature-rich, although it does only have a five-inch 720p display, which reduces the amount of detail that you get from the 4K camera. The power and volume buttons sit on the top, along with the microphone and antenna, while the menu, back, zoom, push-to-talk, and navigational buttons sit on the front. 

The camera can be operated via the navigational buttons on the parent unit or from the app. The zoom button zooms in increments of two, giving you a 2x, 4x, 6x, and 8x view of your setup. Via the menu, you can change the general settings (brightness, alerts, sounds, temperature units, etc), and go through your MicroSD storage.  The menu navigation is pretty intuitive and easy to get to grips with, which is especially handy if you’re fumbling around in the dark with a motion or sound alert. 

The speaker for the parent unit is located right in the middle of the rear of the unit, which avoids any potential issues with hands blocking sound transmission when handling it. It also means that you get even distribution of sound when the unit sits within the charging base. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think I’d use the charging base much, but it’s been a godsend having somewhere where I can place and see the feed – all without worrying about the battery draining down. 

The one thing that the parent unit is missing that I’d have liked is a volume indicator. Most parent units have an LED strip on the side that tells you how loud a sound is in your nursery actually is. While alerts can be set up to monitor this, I missed not having a visual indicator at my finger tips.

In terms of other features, the E21 can detect motion, crying, temperature, and sound, sending alerts to the parent unit and app when set up, as well as five white noise sounds, although I’m slightly puzzled by Eufy’s choice on that front. You can choose from forest, cricket, rain, streams, and alpaca bells to soothe your child, which are odd choices given the most popular sounds for babies tend to be white, heartbeat, or womb noises.

• Parent unit restricted to 720p

Without question, the Eufy E21 has some of the best video and audio capabilities that I’ve tested in a baby monitor. Its 4K UHD camera, impressive field of view, and active noise cancellation make it a triple threat – but that’s what you’d expect for a unit that costs over £200. 

While the resolution on the parent unit leaves a lot to be desired (I’m still not sure why these only ever have 720p displays), the quality on the app is impressive – even more so because you can tweak it to your liking.

I’ve got mine set to 4K recording, but you can downgrade the feeds to 2K, 1080p or 720p as you see fit. I’d personally recommend keeping it to 4K where you can, purely because when you use the zoom function, you can still get crystal clear pictures of your little one and their environment all while adjusting the frame with the navigational buttons. 

The quality of the camera in the day is fantastic. In the test photos below, you can pick out the detail in the baby grow, the blanket, and even the mesh of the next-to-me crib. The quality naturally dips with infrared at night, but you can still pick out key details in high definition. In that regard, the E21 is definitely the best camera for video quality that I’ve tested – and that quality isn’t compromised at distance either, so if you want to place your camera on top of a wardrobe or high shelf to give you a better view, you don’t have to worry about anything falling out of view. 

There had been some complaints about motion latency online, but during testing, I found the camera to be quite responsive – the E21 has gone through quite a few updates since launch and now with things like motion alerts being added, I’m guessing Eufy has fixed those problems. When I tested motion latency, I noticed less than a one-second delay on the parent unit and less than a two-second delay on the app at best. 

As for audio quality, the active noise cancellation means most ambient noise is filtered out – ensuring that alerts are focused on you and your baby. However, I found that in comparison to other parent units, the actual volume of the sound outputted by the unit isn’t as strong – despite the volume being whacked up to the max. And without the LED soundbar I mentioned earlier, I found myself crooning my neck to listen out for the slightest of sounds.

Fortunately, the sound alerts have helped with this. Easily set up on the unit or via the app, you can set up the sensitivity for crying and loud sounds and have alerts ping to both the parent unit and app. The default volume for alerts on the unit is really quiet, so you’ll want to turn this up. I’m also not a fan of the alert noise, which sounds a bit like a doorbell, so it would be nice to have the option to change that in the future. 

As for two-way-talk, I’ve been quite impressed with the E21. The clarity of the audio transmitted from the parent unit to the camera is clear and I found that it transmitted within less than half a second. The app is a bit slower, due to the fact it has to establish a connection, but not by much. I do really like that both the parent unit and app show that your audio is transmitting by showing your soundwaves on the display. From the other direction, the latency from the camera to the baby unit and app is about one second, so good all in all. 

The camera also makes very little sound when the pan/tilt is being operated, which is important if your baby is a light sleeper. 

If you’re familiar with Eufy products, the app for the baby monitor will be familiar to you. It’s intuitive to use and immediately displays the last-viewed picture of your camera feed. If you click on the image, it’ll establish a connection with the camera and show you the live feed. 

One of the things I like most about the app is that you can choose to record live, sending video and screenshots directly to your phone gallery. This is a feature usually locked behind a subscription on other cameras and it does it so effortlessly. 

The app also has an events centre, which allows you to view any alerts or triggers that the camera might have caught. I’ve found this particularly handy when catching up after popping out for a while. 

I also want to praise Eufy here: the app is visually appealing. It’s not cluttered, everything is where it needs to be, and the notifications you get are to the point without any upselling involved. 

The E21 has a range of 800 ft / 243 m, according to Eufy. That’s quite a distance and one I was curious to put to the test. I live in quite a long house, where the nursery is positioned at one end and the garden on the other. 

In our range tests, I never once lost connectivity with the parent unit (with Wi-Fi turned off) while walking around my property line. I could see and hear the baby in every single room of my house and garden, which is hugely reassuring. I even took the unit out onto the street and only lost connection when I got to the top of my cul-de-sac – approximately 200m away, which would have seen the signal pass through several buildings too. Out of the cameras I’ve recently tested, only the Motorola PIP1710 Connect has topped this – and only by a little bit. 

Connectivity wise, the camera can be operated on either a local feed or on local and Wi-Fi. The switch to turn this on or off can be found on the back of the camera and can only be turned off here. I’ll talk about what this means from a security and privacy perspective shortly, but once it’s switched off, the live feed to the app ends fairly quickly.

I didn’t notice any severe latency or congestion issues while using the camera with Wi-Fi mode enabled, which is more than can be said for some of the other cameras I tested. Plus, at this price bracket, I’d expect nothing less. 

The E21 is marketed as privacy-first: a fully offline capable camera with microSD storage, with Wi-Fi mode toggable on or off, and “bank-level encryption” when connected. Given all the horror stories I’d heard of baby monitors being hacked – particularly over Wi-Fi – security is front and center in my mind when considering any baby monitor. 

Fortunately eufy seems to take this quite seriously. After setup, I was pleased to see that the app prompted me to update the firmware on both the camera and parent unit straight away. Unfortunately for me, though, I ran into a bit of an issue with the parent unit where it got stuck in a restart/recovery loop straight after the update. I was able to fix this with the help of Anker Support, who gave me the necessary .bin file to drag and drop into the unit’s folder while it was connected to my PC. 

The support team have since assured me that this was a blip and not normal behaviour for first-time set up, but it did put me off somewhat. Nevertheless, I was particularly pleased with Support’s rapid response time and the fact that the device prompted a firmware update straight out of the box – something less tech-savvy parents might not necessarily look for. 

It’s also pleasing to see that Eufy has guaranteed lifetime technical and security support for this product. That does hinge somewhat on when Eufy deems the E21 to reach its end of life phase, but given their history with supporting products in other ranges, I can’t see this being taken off the shelf any time soon. 

As for privacy, you have the option to turn off Wi-Fi on this device to keep the feed running locally on your parent unit. However, unlike other baby monitors, you can only switch this off on the camera itself. This is quite disappointing, especially since most competitors allow you to do this from the parent unit.

Nevertheless, when turned off, I found the camera to be quite responsive: the app feed was cut within two seconds. Eventually, the message “unable to connect to device / please turn on Wi-Fi switch on the camera” is displayed, and there’s no way to bypass this in the app – even on a different device. 

You don’t have to use the app at all if you don’t want to, as the camera comes with a microSD slot, which allows you to store any captured footage locally. The camera also comes with a Privacy Shutter feature, which spins the camera around and down, stopping the live feed at a hardware level – giving you and your baby the privacy you might want during feeds and changes. This can be triggered from both the parent unit and the app.

You can add people to your family sharing account to view the feed via Wi-Fi if you want, but the process is fairly tight. They’ll need their own Eufy Baby account with a secure password and once they have that, you can invite them to view and operate the device. They can be removed at any point from the app’s settings. 

The monitor has a 12-hour battery life, which stood up in our tests. However, I found that we rarely ran out of battery life on the monitor due to the fact I was using the charging base when not actively monitoring the feed. 

The camera also has a 5,000mAh battery, which Eufy says will last ten hours in the day and five hours at night. This certainly tracks with our testing – we got just over ten hours in the day, and just short of five at night.

There’s not a huge use case for leaving the camera unplugged, but it’s reassuring to know that I could still watch my baby while on the move or when the power goes down. 

At £249/$259.99, the E21 is one of the most expensive baby monitors that we’ve tested. It’s definitely sitting in the premium bracket and won’t be for everyone, but its feature set does partly justify the high. 

For your money, you get a camera capable of 4K resolution, an 8x zoom, and the best night vision you can buy, as well as a rich feature set that isn’t locked behind a paywall or subscription. 

It’s expensive, but if you’re going to pay £50 a year just to have the ability to record or screenshot your baby’s movements or store their special moments, you may as well factor that into the price of a cheaper unit. 

Sure, the E21 isn’t perfect, but it’s clear that Eufy has looked into the launch issues of the camera and taken parents’ feedback into account – something that sells me more on the value of the camera than anything else.

Should you buy it?

Video and audio quality is where the E21 truly separates itself from other baby monitors, with its 4K resolution, the zoom, and the night vision performance outperforming all others. If picture quality is what matters most to you, nothing else will come close.

The no subscription model is the other huge plus of owning a Eufy baby monitor. If you’re looking at a cheaper product, factor in what you’d pay over a year or two for the option to record your camera feed, store footage on the cloud, or even have cry sensors. Suddenly the price doesn’t look as scary. 
Of course, the camera isn’t without its issues. The firmware issue that sent the parent unit into a restart/recovery loop wasn’t a great start, but showed the effectiveness of Eufy’s support team. The 720p display also doesn’t do the camera’s 4K capabilities justice, and being unable to turn off Wi-Fi from the parent unit is a small but annoying inconvenience. 

If you weigh all of that up though, the pros far outweigh the cons.

We test every baby monitor in a real-world nursery setting for at least a week.  We check video and audio quality on both the parent unit and the app, run night vision tests at set distances, and check the range throughout the house and garden to test its reliability. 

Security and privacy get particular attention – we check account creation, two-factor authentication, and local-only Wi-Fi modes. We also check battery life against manufacturing claims and check the value of subscription costs where they apply. 

We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.

Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.

• Used as our main baby monitor for the review period
• We take samples during the day and night to see how clear each camera’s video is
• We check each camera’s security features in-depth to ensure baby’s safety

	Eufy E21 Baby Monitor Review
Manufacturer	Eufy
Size (Dimensions)	80 x 78 x 110 MM
Release Date	2026
First Reviewed Date	23/09/2026
Model Number	Eufy E21 Baby Monitor
Resolution	3840 x 2160
Battery Length	12 hrs
Camera Type	Baby monitor
View Field	330 degrees
Recording option	microSD
Two-way audio	Yes
Night vision	Yes (IR)
Motion detection	Yes
Audio detection	Crying
UK RRP	£249
USA RRP	$259.99