Eve is well-known in the HomeKit accessory space, which made me very excited to try its Outdoor Cam, the brand’s floodlight camera. However, after spending time with this HomeKit-exclusive camera, it left me wanting more, and I’m not sure if it’s worth the lofty asking price.

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Price and Availability

The Eve Outdoor Cam is available for $249.95 from Amazon, Best Buy, Apple, and directly from Eve in black or white.

A Design Befitting of Modern Homes

Some home security cameras bear a striking resemblance to traditional floodlights—the Eve Outdoor Cam is not one of them.

The overall design of the Eve Outdoor Cam is very contemporary and modern, which means that you need a specific style of house for it to blend in well. My house is not one that lends to the contemporary aesthetic, but I don’t think the camera looks too out of place. It’s definitely got a modern “in your face” flair though, and doesn’t try to blend into its surroundings.

Installation was honestly pretty straightforward, as long as you’re okay modifying your home’s electrical wiring. I started at the electrical panel where I turned the breaker off to my front porch and verified that the power was off.

I had to use the adapter plate that’s included with the camera to mount it to my junction box, but the overall install took maybe 15 minutes from start to finish. I had a bit of trouble getting the power cord through the housing so that it would remain waterproof, but I did eventually get it in there. I ended up not using the locking key for the wire, but I don’t think I’ll have any issues from that as it’s press-fit in there quite well.

Once installed, you’ll have a two-way adjustment to change where the camera is pointing. This allowed me to get it aimed at the exact spot I wanted it, so that I could see if a package was on the porch or not.

The one thing I do wish was that it had more than a 15-degree tilt to allow me to see more of the ground than I’m able to currently. That’s not a dealbreaker, but it’s something that I do wish it had.

Exclusively Compatible With the Apple Ecosystem, for Better or Worse

I’m a huge Apple fan. My entire house runs off Apple gear. I have an Apple TV 4K, iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Apple Watch, and iPhone 15 Pro. Needless to say, all of my smart home gear is also HomeKit-compatible.

However, while I do like using HomeKit with all of my gear, there’s something to be said about having multiple options for controlling your items. My home security cameras are all integrated into HomeKit, but also record to my NVR that I run.

The Eve Outdoor Cam is a native HomeKit camera, but that’s all it works with. In fact, it’s not possible to use the Eve Outdoor Cam outside of HomeKit.

To utilize all the features of the Eve Outdoor Cam, you need more than just a HomeKit setup, though. You’ll need a HomePod or Apple TV 4K to act as a Home Hub, as well as an iCloud+ plan with 50GB or more of storage to utilize anything more than a live stream of the camera.

The camera comes with features like event recording and AI motion detection (to only notify you if there’s a specific type of motion detected), but those functions are only available for those with an iCloud+ plan.

Another caveat is that you can only record one camera with an iCloud+ 50GB plan, and bumping to 200GB ups that limit to five cameras, while the 2TB or higher plans let you record unlimited cameras.

Being limited to HomeKit Secure Video also limits the video quality available through the camera. The video quality is okay at best. I have a $55 PoE camera on my porch that looks far better than the Eve Outdoor Cam, which is partially due to the 1080p quality limit placed on HomeKit Secure Video.

Don’t get me wrong, HomeKit Secure Video is a nice addition to the camera, but I really wish there was some other form of recording available—even locally to a microSD card. As it stands, the only way that the Eve Outdoor Cam will record any footage is with an additional subscription to iCloud+.

This came up as an issue even during this review. I could not get the camera to actually store a recording of me talking to it in iCloud, even after multiple attempts, multiple factory resets and re-pairs, and multiple methods of trying. Doing some research, this isn’t the first time HomeKit Secure Video has had troubles with recording, though normally a factory reset fixes the issue.

If I had any other method of recording, be it locally to internal storage on the camera, a microSD card, or even a service that’s hosted by Eve itself, I would have had other options to try and get the recording. As it stands, I wasn’t able to get a quality recording at all when I was trying to.

This also doesn’t give me much confidence that the camera would store a recording if someone were to try and break into my house—which is the entire point of a security camera to begin with. This isn’t necessarily Eve’s fault, as it seems to be a HomeKit Secure Video issue. However, it is Eve’s fault that there are no other recording methods available.

I also ran into a problem where the camera would just become unresponsive within HomeKit. I have other cameras in HomeKit and they all work flawlessly, but the Eve Outdoor Cam is very hit-or-miss when it comes to reliability within the HomeKit ecosystem.

Another issue is, if you ever want to leave the Apple ecosystem, then the Eve Outdoor Cam will have to go with it, as there’s no real way to use the camera without some form of Apple products in your home.

This could be seen as a benefit to some, but I see this limiting factor as a pretty big drawback to me. Especially when there are other cameras for far less that can do so much more—without a subscription needed.

A Light That Illuminates Even the Darkest Shadows

The built-in 1,500-lumen LED spotlight is quite bright, all things considered. It has a number of triggers available, and I do like that the light itself is also part of HomeKit.

I know that HomeKit exclusivity is a drawback, but if you are an all-in Apple household, then there’s some pretty neat functionality available through the light.

You can use HomeKit automations to trigger when the light turns on and off. If you have a HomeKit-enabled smart lock on a door where the Eve Outdoor Cam is mounted, then it can be programmed to turn on the moment that door is unlocked.

It can also be programmed to turn on whenever everyone leaves the house, when just one person leaves the house, or whenever someone comes home after a certain time of day.

Personally, I programmed my Eve Outdoor Cam to turn the light on at sunset and off at sunrise, as this means I don’t have it on during the day, and it’s not randomly turning on throughout the night.

I’m actually thinking of building a new automation where it turns on at sunset, goes off whenever I run my good night scene that shuts my house down, and then only turns on when motion is detected for the rest of the night.

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There’s a lot that can be done with a light this bright in HomeKit, including triggering it only at a certain brightness, since the light is dimmable too.

At night, the light definitely highlights any movement and easily illuminates my front porch, making it easy to see what’s going on within the Home app. However, even if the light isn’t on, the IR LEDs give the camera night vision so it can see in the dark.

Both methods of seeing at night—the 1,500 lumen floodlight and the IR LEDs—make it easy to know what’s going on in the view of the camera. However, if you want to see more than a few feet away from the camera, you’ll definitely want to opt to use the floodlight instead of the IR LEDs.

Should You Buy the Eve Outdoor Cam?

It’s honestly somewhat tough for me to recommend the Eve Outdoor Cam. There are so many other excellent cameras out there for far less money. The main thing that holds me back from rating this camera higher is the price.

At $250, you’re getting a solidly built outdoor camera with decent video quality and a really bright light. The bad part is that it’s exclusively HomeKit. For comparison, the Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight Cam is battery powered (meaning you don’t have to wire it yourself) and supports HomeKit, Alexa, Google Assistant, and more for $170 (a full $80 less than the Eve Outdoor Cam).

Ring, Wyze, and Eufy, and several other brands also have floodlight cameras for far less that can be relatively easily brought into HomeKit through a service like Scrypted or Home Assistant.

At the end of the day, I don’t think the Eve Outdoor Cam is that great of a value. It does the job it’s asked to do as an outdoor floodlight camera, but comes with a lot of limitations. If Eve had some other way to record footage that didn’t require a monthly subscription to iCloud, then I’d likely rate this camera higher, and it would be easier to recommend.

As it stands, I think the only people who should consider the Eve Outdoor Cam are those who are very solidly in the Apple ecosystem with an existing iCloud+ subscription and no plans to leave the world of Apple anytime soon.

If that doesn’t sound like you, then I’d skip this camera. If that is you, then this could be a solid choice for your smart home security setup.