After reviewing a doorbell from EZVIZ, I was pleased with its performance, I welcomed a new addition to the house security suite. EZVIZ asked me to look at EZVIZ CB8 Lite. I don’t have an eye in the sky watching over my driveway, so I decided to battle my vertigo and fit this to the front of my house. It’s wireless, it looks around and comes with a solar panel so I don’t have to think about battery.
What’s not to like?
EZVIZ CB8 Lite
I received the EZVIZ CB8 Lite Kit – it means that apart from the security camera, I received a solar panel that keeps the device running all year round. This is a 4 MP system (capable of 2560 × 1440 at 2K 15fps) that connects via 2.4GHz (Wi-Fi 6) to my router. The device uses a built-in battery (5,200 mAh) to work without a fixed power supply (usage dependent) and offers the most popular security features: pan/tilt, spotlight, siren, colour night vision and 2-way intercom.
You can grab it on Amazon for just under £80 or save a little and pay £64.99 for the camera without the solar panel. While you’re shopping around, you want to buy a compatible microSD card of a good brand up to 512GB (AmazonUK|AmazonUS). The box contains everything that you need to fit the camera (and the panel) to the wall.
Not ideal installation
The front of the house faces North, and with gaps between other houses being a little bit tight, there is only a sliver of sunlight available to add the solar panel to my EZVIZ CB8 Lite. With templates included, and snap-on design of the brackets, the biggest obstacle was my vertigo and a little bit wobbly ladder.
But after conquering the feat, I had the camera and solar panel mounted. I pre-emptively connected it to my WiFi (no issues there) and I decided to run it only using internal battery and the solar panel.
Battery life
In always-on mode, with all trims enabled, the battery lasted almost 3 days. This figure would probably be better if not for the solar panel, which gets about 2-3 hours of sunlight at best. When I adjusted the settings to detect, track and record motion only, the limited sunshine was enough to keep the camera topped up to 100% each (sunny) day.
In doubt, you can always connect it to a fixed power supply (USB-C) or set times for monitoring.
Things that I didn’t like
Usually outdoor cameras that use WiFi have extended antennas poking outside the enclosure. Not EZVIZ CB8 Lite. Everything is nicely tucked in for a very slim, compact look. I get that the camera is fitted on the outside of the house, but my WiFi router (Asus RT-AX88U) is about 5m away on the same, as the camera, floor. The signal reported by the camera is weak, and this shows whenever I try to use the dedicated pan/tilt controls. They move the camera with annoying lag. Thankfully, preset locations saved me a lot of frustration. If you’re going to pick EZVIZ CB8 Lite, make sure you have decent WiFi coverage.
I was going to complain about the lack of the RTSP mode, however, while I was playing with Home Assistant the EZVIZ device showed up on the list of LAN devices to be added to my server. After some Googling I discovered that EZVIZ CB8 Lite has LAN mode that you can enable. Not sure why this is implemented in such secret way. To do that:
- Open the EZVIZ mobile app.
- Select the profile icon.
- Navigate to Settings > LAN Live View > Start Scanning.
- Select your camera.
- Select the gear-like icon in the top-right corner > Local Server Settings > enable RTSP.
The scan option didn’t work for me, I’m not sure if this is model limited, but trying the manual setting and using Windows EZVIZ Suite did not work for me.
Audio/Video
Pleased with my doorbell, I expected at least equally good visuals from EZVIZ CB8 Lite. It comes with colour night vision, a spotlight and traditional IR-based night mode. 2K resolution may not be the top spec, but the camera has advanced AI detection features, and these are never available on 4K models in this price range.
Day
The image options allow for 3 saturation presets in case you want to tone down the feed a little. I found the natural setting to be my favourite. The camera deals well with bright sky without overexposing areas or turning everything dark. Car reg plates can be recognised up to about 10m, beyond that they turn into blur even on stationary vehicles.
As I use EZVIZ CB8 Lite for the bird eye view, I get less details from faces. to get nice clear shot of someone’s face the person has to be relatively close to the camera. This would improve if the camera was mounted lower. I already have EZVIZ doorbell doing that legwork.
15FPS footage isn’t revolutionary, as some frames will contain blur, especially on moving objects, but there is a good chance of a nice clean shot every couple of frames for export. The camera covers a wide area, and it’s best suited for an overview-type placement.
Night
My front of the house has a street light nearby, so the footage always feels like it’s being shot in the dark. The garden may appear to be pitch black with skies so dark, I can’t tell the clouds from the trees, and EZVIZ CB8 Lite shows clear colour details and captures the type of the clouds that cover the sky.
It’s simply short of magic. All this without using the spotlight. Spotlight really triggers when the camera is actively tracking someone. It works as deterent as it’s clear that camera doesnt need it.
Audio
Since the camera is equipped in a microphone and speakers, the video feed comes with audio recordings, which, considering a 5m elevation, is pretty clear. The speaker is loud enough to tell people off on the street, too. There is a loud siren to scare the heck out of the trespassers.
Files stored on the SD card are not easily accessible, and my VLC had a hard time opening them up. Your best bet is to use your mobile app or PC suite to managed stored files.
App and Features
The EZVIZ app offers typical features for security cameras. In options, you can select the detection and tracking settings. These include triggers caused by cars and people. Each time something triggers the camera, a short recording is made based on your settings. Clips are stored on the SD card, unless you have a cloud plan. These start from £5.99 a month, and apart from storage, additional subscriptions are available if you’d like to get advanced security. And I mean security, as subscription plans include a safety team dispatched to your house in case of a breach!
AOV
Battery-powered CCTV often experience a delay when capturing footage, caused by the time it takes for the camera to detect the motion and wake up all the systems from low power mode. EZVIZ CB8 Lite offers AOV and 24h mode that decreases this delay and records more footage once the motion triggers the camera. This also means that camera will capture what’s happening in between the events.
As nothing in this world comes free, this is done at the expense of battery use (perfect for solar panel and USB-C charging scenarios and the increase in usage of the SD card – so best get the bigger card if you want your footage stored for longer before it gets overwritten.
I tested the tracking feature of the camera, and despite trees in the frame, EZVIZ CB8 Lite tracked humans perfectly fine even when covered by foliage! One of the most convenient options is the ability to set pre-set locations, so you can quickly go to various positions to check out the surroundings.
Timeline is split between what’s on the card and what’s in the cloud, with events labelled by icons for easy identification.
Integrations
You can connect the app to Google Home and Alexa. I tested it with my Alexa Show and the stream loaded up in about 10 seconds, showing the footage with about 5-7s delay. While I could use the speaker and a microphone to have a conversation, I was not able to track pre-set locations using commands. This is likely to be an Alexa skill limitation rather than anything else.
In Home Assistant, you can add the camera and take advantage of the functions directly from your dashboard. That’s neat even if the integration only worked for me over cloud.
Final thoughts
Other than the range issue, I had a pretty good experience with the camera. I’m unlikely to interact with it unless there is an issue, and between SD card backup and paid cloud sync, there is enough there to keep your stream safe and the camera looking in the direction of the action. If you are looking to expand your security system and EZVIZ CB8 Lite features fit the bill, then give it a go. If you have any questions, let me know in this Reddit thread.
🆓📈💵 – See the transparency note for details.
