The Eufy sits on the floor or table, and has a small compartment for dog treats that can be flung to your pet using the app. The camera itself has a 170° wide-angle view (which creates a "fish-eye" look) and is designed to rotate up to 270° to track and follow your pet if it walks within this range.

Although the camera is costly upfront, unlike other pet cameras, there are no additional subscription fees to access all of the smart features.

You can view a live stream of your pet's activities via the app and record or screenshot any interesting activity, while two-way audio lets you chat to and listen to your pet.

There's 16GB of local storage on the device and it'll record snippets of detected activity, such as barking and motion.

We gave the camera to two triallists. Deanna has two small dogs, Hamish and Errol; and Denis has one, Tempe.

Our expert tester and our two triallists, Deanna and Denis, all had very easy experiences connecting the Eufy camera to their home network and installing the apps. Deanna found the fish-eye effect was less pronounced when she placed the camera on the floor rather than on a table, but her dogs' heads were cropped out of the frame when they came right up to the camera. 

"If the petcam is left on the floor it would need to be carefully positioned so as not to be knocked over," Deanna says.

Deanna and Denis had mixed experiences using the app. Deanna did not find the settings and navigation intuitive, and rated the app poorly. There were only Quick Start instructions provided and these did not cover all of the available features.

She also had some technical problems recording the voice commands and downloading the "doggy diary", which is an automated video compilation of the dog's day, set to music.

Denis, on the other hand (who is comfortable with tech), found the available settings useful for setting up commands and alerts for the dog to hear. He noted that some of the icons on the menu were tiny, but there were only a few, so you were able to figure what they did soon enough.

The Eufy lets you associate the treat flicking with a squeaky toy sound, Pavlov-style so they learn to anticipate it. "The ability to flick the treats at different distances was interesting," Denis says.

The unit can also swivel up to 270° so the treat flicking becomes a game. Deanna's food-motivated dogs learned quickly that the pet camera held yummy treats but they did not always respond when the sound came on, suggesting that owners may need to be patient. 

Hamish would wait for treats and chase them enthusiastically. "Sometimes treats landed on his head and back and he had no idea where they had gone, but he knew they had been launched so looked for them anyway (to no avail!)," Deanna says.

Keeping the camera filled with treats was easy, as was the cleaning process, but Deanna noticed some residual water after washing and advises careful drying with a paper towel to avoid any microbial growth.

Denis says Tempe did not interact with the device when she heard the treat alert. She did get used to the sound of the treat hitting the floor, but did not seem to anticipate anything further.

Our triallists found the app alerts useful if you’re keen on knowing your pet’s every movement, but the notifications could get annoying after a while.

Denis and Deanna both found the AI did not accurately differentiate between a person and a pet. And while there is the option to set a particular "pet activity zone" on the app and theoretically restrict notifications within this zone, Deanna still got notifications when the dogs were outside it.

Our expert tester was impressed by the Eufy's excellent video detail, but notes that the fish-eye lens does distort the view and distant objects may appear small. 

Motion was smooth with about a second delay. Deanna noticed that most videos of recorded activity retained their high quality when downloaded off the device.

Denis said audio was very good and the voice commands were "clear enough and could be discerned as coming from the owner". 

We reviewed the previous version of Furbo's flagship product back in 2019, and were impressed by its video quality and ability to entertain pets by tossing treats. The latest Furbo 360° Dog Camera now includes the ability to spin in a complete circle, so you can keep tabs on your pet as it roams around, and throw treats to them virtually anywhere in the room.

The version we tested requires an additional "Nanny" subscription on top of the purchase price to activate it and get all the functions working ($9.99 per month). Features include "possible vomit detection", continuous barking/meowing alerts, cloud-based storage, and activity/security alerts.

We gave the Furbo to Matt who has a dog, Ruckus, and to Chris, who has a cat, Adi (we tested the dog version of the camera, but the cat version is virtually the same apart from the colour and a feather toy attached to the top of it).

Both Matt and Chris found the setup simple; Furbo has a wide base and can be placed on the floor close to a nearby power point. The app was easy to set up with the local network.

There are many customisations you can make to the Furbo's settings, but you need to subscribe to unlock the full functionality.

Our expert tester found the app easy to use with good-sized icons and straightforward symbols. Chris found it surprising when the camera started "recording video on its own volition", but acknowledged that was the camera's intent. Matt liked how video and audio were automatically deleted after a day but you could download it before then.

You can set up alerts for particular activities within the app such as when your pet meows or barks.

The treat feature was a real favourite with Chris's cat Adi who "rapidly learned that the Furbo was dispensing his favourite treats and frequently hung around it waiting for a snack". 

"In fact at one point it looked like he'd figured out the treats were inside it and he was thinking of how to break in," says Chris.

Matt's dog wasn't that excited by the camera. When a treat came out he stood there expecting another one for a minute or so before going back to bed.

Both Matt and Chris found cleaning the treat container straightforward.

Chris found the idea of a vomiting alert off-putting, but Matt found it useful as Ruckus sometimes does this (however, he didn't vomit during the time he tested the camera, so it did not trigger). Chris said his cat liked the camera, but other humans in the family didn't like the sense of being "spied on" when the camera tracked their movement in the room. Matt liked this feature as it did a good job at following his dog so he stayed in frame.

Other alerts include the "home emergency" notifications such as breaking glass, CO (carbon monoxide) / smoke alarms or people. The Furbo can also detect "abnormal" or concerning behaviour such as chewing, continuous howling, or excessive weeing and pooing (or as the US-centric app calls it, "potty").

Matt turned the video functionality off for privacy reasons unless he wanted to use it to send a treat.

For anxious dogs, the device can use calming sounds and send treats if it detects barking.

Our expert found excellent detail and colour in the video in both daylight and low light conditions. Night mode was very good, too. Our home triallists also thought the video quality was great.

Our expert marked this model down slightly for being less sensitive to sound than other cameras we tried, requiring at least 65dB before sending an alert (conversational level) as opposed to 45dB for the most sensitive pet cameras. That being said, you may only want to be alerted if a dog is being particularly loud, and a dog's bark would be louder than 65dB.

The Petcube is a smart camera with two-way audio that dispenses treats. It claims a viewing angle of 160° which is wide enough to get a decent view of a room, but it doesn't have the ability to spin around like some other cameras. 

While all Petcube cameras come with free basic monitoring features such as a live stream, you have to pay extra for cloud-based storage, alerts and smart features. We got two triallists, Jen and Matt, who both have dogs (Viv and Ruckus), to try the unit in their homes.

The rectangular unit can be placed on a shelf or on the ground, pointing towards where your pets spend most of their time. You can also hang it up on a plasterboard wall using the provided anchor screws. Our expert tester and triallists found it easy to set up. It only took Jen a minute or so to link the camera with the app, and Matt found it a seamless experience that was explained well in the instructions.

Jen found the app simple and easy to use. She also activated a two-week trial of the subscription service so she could download and record videos of her dog, Viv. This does end up storing a lot of videos, so she isn't sure if she would use that on an ongoing basis.

When Jen was home she didn't find the alerts useful as they were constantly pinging her, and she would probably turn the notifications off if she owned the camera long-term. Matt did not use the paid-for service so his alerts were limited; he found them OK for the basic service offered.

Viv getting up close and personal with the Petcube.

Our expert found the motion smooth with excellent detail during daylight and dim conditions, and night vision had good detail in contrast. But Jen's video looked more laggy as her dog moved around. Video quality may depend on your wireless connectivity, and unfortunately there didn't seem to be a way to lower the resolution if you wanted to capture video that took up less bandwidth.

Audio-wise, the subscription plan will alert you to barks. We found it was a little less sensitive than other cameras, requiring 55dB to alert you to noises, but still OK.

The Arlec was slightly different from the other pet cameras we tested – rather than dispensing treats, it is a smart pet feeder which provides a continuous food source for your pet. It has a large 5L capacity in which to store dry, pellet-style food and a static fish-eye lens. 

We gave the unit to Chris (who has a cat) and Matt (who has a dog).As it is a fairly basic device, there is no onboard or cloud-based video storage and if you do want to download videos you need to do it in real time. Like with all the other models, you can talk to your pet through the device if you want to say hello.

The Arlec unit is designed to be placed on the floor and near a power point. Unfortunately, the instructions were poor. Our triallists had technical problems pairing the unit with the Grid Connect app. Matt described the instructions as "awkward and frustrating", noting that they require you to scan a QR code displayed on your phone with the same phone you are holding. 

Chris noted his phone needed to be on the 2.4GHz home network before being able to connect to the router, but even then he had to put the feeder right next to the router before it could pair up, despite being placed only about 4m away in a direct line of sight. After pairing, he was able to put it back to its original location.

The Grid Connect app was generally unintuitive to use, with features buried deep within the app and a clunky series of menus that take some getting used to.

Unlike the more premium apps, you have to manually save videos and screenshots to your phone, but at least the functionality is there and you don't have to pay ongoing subscription fees to access it. 

Food portions are around 10–15g and you can dispense the food manually on the feeder or remotely via the app. You can also view a history of how much food was dispensed and when.

Chris's cat knew the sound of food falling into the bowl and was surprised to hear his owner's voice coming from the camera. Matt's dog was excited to see so much food; a change from the single treats that he experienced with the other cameras! While the bowl is easy to keep clean, ants may be attracted over time to the internals at the bottom of the hopper where the food dispenses, and our triallists found this part was hard to clean.

Chris only partly filled the unit because it had such a huge capacity, and it would quickly send alerts that it was running out of food. However, he did find the alerts useful. Our expert was unable to find any noise alert settings (like barking alerts).

Matt's dog Ruckus enjoys gobbling the food from the smart feeder.

Your pet will be right up near the fish-eye camera while feeding, so there will be distortion, and distant objects will look small. Overall, video quality was not bad, with some drop in quality in dim and dark conditions.

Sound was very good overall, but our expert could not find any settings for sound alerts, which is a real downside as you can't monitor how often your dog is barking.