Chew Test Watch Your Dog and Home with Furbo
The Furbo camera for pet comes fully loaded with a camera, treat dispenser, sound notifications, night vision and even a handy night light. It certainly has a lot to offer for you and your dog as well as adding safety and security, but is it the best dog camera? There are a lot of features to talk about so let’s begin this Furbo dog camera review!
Fun Factor
It is endlessly entertaining fun to have an interactive dog toy with a camera feed that is controlled by your phone from anywhere. The Alexa pairing feature is a welcomed bonus that lets the Furbo toss out dog treats instantly at any time. Where normally you would be required to load up the app and video feed, taking quite a bit of time before you can send your pup a tasty treat.
Cloud Storage & Dog Diary: The Furbo Dog Nanny is a subscription service that will record any significant events and save them online for review at any time. It will also piece together highlights of your dog for the whole day and add music to it which are always fun to watch and post or share with friends!
Quality & Durability
While unboxing, one of the first things that impressed me when I laid my hands on it was the build quality. The combination of durable plastics with real bamboo wood cover gaskets give off a cool and slick vibe. The weight of the Furbo camera makes it feel solid and well built. I am not worried about screws getting loose, hearing creaking plastic noise or that it will fall apart all together.
The Furbo Dog Camera comes fully featured with attention to both design and functionality.
Video: The camera and video quality is good for what it does. Wide-angle lens plus night vision make sure that the video feed is always ready to capture what is going on around it in low light conditions.
Audio: The microphone and audio playback on the feed is nothing to write home about. It does the trick picking up any important audio cues like barking, howling, alarms, etc.
Treat Launcher: The capacity is around half a cup which is fairly good for a unit this size. It also has a generous launch tube roughly the size of a quarter allowing different sized treats to be used. The launcher also has decent range, able to chuck a dog treats several feet away. It also plays a cute sound that lets nearby dogs know a treat is coming which those dog will learn to anticipate and quickly respond to!
Safety
What really sold me on this product despite the steep initial investment is that it essentially doubles as a security camera for your house. With features like human detection, night vision and barking alerts the Furbo unit will let you know what is going on at your house. This adds peace of mind when you are away from home, at work, or on a different floor. It can even detect if your fire alarm or CO2 alarm is going off with its alarm detection feature.
Note: Some of the alarm and notifications are part of Furbo Dog Nanny subscription service. Please review their latest info on this if this is important to you as it is updated constantly.
I live alone and have to leave the dog is on its own for hours at a time while I go to work. The Furbo makes a great home companion for my lonely pup and can give you a real peace of mind knowing that you can always check in on your dog. Its built-in features will notify you if anything remotely suspicious is going on in view of its camera. For myself this was one of the main reasons for getting this dog accessory and it was worth the price tag.
Value
It is clear from the instant you lay your eyes on the package design, presentation, and unboxing experience that this is a special product. The makers behind the Furbo camera wanted to create a high-end, long-lasting, modern product that is both stylish and functional. As mentioned in the Quality section, the engineering and materials used are first class and is very well built.
While the price tag is high, there are often deals for the product. I was able to get a good sale price for Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend. I feel like Furbo is in a position to charge a premium based on everything that goes into this product. Plus the fact that this is a relatively new product as far as dog electronics goes, they have control over the price while their competitors play catch up. There is also an added value from Furbo’s on-going support that continually add useful features and upgrades to their app and cloud services.
Initial Impressions
Unboxing the Furbo was a good experience, the packaging, design and manuals were all well thought out. I was able to get connected in no time at all. It was immediately disappointing to be met with poor and stuttering video quality – even though I have very fast internet and connected with 5G Wi-Fi. Even at the lowest video setting the video would lag and have problems with maintaining a stable connection, repeatedly dropping out over the wifi. It wasn’t until I updated the firmware on the the following day that I was able to correct this problem.
Note: Without this initial firmware update the video and internet connection was spotty. As a result I feel that this should be addressed for new users either by mentioning in the manual or done in the initial app setup. However, it is good that the app will notify you when a new update is released.
Final Thoughts
After nearly a year of using the Furbo Dog Camera system I can say that it is definitely a game changer. Having a camera for pet watching over your pup as well as what goes on inside your home will put your mind at ease whenever you leave the dog on its own. Being able to feed your dog treats remotely is also a lot of fun and can help out when you are in a pinch and running late. Monitoring your dog and being able to communicate through the microphone can also help with lonely dogs and dogs with separation anxiety.
Overall Score
Sumo Dog Toy Large Review
KONG Ball Review
