Review: Baseus S1 Lite 2K solar security camera drops to under £50 - and it's brilliant
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A crisp 2K wireless security camera with solar charging and no subscription, the Baseus S1 Lite is now a bargain on Amazon - here’s what we think of it
I hadn't heard of Baseus until I was invited to test one of its security cameras, but when I read through the specs, it seemed to tick all the right boxes, so I figured I'd give it a go.
The new S1 Lite captures 2K footage with a 135-degree field of view, it has a built-in solar panel, colour night vision, AI motion detection, a bright spotlight and, most importantly of all, it has absolutely no subscription system. Everything is stored on an SD card.
I even found the price quite attractive. At just £79.98 it undercuts a few key competitors, but there's currently a double deal on Amazon which gives you £24 off, plus a promo code - it's a complicated set of discounts, but it ends up costing just shy of £50 in your checkout.
To get this sort of feature set for just £50 is absolutely remarkable. So surely it's a bit rubbish, I thought to myself, as I opened the box. But it feels solid, and it's remarkably compact.
It comes with everything you need to mount it in the hand, and its little solar panel is built in to the top, so you can tuck it into all sorts of small places on the front of your house, and it's very innocuous. No wiring, no external solar panel, just connect it to your WiFi and off you go.
Daytime footage is every bit as good as you'd expect from a 2K sensor, and the night-time footage is every bit as good as I've seen from cameras costing two or three times more.
The small spotlight isn't overly bright, but it doesn't seem to clobber the battery too much either, which is good.
The battery, incidentally, certainly stood up well to heavy use in the shady spot I placed the camera in. The solar panels on these compact units tend to be a bit inadequate unless they're placed in direct sun, but so far so good. It remained above 60% for most of the time.
I've a feeling this will become more of an issue in the autumn and winter, but there are ways to reduce battery consumption in the app without sacrificing too much in the way of performance.
The app isn't a highlight. It's pretty good, but I found it less easy to navigate than some of the smart home systems I've tested. Baseus will no doubt keep making improvements to firmware and software though, so this shouldn't put you off.
Overall, I found it hard to criticise the Baseus S1 Lite, and that was before Amazon dropped the price by such an impressive amount. At £79.98 it's a superb piece of kit if you're after a simple way to beef up your home security. But at the £49.59 it's currently available for on Amazon it's an absolute bargain.
For less than £50 you can have a simple, truly wireless security camera with no subscription fees, crisp footage, and motion detection alerts.
I think you'd be mad not to buy one while the deal's on.