Owning a pitbull is kind of like having a home security system: If someone's at the door, my boy Bradley will always let me know. With the Furbo Dog Camera, I have an extra line of defense. It lets me use my phone to keep tabs on Brad, and my house, from wherever I am. The $249 Furbo is essentially an indoor home security camera and dog nanny in one, offering clear 1080p video even in the dark, plus barking alerts and two-way audio so you can hear and talk to your pupper. Perhaps best of all, it lets you toss treats to your pup when you're out and about. The Furbo Dog Camera is indeed pricey, especially compared with traditional security cameras, but it's as useful as it is fun, and gives you peace of mind that your dog and home are safe. For that it earns our Editors' Choice for pet cameras.
Design and Features
The Furbo stands 8.86 inches tall and has an oval base that measures 4.72 by 5.91 inches (LW). It weighs 2.1 pounds and features a 1080p camera with a 160-degree wide-angle lens, 4x digital zoom, and automatic infrared night vision. It also has a microphone and speaker, a barking sensor, and a treat tosser. There's a status indicator light on the bottom, a cavern inside to hold treats (up to 100 depending on how big they are), and a natural bamboo wood cover on the top, for a sleek, attractive look.
It comes with a 90-day free trial of Furbo Dog Nanny, a subscription service that gives you access to additional features. Even without a Dog Nanny subscription, you can view the Furbo's live video stream on your phone, hear and speak to your dog using the two-way audio feature, toss treats, get barking alerts, and take photos and video.
The Dog Nanny feature—which, after the free trial, costs $0.99 for three months, then $6.99 per month or $69 per year—adds event-based cloud recording, a Doggie Diary feature that creates a 60-second highlight video of your dog's day, scheduling support, and AI-powered smart alerts. Furbo's smart alerts notify you when your dog is being active, looking directly at the camera (which it calls a selfie), and has been barking for over one minute, crying, or howling. The alerts also tell you when a person is detected or your smoke or carbon monoxide alarm goes off.
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The Furbo records 15-second video clips when it detects people or dog-related events like activity and barking. These video clips are saved in the app for 24 hours. Within that window, you can save them to your smartphone's internal storage if you want access to them for longer.
Like the Furbo, you can use the Petcube Bites 2 without a subscription to watch your pet, interact with it, give it treats, and capture screenshots or record video from the live feed to your phone. Without a subscription, the Bites 2 stores 10-second video clips in the cloud, but you can't download them and they're gone four hours after they’re captured.
Petcube also offers a subscription service, starting at $5.99 per month or $47.88 per year, which adds three days of video history, 30-second video clips, up to 10 video downloads per month, and smart alerts that can differentiate between barks, meows, people, and other noises.
Setup
The first thing you have to do when setting up the Furbo is decide where to put it. The company recommends placing it 12 to 20 inches above the floor, based on your dog's height, in a place there they usually wander. It has three pieces of 3M double-sided tape on the bottom that will affix it in place if you're worried your dog is going to knock it down. I placed the Furbo on my TV stand, and it turned out to be the perfect spot, offering a view of my entire living and dining rooms.
A quick start guide in the box includes setup instructions. To get started, you simply plug it in and wait for the status light on the bottom of the device to turn green, indicating it's ready. You then download the Furbo app (available for Android or iOS), create an account, and the app then walks you through the rest of the setup process.
The app asks you to (optionally) enable notifications, select the device you're setting up, and whether or not the status light has turned green. It then asks for permission to use Bluetooth to connect your phone to the Furbo. Once the app finds your Furbo via Bluetooth, it asks you to select your Wi-Fi network and enter your password. It then asks you where your Furbo is located; I pressed the option for Living Room. You can name your Furbo device; I went with the suggested option: Living Room.
Once you get it set up, the app helps you introduce the Furbo to your dog. "Vets and trainers certify that dogs will have a 'positive association' with Furbo if introduced properly," the app says.
It advises you to fill the Furbo with your dog's favorite treat. Treats you put in the Furbo should be dry, firm, round, and around 0.4 to 0.5 inches in diameter. I filled it with Savory Salmon Blue Bits because I had them on hand. They worked with the Furbo most of the time, but occasionally got stuck and didn't shoot out, likely because they aren't dry, firm, or round.
Furbo recommends letting your dog see the treats inside the device to help foster a positive association. You should also let your dog get close to and sniff the Furbo to help it become familiar. Then, stand next to the Furbo and toss a treat to your dog by hand, so your pooch associates the Furbo with treat time.
The app shows you how to use the Furbo to toss your dog a treat, and has you practice it a couple of times. To get your dog's attention and help establish a positive association, the Furbo makes a barking sound when it's about to dispense a treat. My dog isn't very treat motivated, but he still got the hang of it right away and ate all the treats the Furbo tossed (it tosses two to three at a time). At first, because of where I had it positioned, the treats went under the couch, so I had to make a minor adjustment.
Furbo Interface
The Furbo app has three main sections on the bottom: Home, Furbo Dog Nanny, and Menu. To start monitoring your pet, just visit the home screen and press the play button. Once you do that, it will open the live video stream in full-screen mode. At the top of the stream it shows the date and time, and buttons on the bottom let you take a video or photo, toss a treat, and enable the microphone so you can speak to your pet.
On the home screen, it shows a tally of barking, activity, person, and selfie alerts, and you can click each one to bring up a timeline of those events with 15 seconds of video for each. Under those buttons is a timeline of all events.
In the Furbo Dog Nanny section, you can view and download a short video highlight of your dog's day. If you're out of the house a lot, this lets you quickly see what your pooch was up to all day.
In the Menu section, you can access help content (including FAQ and live customer support) and camera settings. In the Settings menu, you can change your camera's name, video quality (360p, 720p, or 1080p), night vision (auto, always on, off), treat toss sound (including the option to record your own), speaker volume, and on/off scheduling (so the Furbo automatically turns on during your selected times). Here, you can also adjust the barking alert sensitivity and disable the various alerts (person, selfie, activity, continuous barking, dog crying, dog howling, CO/smoke alarm, and when the device is disconnected from Wi-Fi or power), all of which are enabled by default.
Performance
The Furbo offers a wide field of view and sharp picture quality. In testing, I could see and hear my dog clearly, even in the dark thanks to the automatic infrared night vision.
Though the Bites 2 and Furbo both feature 1080p cameras with a 160-degree field of view, the Furbo offers superior picture quality. In good light, the Furbo's video looks crisp and colorful. The night vision is clear to about eight feet.
In addition, the Furbo's barking, dog activity, and person alerts were always spot on; I never got any false positives.
Considering I work from home and we're in a global pandemic, I don't go out often these days. But when I do, I love using the Furbo to check on my dog and toss him treats. The treat tossing feature works like a charm. Furbo recommends using it as a distraction when your dog is anxious, pacing, licking, or barking. You can also use it as a reward when they stop any of those behaviors.
Within minutes, Brad had a positive association with the treat tossing sound. Now as soon as he hears it, he knows to go over to the Furbo and wait for a treat. On the video stream, I can see the treats shooting out of the Furbo, and Brad picks them up every time.
The barking alerts have been especially helpful. When the app notifies me that Brad is barking, I open the video stream to make sure everything is OK. As soon as I initiate the microphone and start talking, I get his attention. He sometimes seem confused by this, however, and will start pacing by the front door when he hears my voice.
The Alexa integration also worked well in testing (though unfortunately Google Assistant isn't supported). After enabling the Furbo skill within the Alexa app, I was able to toss treats with the sound of my voice. Just say, "Alexa, tell Furbo to toss a treat," and the Furbo spits them out. You can also use Alexa voice commands to watch the live stream or your Doggy Diary on an Echo Show, create automatic treat-tossing schedules, and come up with routines to have the Furbo work together with other smart home devices.
Even the status light is useful. A white light means the Furbo is starting up, yellow means it's in sleep mode, blue means it's in use, and purple means there's no Wi-Fi connection. The company says it uses blue for interactive mode and yellow for sleep mode because dogs can see these colors. So over time, your dog may learn that the blue light means you're there.
One of my only gripes about the Furbo is that sometimes the alerts can be overkill. If I walk within view of the camera, for instance, it'll send an alert to my phone that a person was detected. If you start getting annoyed by too many alerts, you can always disable certain ones. Furbo will still keep a record of the events, but you won't get notifications on your phone about them.
At one point the Furbo wouldn't connect to the app, but that might have been due to my phone's connection or because I was installing a Furbo firmware update at the same time. Other than that, I didn't experience any connectivity issues.
Comparisons and Conclusions
If you want to keep tabs on your dog when you're not at home, the $250 Furbo is an excellent option, offering clear 1080p video that you can stream on your phone wherever you are. Its two-way audio and treat tossing features work well, and its dog activity, barking, and people alerts help justify the relatively high price.
The Furbo offers sharper video quality than the similarly priced Petcube Bites 2, plus selfie alerts and highlight video of your dog's day as part of its optional subscription plan, earning our Editors' Choice for pet cameras. It also goes on sale regularly, so you can likely find it for well under the list price, making it a stronger buy.
Of course, if you just want to keep an eye on your pet and don't need to remotely toss them treats, traditional security cameras work just fine and can save you a lot of money. The Wyze Cam Pan, for instance, is loaded with features including mechanical pan and tilt, motion tracking, and free cloud and local storage for just $30.
The Furbo Dog Camera is as functional as it is fun, letting you check on your pet and give it treats no matter where you are.
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