We have just finished reviewing the Baseus S1 Pro Outdoor security camera, and the Baseus S2 lands on my desk immediately after. What am I to do but dive right into it?
The Baseus S2 builds on the foundations set by the S1 Pro Outdoor Dual Camera 3K. The same bullet form factor and sun tracking solar panel on top. From eyeballing the two when they were sitting on my desk, they are very similar in size.
I checked the official specifications, the S1 Pro measures 165 x 71 x 77 mm, and the S2 is 164.4 x 71.1 x 77.2 mm. Hardly anything between them.
tl;dr
The Baseus S2 improves on the S1 Pro with 4K resolution, radar-assisted motion detection, AI facial recognition, and a simpler single-lens setup. It’s fully wireless, solar-recharging, and skips the hub and subscription traps. Not flawless, but for the price it is impressive.
What’s Difference between the S1 Pro and S2?
On the surface, not a lot.
If you are peering at the business end of the S2, then you will notice there are a lot less googly eyes staring back at you.
The S1 Pro has two lenses, a LED and a PIR sensor which are the four circles on the front end of the unit.
The S2 has just a single lens. Next to it is a radar with the LED ring around it. The bottom half of the front end is the PIR module. So whilst it looks like only half the front is used, there is equipment packed in behind the scene.
Image resolution has been bumped from 3K to 4K.
The single lens has a wide 145° FoV and eight times digital zoom. The blurb says coverage up to 12 metres.
The S2 is a wireless camera that you can directly connect into your WiFi network. There is no HomeStation requirement which also means, no centralised storage.
It has the same sun-powered tracking system to maximise your solar recharge capability.
Local storage is via microSD on the camera. I have literature saying 256 GB or 512 GB is the upper band for support.
What has stayed the same?
The solar panel that rotates according to the sunlight to maximise the recharging time.
Still no subscription fees, or even a sniff of a subscription model. WYSIWYG. Now that’s an old buzz acronym. What you see is what you get.
Your initial outlay gives you all the features the S2 has – with the exception of the microSD card.
Setup and App Walkthrough
Since I have reviewed the S1 Pro, I already have the Baseus app and the account. If this is your first Baseus camera, then you need to get onboard with those two requirements.
I already have a “Home” profile in the app so when I added the S2 into my setup, I was prompted to select the Home profile. Alternatively I could create another one if it was at a different location.
Pick your mounting location where you can get direct exposure to sunlight. Baseus advises against just under the eaves of a roof line for example.
I have mine stuck high on a tree truck well clear of foliage, replacing a much older battery unit that had needed regular take down for recharges.
Camera Hardware and Real-World Use
Baseus has forego the dual telephone and wide-angle lens on the S2, opting in favour of a the simpler single wide-angle lens with digital zoom.
I have waxed lyrical about the benefits of the lens setup on the S1 Pro, and on face value I feel that this is a step backwards. However bearing in mind that the telephoto lens combination is not suitable for every situation.
For example, I have the S1 Pro setup to cover off a specific part of my property that only has a single point of interest. So putting the S1 Pro in that location is perfect because by default I have a close up of the POI.
With the S2, I have a much more generic coverage profile. I want to see everything that is happening towards the front of my property. The wide field of view allows me to have full coverage from a single camera. This was something I could not achieve with the previous camera I was using in the same location.
The image quality is excellent across the board. Daylight as one would expect is crystal clear in UHD.
The PIR is no slouch, giving good details and clarity at night.
With the LED on, it kicks in the colour night mode (look it’s not strictly colour night mode, it’s throwing light at night so the sensors can see the colours). Whilst the throw of the LED does not look like much in person, it is magic on the footage and the entire scene looks well lit.
Biometrics Makes an Appearance
Built into the S2 is AI driven facial recognition. You can whitelist up to 10 family members so they do not trigger the notifications.
This requires you to enrol people into the Baseus app which is quick and painless. You just need to take a selfie within the frame the screen provides and that is.
Does your mugshot get send over the internet into some giant database? I can’t answer that question. But given that there are no cloud services per se with Baseus, it seems everything is kept on the camera. The app is just a conduit to get access to the camera itself and to drive the notifications.
How effective it is based on just a single photo for each family member? I say this feature is still a work in progress.
I tested this under various conditions, and good baseline photos taken in good light. The results were inconsistent at best. The idea is that if a known face is detected, then you skip the notification on the phone and a clip is recorded and stored against the known user on file.
In practice it sometimes works – in recognising a face when the photo on file is closer to the lighting condition in a live environment.
For faces it does not recognise, the S2 will create an entry for an “Unknown Person” and store the video with it. At this stage you can review and delete the footage, or add the face to the whitelist.
It is far from perfect but it cuts down on errant and unnecessary notifications which is a blessing.
Also of note is that whilst the biometric feature is included into the unit, it is only being activated via the latest version (at time of publish is v1.02.33_1.13.94_1.1.3_1.04.07). No doubt Baseus will issue updates and improvements with firmware releases down the line.
The Big Key Features
There are a new features that has made an appearance in the S2.
First up is the radar detection. No, you are not going to see the cops with the mobile speed cameras, sorry to disappoint.
Baseus uses it in combination with PIR to reduce false alarms. It is a ridiculously windy night here in Melbourne as I am writing this review. Normally the camera notifications would be going bananas being triggered by the trees swaying in the wind. But with the S2, it has been dead quiet on that front.
I am actually quite impressed at how well that works. There is nothing to configure to take advantage of it, it is just there.
You can tune the detection type to look at all things, or just humans only.
There is also smart detection for vehicles or pets.
Additionally you can create two activity zones. This particular feature has seen an upgrade. Rather than a simple box that you can resize, on the S2 it starts as a hexagon and you can drag each of the six dots to create a polygon to suit your needs.
Unfortunately this change has not filtered down to the privacy zone. It is still just a rectangle you can make bigger or smaller.
The S2 also sports an IP67 rating. It is dustproof and waterproof. I have it completely exposed to the elements right now and it is going strong.
Glitches and Gremlins
The same issue I discovered with toggling the LED at night has carried over to the S2. This indicates to me that it is an app issue.
What happens is if you manually turn on the LED whilst in Live View, then turn it off, the image goes dark as if the PIR did not kick back in. It fixes itself if you exit the Live View and go back in.
Another issue I found is that if I see a notification and tap to view it, I get a “recording is incomplete” error. I have to wait until it is done, or go into Live View, which may be too late already.
The smart detection is not exceptional. On many occasions I have had a vehicle go past which registered as a person. I suppose technically someone is in the vehicle. This happens under all light conditions.
The facial recognition needs some refinement. I have tested scenarios where the S2 picked up my face in infrared and filed it under Unknown Person. On it’s own not a big deal as it was literally night and day difference. But to “recognise” the face, I have to consume another of the ten whitelist slots.
Each photo will consume one of the ten whitelist slots. I can’t add additional photos from the S2 into the same user profile to improve it’s intelligence, for wanting of a better phrase.
What Features I Want To See
With the facial recognition feature, I would prefer that rather than ignoring a whitelisted person, it tells me when a known person is seen on frame with their name. It would make it simple for me to know at a glance if one of the kids have headed out or returned home.
Just like with the S1 Pro, I would like some means of pushing the footage off the camera into other storage. Be it a Samba share, or a cloud service. Local storage with TUV Rheinland EN18031 and AES + RSA dual encryption protocols is wonderful, but if the unit itself is stolen, I got nothing. (Edited 28 July 2025). Note that CCPA-compliant encryption is expected to be introduced later in 2025.
This is particularly important when the data takes time to get written to microSD. By the time I can get into the footage, it may already been taken out of range of my Wi-Fi network.
The S2 works with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. I would love to see Home Assistant on the list, and I am sure Apple fans would like to see HomeKit support.
Final Thoughts
It occurred to me that I called the S1 Pro a “less frills” camera, rather than “no frills”. With the S2, the key addition of radar detection and AI facial recognition are excellent value-adds.
The two cameras, the S1 Pro Outdoor and the S2 are designed to meet different use cases, as I have detailed earlier.
Without the HomeStation component and with direct Wi-Fi connection to your network, the Baseus S2 is a simpler and more affordable option with a RRP A$379 (coming soon in the Au store).
Overall I am pretty impressed with the Baseus lineup I have reviewed so far. They are not perfect but they are pretty solid offerings for people who are shying away from the subscription model.
DRN would like to thank Baseus for providing the review unit.
