Furbo - smartest pet camera Reviews

by Aksin114

this app is more expensive then any other dog cameras because of the features they offer. When I purchased in 2017 I was told smart alerts are free and that comes with a price. After 2 years of using all these features that makes camera expensive become part of monthly subscription for $6.99! You don’t get alert unless you pay monthly subscription. On top of that, so many times camera freezes and loose connection, if you update sometimes it doesn’t work until next update. It is not worth your money!

I already paid $200 which is not worth the price and now I am expected to pay extra $6.99 for this useless camera. Beware and never purchase this camera. There are better ones out there for half a price or even cheaper. They loose so many customers already and they are trying make up that loss from existing customers by cutting the free features and putting them under subscription. Im never going to subscribe what is suppose to be free! I will report their false advertising and save as much as new potential customer from wasting their money!

by Moose-turkey

This has got to be one of THE most frustrating app and product to connect to. I did all the set up steps it told me to do, wait for the green light, open to app and follow instructions.

The part it will never seem to connect successfully is while this app is trying to connect to your wifi (taking up to 3 - 5 mins), it will ALWAYS FAIL. I’ve tried everything it instructed me to do including restarting both my router and this app itself. It will fail to connect over and over again despite my wifi being up and working.

Signing up and everything was easy, but the technical functionality of this product and app seems absolutely horrible. I would never ever recommend this kind of product to other dog owners. You’re better off getting an at-home camera with 2 way speakers like the Google Nest Camera (indoors).

by Shaezilla

The this app was worth it at first when they gave you the premium service trial, but now that it has expired it’s useless. The microphone quality is awful and makes you sound creepy so when you try to talk to your dog it scares them. It was worth it for me because of the person spotted feature but now I have no idea if the sitter came to let my dogs out while I’m at work if I’m too busy at the moment when they bark to immediately pull up the buggy, slow app and watch to see what they’re barking at.

I’m not going to pay a monthly fee in perpetuity for that feature after I bought the device for hundreds of dollars. I work in the animal care industry and will actively warn everyone I know against doing business with this shady company. All the reviews that are positive have just received the product and haven’t lost the “premium features” yet. They are not transparent about the fact that you need to pay every month forever when you’re buying the device. It’s not until you download Furbo and see all the reviews from people who were duped, like you.

by Raaeeenbow

I got this back in the spring of 2018 (before you had to buy a dumb subscription) and I used to LOVE it! But I just started trying to use it again after going back to work and it looks like I’m the only one working. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to reset it in the last week. Hard reset my phone, deleted Furbo and re-downloaded, “removed” the camera and set it up again, and I STILL get the network connection error. But only when I go into the camera settings!! So awkward when I can literally open the camera and look at my living room, but there’s no network connection? It’s sitting literally inches from my router and yet all I get is just “put it closer”. Great. The thing is useless. The bark alert goes off if one of my dogs so much as rustles the pee pads. And I can’t fix it, because it won’t let me into settings! I’m sure there’s a better option out there. Save yourself. Go find it.

by Unhappy With Furbo

Buyers beware. The description on Furbo is not entirely true without a “Premium Subscription.” I am very unhappy with this app right now. I have been using my this app for two years with no monthly subscription and always received person alerts, activity alerts, dog selfies, etc without any extra charge. Months ago they started advertising this was going to be called “Dog Nanny” and require a premium subscription or some ridiculousness like that, but I was given a free trial that kept extending itself so I didn’t worry about it too much thinking it was something new they would try but wouldn’t actually last. Alas my final trial renewal or whatever they want to call it has expired and I won’t be getting any more video clips or alerts when there’s activity in my home. It is just wrong of them to offer a service to loyal long-standing customers for years then change their policy and require a subscription for the same services they were getting all along for free. Completely ridiculous. Not cool, this app. Not cool at all.

by Esk1991

Furbo needs SERIOUS improvement. It’s almost unusable. We have had ours for 2.5 years and Furbo has worked properly maybe 40% of the time. Over this time we have tried Furbo on 4 separate phones and it has made no difference. The company is always bugging you to do app updates but they never help. We just got a new puppy this past weekend (feb. 2021) and had to move our this app to the other room. This was so we could keep an eye on how our first dog interacted with the puppy the first time we left them alone. Before leaving we loaded up Furbo and it worked fine. We left, and 20 mins down the road, Furbo absolutely refused to work whatsoever. Did not load, even after several restarts and trying on two different phones. This is only one of SEVERAL times this has happened. I thought the idea of having this device was to keep an eye on your pets and make sure everything is safe when you can’t be home. Apparently this app disagrees. this app gets and absolute failure of a grade. My advice to the company is to simply spend the money on a decent app and stop getting people to buy your broken product. My advice to the consumer is to buy literally any other camera on the market until this app gets it together. I believe the product will be fine for the money once they address the absurd connection issues.

by Sickoffurbosapp

I’ve been using this for 11 months. At this point in time, it doesn’t maintain your dog’s info, has stopped capturing the dog’s movement in pics, and is painfully slow to load to the point of ridiculousness. Sometimes it doesn’t load at all! (And it’s not my phone cuz that’s new.) This is purely software bugs they need to fix. There’s no way to control the Doggie Diary which sometimes comes through multiple times (even though no pics were captured, so what’s the point of that?) late at night once you’re already asleep. I’m so freaking annoyed with this awful app and wish there was another choice - I’d try it without any consideration at all. And the whole Doggy Nanny thing is beyond stupid. Is it something we’re supposed to subscribe to even though buying the this app was supposed to provide what it keeps telling you is a premium service? The developers really need to get it together.

by PutInWorker

I am very happy with the camera itself, I have been trying to use it to help with my dog’s separation anxiety by tossing treats when she gets nervous.

However, Furbo itself is horrible and causes me so much frustration to use. The worst part is the never-ending popups that I’ve been getting within Furbo (i.e. “Did your dog eat the treat?”). It automatically activated the dog nanny demo which I didn’t actually want, and now it forces me through a tutorial of how to use the service when I’m just trying to watch my dog to see if she is damaging the house. There is no way to leave this tutorial and it forces me to save videos to my phone that I didn’t want.

Again, I love the product but Furbo needs to be a little less tutorial-heavy (it is very intuitive to use, just let me get to it!) and stop with the popups.

by BasilZazel

When this device works properly it is wonderful. I used it with no trouble for 7 months, at which point it stopped sending barking alerts to my phone (a service for which I pay a monthly subscription). Customer service talked me through days of trouble shooting, and eventually sent me a refurbished this app to replace the original. That replacement was unable to connect to my WiFi, which prompted more days of troubleshooting with customer support. They sent me a second replacement, which will not connect to Furbo at all. I have no way to access my account thru Furbo without a linked this app, and so I can’t even cancel the subscription that I’m not using. At this point I have spend hours over the past month trying to make this device work on any level, with no success and constantly changing support advice.

by Captainnibles

I’m a little shocked at many missing obvious features of this app, and number one is the ability to toggle some sort of audible announcement when someone is connecting to the camera. Nothing weirder than setting up a spy camera in my own home and not knowing if my own family might be listening in or watching in an inopportune moment. Like disturbingly creepy and SO easy for them to solve.

We’ve instituted a “verbally announce yourself” policy when checking the camera, but really this seems like a basic and obvious feature I can’t believe they didn’t think of: maybe something like a chime for 1 or two seconds before connecting the camera. This would of course be an optional setting for those that don’t want it.

As an example, my brother will be watching my dogs for a few days while we are on vaccination. I’d like to check in, but I can’t really have a camera that I’ve got 24hr silent access to while I have a guest in my home… really creepy. Please fix, this app.

by Sashpups

I purchased the this app so that I could keep an eye on my pups while I’m gone. First week no issues now every other day there are issues with connection and I get some notifications. The other problem with it is my husband and I have the ap so we both can check on our pups. He gets all the notifications and I just get a few of them. We’ve had to reset the this app multiple times. I love the ability to check on my pups, but it’s a pain to constantly reset it. We don’t know there are issues till we go to look in on them and find out it needed to be reset. I sometimes have to reset it a number of times in a day. Pretty expensive dog camera. I wish it’d just work the way it did when we first got it.

by Anon468634

Please introduce the ability to set your work hours or hours that you will be out of the house so that you don’t have to receive a million notifications when you are home. I love getting the notifications when I’m gone, but when I am home, I don’t need to get so many notifications and it’s a pain to have to turn off the notifications manually. It would be really nice if there were a feature where you could set your work hours or general time you’re not at home as when you want Furbo to send you notifications. I’ve searched all over the settings and help documents and googled and it doesn’t seem to exist yet. I would really really really appreciate this feature!

by Whocares314

I found the setup and use of this device pretty easy. I had it set up in just few minutes and streaming video and audio without a problem. Some of the negative reviews with connection issues might be because of a bad WiFi connection. You do want a strong signal with a good S/N ratio at the location where you put the this app.

My only complaint is with the speaker quality in the device. Using the 2-way talk feature to talk to your dog sounds horrible! I had my wife leave the house while I stayed a listened and the sound quality coming out of the device was barely intelligible! I’m surprised by this because the pre-recorded sounds that the this app can make do sound decent. I know my iPhone is capable of recording high quality audio with its microphone. I think it may be possible that Furbo is very poorly compressing and downgrading the quality of your voice before beaming it over to the this app. I would love to hear from the developer what audio format is being used for transmission. It sounds like a potato!

by Harley Q BBQ

We have been using this app the last two days and have already found a few things that need fixed. First, you get to create a doggie profile: picture, breed, birthday, etc! However every time I put in the information, it disappears by the end of the day And I have to redo it again! (This has happened at least 5 times and yes I’m saving the info!) Second, it does a great job notifying me however the notifications are delayed. It’s great for when we are out of the house, but when we are home my phone blows up with notifications of “barking” which is actually a noise and a “human was spotted”. I wish there was a way to adjust that without having to changed the settings in Furbo every time I leave the house. Aside from the the product is great! If those few bugs would get fixed I’d rate this 5 stars.

by Jay-tee-eye-vee

I don't seem to have as many issues as other users do, thankfully. The this app itself is great and Furbo has a nice interface and works well for the most part. My main complaint is with regards to a loop Furbo gets stuck in. It wants me to review the this app and give a rating as well as what I think can be improved. Well, the problem is you can't dismiss this dialogue and even if I try to leave a review from within Furbo , it boots me out of it upon submission. When I open it back up, it just prompts me for a review again. The only way to get Furbo working again is to reinstall it. Fix that, and I honestly will have no major issues. My only other (minor) issue is the way this app pushes the nanny service on users. I'm not interested in it nor will I ever be, so I should be able to hide that stuff in the settings menu.

by Atagana

I have loved my this app camera and companion app for a while now. The additions to Furbo have been well thought out, helpful, and well implemented. The one thing that I am consistently trying to figure out is the Dog Nanny subscription model. It says that I am on the free trial but doesn't tell me how long that will last or how much it will be at the undetermined end of the trial. I suppose I will keep my fingers crossed on a continual free trial... The Doggy Diary has become a daily activity that my fiance and I do together. I will literally get excited when I receive my notification that the Doggy Diary is ready. The last two days, however, I have received the notification, opened Furbo , and been greeted with a message that no Doggy Diary was recorded. The disappointment this has created is something that I cannot adequately describe. I am hoping that today's update will fix this. If it does, I will alter my review accordingly.

by BHern12

this app is a great product that allows pet parents and their furbabies to connect while apart from one another. No matter the distance this app will let you check in on your pet barring WiFi signal. Fortunately I have not experienced any connection issues that have altered my experience. That being said I believe this app can build upon their already great product. A simple feature I would love to have would be allowing you to record a number of messages you could play when you are not able to speak over the microphone. Let’s say you are at work or around a group of people that maybe you don’t want to hear your puppy talk. Having the ability to say what you want with a press of a button would be amazing. There’s been plenty of times I wanted to tell my dog I love and miss them but also knew I would catch a stare or two. Having a feature like this would really improve pet to owner interaction and the amount of time spent using Furbo . Overall the this app does an outstanding job at performing what it was built for and I recommend it to any other dog owner

by Linda1962321

I actually bought this to keep an eye on my cats, I love that I can toss treats and they come running so I can see them when I am not home. Picture is great, even at night. I have had a few connection issues maybe 2-3 times a year but had no issue reconnecting when home again.

A few times my smoke alarm has gone off and this app immediately notifies me - love this feature! Also like the feature where it tells you that a person walked by (I actually caught a cat sitter lying - told me he was there at 6 to feed them but this app notified me of his arrival at 10 at night! I also love the nightly video where they piece together the days events…

I wish they would allow two cameras per account and that it would say “your cat is active” - missed marketing opportunity that they focus solely on dogs. I do pay for a annual subscription and it’s worth every penny to be able to check on my babies when I am away! When I am home, I turn it to point out the window and use it to monitor visitors to my house.

by Isaac921

I ordered this thing before I read all Furbo reviews and got really nervous about my purchase. There are pretty terrible reviews about every aspect of Furbo, setup, basic use, app crashing, etc. So far so good for me. I did notice that there was an update to Furbo the day before it arrived. I don’t doubt the issues others have had, I just think/hope this company has resolved them through updates. It took me about 10 minutes to set up with absolutely no issues. The only reason it took 10 minutes was because it had to update the device firmware. I’ve messed with every feature of this and everything seems to work fine. I do wish the treat tosser would toss them more than a few inches, but it does work. The quality and range of the camera exceeded my expectations, it covers 100% of the area my dog will be in while I’m gone. I will adjust this review if I start to experience app crashing or other issues. But as of now I would totally recommend this to a friend.

Things I’ve checked:
Works well both on WiFi and cellular.
Bark alerts work.
Motion alerts work.
Dog selfie feature works.
Treat tosser is weak, but works.
Picture and sound both ways are clear.

Hope this was helpful

by Erameline

Ignore the ding-dongs crying about “premium” items— you get all the basic features that were initially promised with the free plan. In fact, as of March 2019, they haven’t even actually launched the premium option yet, so right now everything is—gasp— still free! (They’ve been trialing and getting feedback for several months now.)

Anyway, for what it does, it’s perfect. It’s got a great-quality camera with amazing night vision, you can zoom in and out on Furbo , you can talk to your pup and hear what’s going on, and you can launch treats!! How cool is that?! I love checking in on my pup while I’m at work.

Additionally, the customer feedback is amazing, especially via the Facebook group, and they’re constantly surveying and taking advice on how to make the product better, so never be afraid to speak up if you feel like there’s something they could improve. I’m very, very happy with my this app and Furbo , and am so glad I invested in this product.

by Oliviabmh

I purchased this about 6 months ago and it was decent...while I was still subscribed to the “premium” account. Once that is over you can only toss treats and look at what your pet is up to if you open Furbo . You DO NOT get any notifications at all unless you pay for the subscription each month (NO person alerts, barking alerts, activity alerts etc.) which completely defeats the purpose of this product and is not what is advertised. I could get a camera that I can watch when I open an app at a fraction of the price. I purchased this specifically because of the alert features. It would be like if you bought an Alexa/Google home and then found out that it will only tell you the time and weather after your “premium” trial is up. Complete waste of money and false advertising! Buyers beware :(

by BriannaBree

I USED TO love this app, I shared it with all my friends and fam- even purchased a few as gifts! But now- its so WORTHLESS!

this app recently launched a “premium” option which makes you pay a subscription fee for everything you used to get included with your initial purchase of the product. I was so upset when this launched MONTHS after I purchased the product... but I gave it a chance and bought the subscription fee. Since then the product has just become more and more useless to me. It takes FOREVER to open, when it does its constantly FREEZING, it used to have a person spotted feature which I would use to check if the sitter let the dogs out, now it’s no longer a feature, the storage of videos you pay for with the monthly subscription fee is hit or miss WHEN it’s working, is just basically USELESS now.

Long story short- don’t WASTE YOUR MONEY... DO NOT BUY!

by Jpsaddogmom

Our product experiences difficulties from time to time with connectivity issues that we look the other way with. But right now we are especially frustrated. They have a “known” issue verbatim from the company via email when we reports playback issues- being able to review footage captured. The #1 reason we purchased the device. We pay a premium for “nanny service” for recordings in which right now we cannot play. The company has offered a 2 week refund but this is not a recent issue, it has been more than 2 weeks and they need to take an initiative reacting to major issues, they are praying on customers not knowledgeable enough to figure out what is wrong. Does not sit well with us as a business model. Would not go back and purchase products from them in the future.

by Louiseangel11111

Works fine with WIFI but can never connect with T-Mobile cell network. So can only check my pups at office, not anywhere else. My boyfriend has ATT and it works. Interesting thing is when I first bought this product one year ago, I was able to connect with T-mobile and all of a sudden it stopped. I reported through Furbo and even offered to help test Furbo during trouble shooting because I DO love the camera. I constantly went back to check updates of Furbo. Can’t believe it’s been a year and still no progress on this simple issue. I don’t know what developers you hired. Hire better ones because it is an amazing concept and product but just pointless when it does not connect. Wish I can still return at this point. A cheap webcam does better than this

by Shawnamyw

Overall it’s ok. I do like checking in a tossing treats while I’m at work. I’ve been experiencing connectivity issues but have other devices still connected while I’m gone and so I know it’s not my internet. App identifies my dog as a person which gives me mini panic attacks but then the cloud recording is nice if I’m unable to view it immediately.

Disappointed that you now have to pay for activity alerts and person alerts. Paid features available are not justified by price increase at all. Just note it’s a basic camera with barking alerts and the ability to toss treats. Treats are inconsistent in how many toss each time but I don’t mind that. Also, use recommended treats as other ones will easily jam the this app and it’s a pain to try and fix/clean out.