Key Takeaways

• The Furbo 360° cat camera offers a range of features, including a feather toy, two-way audio, and a treat toss, to engage with your cat from a distance.
• With its 1080P camera, night vision, wide-angle view, and 4x digital zoom, the Furbo 360° cat camera allows for monitoring in any condition.
• The Furbo 360° cat camera is a great option for monitoring single or multi-cat households and can help reduce separation anxiety by providing interaction with your pet.

The Furbo 360° cat camera expands the range of wide-angle rotating cameras with a focus on cats. For those looking to bring the same protection and interaction for their cats or build a multi-animal monitoring system in their home, the Furbo 360° cat camera offers plenty of features.

Setting Up the Furbo 360° Cat Camera

For those new to Furbo's cameras, the initial set-up process features detailed visual guidance within the accompanying Furbo app and via the included quick start guide (adjacent to a feather cat toy).

Like with the Furbo 360° dog camera, it's recommended you place it three to four feet from the ground with adequate space given to ensure full 360° rotation. It's also advisable to place the camera within 15 feet (4.5 meters) of your Wi-Fi router. 3M sticky pads are included at the bottom of the camera to ensure further stability, especially for more active cats that may otherwise attempt to knock it over or play too hard with the included feather toy.

With the new detachable feather toy, you'll need to clip the feather onto the wand before inserting it into the wand base behind the bamboo lid. While you're free to remove the wand as needed for introduction and to reinforce it as a toy, it's best kept on the Furbo. Once placed inside, the wand is light enough to move with the camera rotation and provide a point of interest.

For more positive first impressions of the Furbo 360° cat camera, it's suggested that treats with a diameter of 0.4 inches are prepared alongside the cat toy. On average, you can fit about one hundred treats (approximately a single 2.1oz or 60g treat bag).

Furbo 360° Cat Camera Technical Specifications

For those already using the Furbo 360° dog camera in their home, the camera hasn't changed with this entry. The Furbo 360° cat camera still uses a full HD 1080p camera with a 132° (diagonal) wide-angle lens. While you have the option to rotate a full 360 degrees, the lack of tilt makes placement much more important.

But whether this is a demerit or not will depend on the typical behavior of your cats. When using the Furbo 360° cat camera to monitor two senior cats, the wide-angle lens worked well at a height of slightly above three feet from the ground. One tended to lounge in a cat tree at window height, whereas another stayed beneath the table—it was able to capture both in their typical resting places.

When looking at the Furbo app, treat size can be configured as either large treats between 0.5 to 0.75 inches or small treats between 0.25 and 0.5 inches.You'll likely need to experiment to find the best cat kibble, but you should focus on firmer treats for the best results.

While a default bird chirping sound can be played once tossed, Furbo advises using your own voice to build up a positive association with the camera. With a maximum recording length of six seconds, there's room to call multiple cats. If your cat is more noise-sensitive, you can also adjust the speaker volume to make it less intimidating.

To stay on top of your cats when they're on the prowl, the Furbo 360° cat camera offers a variety of features to keep them in view. Foremost, automatic cat tracking will follow your cat's movements in live view, or follow and record your cat's movement when using the Furbo Cat Nanny subscription.

Additionally, the 4X digital zoom can help keep your cat in clear view; the adjustable live resolution between 360p, 720p, and 1080p ensures you can maintain a stable connection when interacting on the go.

As with the dog camera, you may still have connectivity issues with 5GHz Wi-Fi.

Introducing Your Cats to the Furbo 360

With any Furbo product, proper introduction to your pets will bring the best results. With the Furbo 360° cat camera, I tried it with both an adventurous boy cat and a more reclusive female cat. In both cases, treat correlation and a custom treat toss sound made the cats less afraid of the new introduction to their environment.

So, when thinking about how to introduce this camera, consider what features will make it a more natural inclusion. While the status indicator lights and default set up were fine on the Furbo 360° dog camera, the feather toy brings another fun distraction which is great for cats that bore more easily.

Understanding the Furbo App

If you're familiar with the Furbo app, you'll find a continued focus on a simplified interface that gets you to your essential information quickly, whether it be live view or a list of cloud-recordings.

For those new to the app, adding a pet profile is a button tap away; you can add additional Furbo cameras too, as needed.

You can choose cloud recordings all at once or by specific categories. Once you've tapped on a category, you're also able to look at sub-categorizations to find particular behavior types, such as variants of how your cat might be meowing. These are done via Furbo's AI smart alerts, so you're able to correct the detection on playback if so desired.

If you're short on time, you can also tap the Furbo Nanny icon to bring up a daily summary video. If you do have multiple cameras connected to the Furbo app under the Furbo Nanny Pro plan, you'll get a combined video of footage from all the cameras. So if you're after a cat or dog-specific diary, this isn't currently possible.

You can once again choose to either play, download, or delete an individual recording. There is no batch downloading or deleting, so you should grab them as you need them. Overall, videos play fine in most cases; you'll occasionally run into an error where the video will fail to load temporarily.

Using the Furbo App for Real-Time Monitoring

Once you're ready to connect to the live view of your Furbo cat camera, there are a few buttons to experiment with. Besides the rotation controls that can be held down, you'll find a photo, video, treat toss, and two-way audio buttons for quick access to the essential functions. You can also swap between different Furbo cameras, adjust auto-tracking settings, or tap on the yellow kebab menu for quick access to all of your settings.

When rotating the camera, there's no adjustable speed, but it moves steadily when held down with the option to tap it for more minor adjustments. If you're attempting to keep an eye on multiple cats in live view, the automatic cat tracking can be disabled at a quick press of the paw-print magnifying glass in the top right. This makes it a bit easier to focus on the pet you want to toss a treat or talk to when they're both moving about.

For those concerned about noise levels, the camera's rotation is almost silent, if you want to catch your pets during a cat nap. But if you do want to draw your cat's attention, you can adjust the volume of your treat toss sound or engage via the device's two-way audio.

Should You Subscribe to Furbo Cat Nanny?

For those unsure about Furbo's subscription plan, a thirty-day free trial is included with the purchase of the Furbo 360° cat camera. If you've already purchased a Furbo 360° dog camera, for instance, this doesn't impact your free trial since it's based on each standalone camera purchase.

So you're free to see how the premium-based smart alerts, camera on/off scheduling, cloud recording, and daily diary video are in practice, even if it's been a while. However, if you do downgrade to the basic plan you'll still get access to the basic meowing alerts alongside the core functions, such as the treat toss and live view.

When testing smart alerts, person detection and general cat activity made up the majority of notifications, and these are sent once every thirty minutes. If your cat is particularly curious of the Furbo or its treat toss chute, you'll also get a fair number of selfie alerts when it looks directly at the lens.

For meowing alerts, I found neither cat registered on medium sensitivity; it only started picking up their meowing vocalizations once I adjusted it to high sensitivity. As is typical of Nanny plans, if any of the smart alerts are becoming too much, you're free to toggle them on or off as needed.

If you're using a single camera, you can opt to pay the basic plan for $7 per month, or pay for the premium plan at $8 per month which supports Nanny services on up to four cameras. After your free trial, Furbo will also offer a highly discounted special offer rate for three months or allow you to choose between monthly, yearly, or two year plans.

Furbo 360° Cat Camera Night Vision Settings

The Furbo 360° cat camera offers full night vision in black and white, or color night vision if there's low lighting.

So depending on where your camera is placed, you'll want to keep this in mind when choosing to keep the camera exclusively in one mode. For safer results, you can opt to let the Furbo choose by leaving it on auto-detection. If you do have any smart plugs or scheduled lights, auto-detection can prove invaluable, especially if you do have to step out suddenly.

Using the Cat Toy and Treat Toss Function

When you're ready to toss treats, it's a good idea to do a few practice shots before settling on a permanent home for the Furbo. Smaller cat treats will travel a fair distance, so you'll want to avoid potentially launching anything beneath furniture or other troublesome locations. For the most part, adequate height can help with this.

Additionally, the Furbo 360° cat camera will sometimes shoot two or three treats at a time depending on the size of the treats. If you're particularly sensitive about the amount of treats your cat gets, you may want to avoid filling the treat chute to max.

The feather toy offers another way to engage a potentially more aloof or less food-motivated cat. It's kept at a suitable distance away from the camera, so there should be no threat of damage. However, if you have a hyper-play-focused cat, such as one at kitten age, you should use the sticky pads at the base of the Furbo to keep it more secure.

It's a small addition, but it's a nice option to make the camera more inviting for your cats, even if they don't have a high play or hunting instinct.

Should You Buy the Furbo 360° Cat Camera?

The Furbo 360° cat camera offers a variety of specialized features that differentiate it from typical security cameras. While some are subscription-gated, you'll still have access to the standard 360° camera features alongside a built-in cat toy and treat dispenser. The design is optimized for pet households.

If you want to stay more closely connected with your cats, it's worth trying out if you believe it'll mesh with their personality and routines. You'll just need to consider the benefits and if you spend enough time away to justify its investment cost (and potential ongoing subscription).