Top Cameras and Doorbells For Your Home

 

Photo by Olga K

The modern doorbell has come a long way. From its humble origins of alerting you to someone at the front door, today, a video doorbell will send an alert to your phone, allow you to talk to visitors from another country and detect if a package has been left on your doorstep.

So how do you choose from the array of brands and models on offer to find the best integrated camera and doorbell for your home? Let’s take a look at what’s available to help you decide.

Brands

Two of the best-known brands of video doorbells are Ring owned by Amazon and Nest owned by Google. Each is compatible with its own brand of smart products such as Amazon Echo and Alexa smart speakers.

The French tech company Netatmo have created a model that is compatible with Apple Homekit while Eufy's standalone video doorbell doesn’t require a subscription unlike most of its competitors. If you want something simple and inexpensive then Blink offers an uncomplicated video doorbell.

Features

When choosing a video doorbell you need to decide which features are best for your home. This can depend on where you live, for example in a flat with shared stairs, in a house on a busy street or a home with a wide frontage.

The field of view and image quality are some of the most important features of video doorbells. If the resolution is poor then you will not be able to clearly see who is at your front door rendering the device pointless. Facial recognition is a feature of some video doorbells which makes it an important addition to your home security.

If you receive a lot of deliveries to your home a video doorbell with package detection will be useful. You should consider if the video doorbell has compatibility with other smart home devices such as wi-fi security cameras, smart speakers and smart alarms. Smart lock integration also allows you to give access to your home via certain video doorbells.

Smart zoning sets the areas to be included or excluded for motion sensors and most will only react to human movement. Head-to-toe view also gives a better look at anyone approaching your front door rather than just a head and shoulder shot. Coloured night vision is another feature to look out for, giving you better images after dark.

Two-way talking allows you to speak to visitors, delivery drivers or salespeople at your front door if you’re not home. The sound quality is an important feature as you need to be able to hear and be heard clearly.

Not all video doorbells come with a chime so if you want one you may need to purchase it separately. However, most models will link to your smart speaker and of course, they will all send an alert to your phone via the app. The ease of use of the app is also something to consider.

Installation

There are two types of installation for video doorbells, battery-operated and wired. For the wireless option, you’ll need to consider how long the battery lasts and how long it takes to recharge it.

Some models allow you to swap the battery while it charges, while others involve the whole device being removed for recharging. This means you are without the video doorbell while it charges. If this is an issue for you a wired option will solve the problem.

Costs

The cost of a video doorbell can range from £60 up to a few hundred pounds. This doesn’t include the subscription costs so this ongoing expense needs to be taken into account.

In light of this, you may want to compare the cost of installing a video doorbell with CCTV costs which will cover the front, side and rear of your home rather than just the front door.

Most video doorbells operate a subscription service for video storage in the cloud. Only a few offer locally stored video so this monthly storage cost is something to think about. Access to previous recordings as well as some other advanced features will typically only be available behind a paywall.