Hi,
With recent increase in the subscription fees of Ring Door bell, I am looking for alternatives. Can I please get some advice if it is worth paying the subscription (assuming affordability is not an issue), or going for the below alternatives.
Thanks in advance for your suggestion and time.
If you're an Apple/iPhone household, choose one that supports HomeKit Secure Video (e.g. Aqara G4); if you have power at your entry you can fit an Aqara G2H Pro camera which will chime when motion is detected.
Been happy with eufy doorbell
Will second this. Bought one for my 70+ year old parents, no subscription, easy for them to set up and use. Works great - picks up all activity and good quality.
Which model, if you don't mind? if it's intuitive enough for the oldies it's good tech
I went with Eufy with recordings via HomeKit. Was pretty much unusable. Poor quality videos, not activating when there was activity. For an Apple fanboy like me it was a real let down. I went back to Ring. Despite the cost, the ease of use and reliability is worth it.
HKSV only works (currently) with eufyCam 2/2C/2 Pro/2C Pro - was yours one of these?
I made sure all the Eufy cams I brought were Homekit compatible. They were still terrible. If I recall as well Homekit arbitrarily limits the resolution on Eufy cams to 1080p.
Please see this article “ Why We Don’t Trust Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video—and You Shouldn’t Either”.
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/apple-homekit-secure…
@7hil: The article is from September 2022 so it's not exactly current. Homekit cameras are visible in Apple's home app where you can access live video and use the motion detection to trigger automations. Some cameras add a further layer, HomeKit Secure Video which stores encrypted camera footage in iCloud for 10 days. HKSV recordings don't count towards your iCloud storage limit. My Arlo cameras include HomeKit support, my Aqara does HKSV. Any camera brand that offers subscriptions won't be giving up that revenue stream any time soon so they won't be adding support for HKSV.
@sumyungguy: I understand all that. I lived with HKSV for two years. I also had Logitech circle cameras integrated. They all suffered from poor quality video, poor quality two way talk facilities, and regarding motion detection were unreliable to the point of being useless.
As an Apple One subscriber, it made money saving sense to have HomeKit compatible cameras in my house but unfortunately due to the poor integration with HKSV, none of them were fit for purpose.
@sumyungguy: Mate, all I’m saying is that I lived with third-party HomeKit compatible cameras for two years and would need some significant improvements in integration to ever go back. At the end of the day I need to be certain that when I’m out the house if there is any unusual motion, I have a system that’s going to pick it up, alert me immediately, and record that event. From my experience, I couldn’t rely on a HomeKit based system to do that.
Have the Eufy wireless doorbell with the homebase, it’s very good.
But next time I would get a HomeKit doorbell, Apple website sells a version. It lets you save the data to your iCloud.
I just upgraded to Aqara G2H Pro, supports HKSV so I can view live and access recordings away from home without port-forwarding, which is required for my Arlo setup but not allowed on my low-cost NBN plan.
Fourth upvote to the Eufy wireless doorbell. Have been using it for nearly one year and very happy with it.
Just a camera above your door is fine, as long as you don't have jackasses that live with you and hang around your front door all day triggering the alerts. If you do have people milling about the door all day then you'll want an actual doorbell so you can limit alerts to just doorbell button presses. Also parcel detection.
Personally I've been using a TP-Link Tapo door bell along with a few other Tapo devices and have been very happy with it.
I upgraded from an older Eufy system (never had the door bell) and impressed with the AI the TP-Link devices offer amongst other features, cost was also a benefit to the Tapo. One of the features I have activated is to use automation where when a person is identified between the hours of 8PM-6AM it automatically turns on my front light which is a Tapo smart bulb.
Otherwise as others have said both Eufy and Reolink are great options too and I'd argue that Eufy is very much a more established product - you couldn't go wrong with it.
i have a plain tapo camera as a door camera.
its person detection sucks.
it's ok about .. 2/3 of the time
But a guy with a box => no detection
wind on trees => detection
people by themselves =. detection
That's interesting - my experience has been pretty good. I have it set to pick up people with D230 door bell and C230WS camera.
I find that the door bell is extremely accurate with no noticeable false positives or miss detections and the C230WS does have some false positives but I'm generally happy enough with it. I'd imagine that options from Ring and Eufy are better though.
ok well .. mines got more hoops to jump
It's indoors, and has to see through a glass window, a fly screen and is seeing the porch on an angle.
Just get a reolink.
https://www.reolinks.com.au/product/video-doorbell-poe/