Which Doorbell Camera Is Best?
1We figured we’d test the waters with the Kangaroo Doorbell Camera + Chime we got from MorningSave a while back.
I love having the record of who was on my porch, but I don’t like the battery life of that model.
We’re hesitant to do a wired project because we’re pretty sure there’s asbestos under our siding, and that’s a whole project we don’t want to start.
So we were looking at the Solar Ring Outdoor Cam Plus and maybe adding a Battery Doorbell.
But I’m curious -
- What brand is yours?
- How do you like it?
- What would you change?
I’d love some advice before we drop the cash.
- 5 comments, 9 replies
- Comment
We have a Ring Wired.
We have a lot of pieces of the Ring ecosystem. I like what we have overall. The wired doorbell is the best piece of the kit.
My complaint and the thing we are looking at changing is the subscription fee for what all we are running. It’s down my list a ways, but at some point I’ll change it out for a non-sub based system.
TLDR. Go with the Ring.
@ChadP You might want to research the recent Amazon moves to employ their devices to collect and sell your previously-privileged information. Alexa is the most worrisome target at the moment; either you allow their cloud services to do the voice interpretation, and thereby permit them to scrape the data in the process, or the voice recognition stops working. I’ve seen statements about Ring devices having a similar drawback of some sort, but as I don’t have a Ring (or anything that employs Alexa), I haven’t delved further.
@ChadP I’m leaning hard into the Ring at this point.
My folks are setup with a Ring as they got used to its ease. When the battery in the $3 thrifted Ring Doorbell Pro died a second time, it was replaced with a Doorbell Wired ($15 refurb from Woot).
I have a strong preference for not having a paid subscription.
I rocked a wired Skybell Pro for about 6 years. It performed well but the morning sun finally roasted it enough that I replaced it. It cooked one battery, which I replaced, and then it rotted the cover over the IR motion sensor and also cooked my replaced battery. The battery in this unit seemed to keep the doorbell operational when the button was pushed, as the telltale sign of a bad battery was the doorbell rebooting when it was rung.
I switched to the Blink doorbell with the Blink Hub for recording my clips to a local USB drive. It has been really good with two caveats: Before I installed the hub the doorbell would eat expensive lithium AA batteries quickly. Unsure why installing the hub would change this so dramatically but it did. Second was a problem related to the hub itself. A failed USB drive seemingly bricked the hub. Their support was kind of worthless helping me figure out the problem but I was able to resolve it on my own after I stopped trying to rely on support. Now that I’ve got the USB issue resolved, it’s been humming along with only infrequent issues, usually that after a few months it reports being offline and a quick power cycle to the hub brings it back. I am using the wired connection for the doorbell, but I think the Blink doesn’t use the AC power present but only rings the chime, so it won’t operate without batteries.
@djslack So with your footage for the Blink being stored locally, do you think Amazon is still scraping it?
@Thumperchick I haven’t done any analysis or checked for traffic. Obviously the notifications still go through Amazon’s servers. You’ve made me curious though.
What is your ecosystem within your house? You may as well get something that goes along with it because whoever owns the ecosystem that you’re smart appliances even TV went on is going to know everything about you already so why give it to another company. At least that’s my logic
@Cerridwyn Yep. Privacy? You don’t got no steenking privacy!
@werehatrack eh
/showme privacy
@mediocrebot Because nothing says privacy more than piles of books on the floor and overflowing bookshelves?
@Cerridwyn weirdly enough, we don’t have the kinds of smart devices that would cause that concern. (Aside from our phones, which are all from different manufacturers and OS’.)
I’ve kind of accepted that privacy is a thing of the past and everything we say is being passively recorded by someone. I hate it, but I don’t know how to function in today’s world without that being a side effect.
Had a homebrew system with local network storage at my last house due to crappy internet. New house came with full Ring system and swapping it out just wasn’t a priority. 3.5 years later and a few upgrades and i’m still relatively happy with it. Internet is still crappy and sometimes there’s lag on the notifications. but i like having access from both phone and computer.
Consider adding a “chime” if you get the doorbell.
Wish there was a Roku app, but that’s not likely to happen since they started selling their own branded smart home stuff. Can view the cams on Lg TV with Alexa, but it’s buggy.