Wired ratio. Battery powered: Smart doorbells require more power than traditional doorbells. You may need a new transformer, and you may need to hire an electrician to install it safely. The main advantage of wired doorbells is that you don’t need to touch them again after installation, they will ring your existing doorbell. Wired doorbells are also generally less expensive and slimmer than models with batteries.
The battery-powered smart doorbell is easy to install on your own and can be installed anywhere you like. The main downside is that you have to remove and recharge the battery every few months, which means some downtime unless you buy a backup battery to plug in. Also keep in mind that your regular doorbell chime won’t work with a battery-powered smart doorbell, so you may need to buy a wireless chime device to plug into somewhere in your home, but you can also configure your smart speaker as a doorbell chime.
Most battery-powered video doorbells can also be wired, which may be the best solution if you’re worried about power outages.
Resolution and HDR: The higher the resolution, the sharper the picture you get, but consider that higher-resolution videos also require more bandwidth to stream and take up more storage space. If your front porch is in direct sunlight or strong shade, we highly recommend choosing an HDR-enabled video doorbell, as it helps prevent bright areas from appearing overexposed or shadow areas too dark to see.
Field of View and Aspect Ratio: If you want to see people at your front door from head to toe, consider the field of view and aspect ratio that your intended choice provides. A wider field of view will absorb more, but will result in a fisheye effect. You may prefer a square or portrait view over the traditional landscape aspect ratio to ensure you can see the visitor’s face and any packages that may appear on the porch.
Local or cloud storage: If you don’t want to sign up for a subscription service and upload video clips to the cloud, make sure your doorbell of choice offers local storage. Some video doorbells have a MicroSD card slot, while others record video to a hub device in your home. You can expect to pay about $3 to $6 per month to store 30 days of video doorbells.
Advanced Features: Many video doorbells offer features such as package detection and person identification. These features make it easy to filter alerts so you only get useful notifications. Keep in mind that you may need a subscription to access premium features.
Choose a brand: If you already own a security camera system or plan to buy one, it makes sense to stick with the same brand for your doorbell. That way, you can access everything in the same app and get a subscription when you need it. If you have a smart home setup, check that the doorbell is compatible with your preferred ecosystem and voice assistant.
Safety: A few things we recommend looking for are two-factor authentication (2FA) to make sure someone using your username and password can’t log into your doorbell and encryption to make sure anyone accessing the manufacturer’s server can’t see your Wi- Fi login details or watch the upload video.
