Which Video Doorbell ?

Doorbell broken and whilst I could replace for <£20 fancy a new video one. Lots to choose from so which is the best for circa £80?

Here is a video about a doorbell. Sorry.

Make sure you understand the ongoing subscription costs to keep all the features.

I tried out a Ring one, and it was shit not only because of this – you have to give them a few quid every month to have access to recordings etc, but also the delay between someone pressing the thing and it actually sounding an alert on your phone/PC was massive – like 25-30 seconds. It was right next to the router with a good connection, so I assumed it was something to do with going via whatever cloud connection it wanted to store the video on.

I’m not sure if the alternatives are any better, but it was a pretty awful product and service.

We were in a similar position to yourself a year-18 months back now. We opted for the ring plus subscription.

It’s quite frankly, pants.

As mentioned above the lag from button press to phone ringing is about a millionty years. Only once have I managed to answer it to someone, and that’s because a tradesman erroneously came to my house for a job so had incentive to hang around.

The only good thing about it is it will should capture CCTV of a scrote going up the side of my house and into back garden/garage.

Couple of Ring offers around the £80 mark or a bit more popped up on HUKD recently, not got one myself but as above, I understand they’re a bit shit.

Been looking into them as I want to do a lot of home automation stuff on my house, there are some great options that don’t involve cloud subscriptions, wifi, etc, but way out of your budget!

In comparison I have just replaced our old doorbell with a Ring Pro – admittedly over the budget you have set – and I am really impressed with it. The motion sensitivity picks up as soon as anyone steps on the driveway. You can set the area it detects motion in so there are no false alarms from people walking on the pavement in front of the house. Night vision is pretty good. Recordings always start slightly before it has detected motion. We were on holiday last week and we had a couple of deliveries turn up and left on the doorstep which I could get a neighbor to pick up for us.

I did quite a bit of research and the battery powered bells seem to suffer with the start up delay, so if you can go for a powered option.

We have several Echo Dots around the house and they all play an announcement when the door bell is pressed with no noticeable delay.

Thanks all, food for thought.

I posted about this a while ago and after reading the replies and doing some more research I came to the conclusion that they are a rubbish solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist. Instead I got £12 plug in wireless doorbell which does an excellent job of ringing when someone presses the button. If I want to see their face I open the door to look. Job jobbed.

Edit Doorbell linky

STW post on Ring uselessness

Thanks @franksinatra I am coming to that conclusion 🙂

Just before lockdown and working from home I got a nest hello doorbell due to almost all our shopping being done on line now and couriers coming round during the day. I’ve not bothered with the subscription service but it works well as a cctv too as you get notifications if it sees or hears activity. Subscription allows you to retrieve past footage and set zones. Not features I thought I’d want initially at least.

I went for the nest hello as I’ve got the nest thermostat so didn’t want yet another app on my phone so it all integrates on the same app.

There is about a 6 second delay between the doorbell being pressed and the notification on the phone, but the bell sounds immediately.

A lot of couriers don’t seem to use it. They’ll knock on the door. Not sure if they do that anyway or only if they see a smart doorbell and don’t want to interact with it. A lot of the couriers who come to mine don’t have good English anyway, maybe they don’t feel comfortable interacting with a doorbell if they’re. It confident with the language. But as I’ve been working from home ever since I installed it I’ve never used it in anger.

Hey ho, does what it says on the tin. Makes a handy cctv if nothing else.

I bought a Ring cctv security camera , cloud based . Not a doorbell but a wifi router based security video package that records a neat clip when motion activated
Impressed so far , can set detection range etc

A lot of couriers don’t seem to use it. They’ll knock on the door. Not sure if they do that anyway or only if they see a smart doorbell and don’t want to interact with it.

Filing this under “morons be moroning” again.

I have a perfectly visible doorbell button. I also have a really loud doorbell, I’d be surprised if next door but one couldn’t hear it. My living room is the back room.

When I have a delivery one of these three happens:

1) They ring the bell like a normal person. The bell goes DING MOTHERLOVING DONG! and I answer the door. System works as designed.

2) They ignore the bell completely and knock on the door with a spongecake. If I’m lucky I’ll catch it and go, “was that someone at the door?” in the same way that you might hear a mouse fart in the loft. I get this to a point, many doorbells don’t work, but you’d at least try it surely?

3) They ring the bell, very clearly hear it ring (see scenario ‘1)’) than immediately pound BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG on the door. Like, WTAF? You’ve just heard the bongs of Big Ben, why do you feel the need to immediately try to stove in the door?

We have a nest one. I had firmly filed video door bells under the ‘why!’ category but new house has a lot office space and my wife didn’t want to be running down the ladder for time wasters.

That said now it’s installed I like it. We have it we’d to the houses old call bell system so if you are in the house the notification is instant. The home hub is typically 1-2s behind. Phone can be as quick as the hinge home but sometimes a bit later (5s).

There is no subscription for normal usage and you can review a short period of the notifications. Nest aware is now only £5 a month for multiple devices so a lot cheaper than it was. When we aren’t at home so much I will probably add a rear camera and get a subscription.

I also use it a fair bit too stream the outside view when I’ve heard a weird noise.

Definitely not a cheap option. We had ours installed by our electrician as needed new cable runs, transformer and connecting to the ancient call bell system.