My analog doorbell has died, so I am on the market for a doorbell camera. I would like to avoid storing my videos in the cloud, so it rules out brands like Ring. Unfortunately, judging by reviews on Amazon, doorbell cameras range from bad (6-7% 1 star reviews) to abysmal (16% 1 star reviews).

To get my feet wet, I picked a very cheap doorbell from AOSU that does not even have a model number. I am not pleased, I think I will be returning it.

Let’s start with the positive:

• The video quality is surprisingly good.
• When someone presses a button, it does record the interaction on an SD card. I was able to retrieve those videos on my phone.
• Motion detection seems OK. Caveat emptor: when motion detected, it sends a notification, but would not record a video.

Problems, most severe first:

• Included chime did not work, probably defective.
• When someone presses the button, the phone does not ring. It’s a regular notification, like email.
• The camera does not record motions, only detects and notifies.
• A thief can easily remove the camera from the mount and take off with it, together with the videos on the SD card.
• The unit is much bigger than I expected. It is wider than my door jamb.
• Starting live video stream takes 5-10 seconds.
• Accessing recorded videos takes a long time and sometimes hangs.
• It also automatically starts playing the last video, sound and all, which cannot be paused.
• There is no application for PC.
• The support is somewhat responsive, but not very useful.
• The application included with the camera shows ads.
• The cheapest cloud storage option is $7 a month, and the recording retention is only 30 days.

I guess the broken chime can be fixed/replaced, but the ergonomics of answering the door call is abysmal. If you did not hear the chime and your phone is on vibrate, forget about it, you are going to miss it. When the phone is not on vibrate, you’ll hear a rather loud “ding-dong”, but then it’s a regular push notification, similar to “new email”. You need to unlock the phone, pick the notification from the list, tap it, and only then you’ll see the “call screen” they show on Amazon product page. Then you have to wait  several seconds for the video to start. By this time the person ringing the bell has probably given up and left. Apparently, Eufy shares this problem, but not Alro or Ring: those show an actual call screen. Or maybe not, it’s hard to tell without having an actual camera. It may also depend on the particular model.

The idea of coupling the camera with the storage and making the both easily removable from the base kind of defeats the purpose of the security product. If someone can take my camera and my videos, what’s the point?

Not recording the video when a motion is detected compounds the uselessness. I guess they save battery life and disk space this way, but at what cost? The camera would  light up and send a push notification when a motion is detected. One can switch to the live video at this point, which takes 3-5 seconds, but there is no option to record. My understanding is that 5 seconds is not so bad, some cameras take up to 30 seconds, especially Eufy.

The unit is rather big, and almost square in cross-section. The mount has 4 holes about an inch apart horizontally. My door jamb is half the width. I am not sure I would  still manage to mount it somehow if I wanted, but that’s a big if.

At some point I was not able to access recorded videos: the app would just give the infinite spinner. No error message, it was just spinning the whirly whirl. I had to power the camera off and on again to make this work.

I contacted the support via chat about the defective chime. When plugged in, the chime would beep every second or so, and wouldn’t stop. The support did respond, which is good. Each response takes a few minutes though. They promised to get back to me within 24 hours, but they didn’t. But they called me “dear customer” 🙂

The application that comes with the camera is not super easy to use, and it shows ads, including ads for cloud storage, which I specifically don’t want. This is not cool, if I buy a product, I don’t expect to be solicited for more money every time I use it. But that would be OK if everything else worked as expected.

I would be returning this doorbell. Even if they fix the chime, not having a proper ring on the phone and no recording of motions are show stoppers.

UPDATE

I’ve got the second camera. The chime that came with it works and is loud enough. Motion recording also works now after I rebooted the camera (go figure). BUT, I found two other show-stoppers. First, a button press does not always result in a notification. It always worked when I was pressing the button and standing near the camera with the phone, but it worked only 1 out of 3 times when another person pressed the button and I was in the yard just outside the house (still good wifi).

Another show stopper is that two-way voice feature has terrible lag, which increases as you continue the conversation. It is like talking to Mars. You say something, and the person at the camera hears what you said 10 seconds later. Or maybe 20 seconds later. It might also fix itself with a few more reboots, but I am not taking chances. Back to Amazon it goes.