During the holiday shopping season, there are often a load of Black Friday deals on video doorbells, making it an excellent time to upgrade your home security for less. But, with many products at deep discounts, it can be tough to decide which video doorbell you should get.
I’ve been overseeing our guide to the best video doorbells for more than five years, and have come up with five simple things you should consider before buying one for your door.
Camera resolution
At this point, you should not get a video doorbell that doesn’t have at least a resolution of 1080p, or something similarly high, such as 1536 x 1536. Some of the best video doorbells have even higher resolutions — for example, the newest Ring Wired Doorbell Pro has a 4K camera which, when coupled with HDR, allows for not just sharp video, but also lets you better see further into your yard.
Field of view
When video doorbells first arrived on the scene, the cameras that they used were largely off-the-shelf components, which meant that they gave you a wide field of view, but not one that was well-suited for the front of your door.
Now, most video doorbells have either a square or vertically oriented field of view, which means that the camera can better capture what’s at the foot of your door, which helps you better see if someone has left a package.
Some video doorbells, like the Eufy Video Doorbell Dual, even have two cameras — one that points straight ahead, and one that looks at the foot of your door — so that you can see things even better.
Package and person detection
Package detection has become a near-ubiquitous feature for most video doorbells, so you should not get one that lacks this feature. Especially around the holiday season, it’s important to see when something has been delivered — and if someone tries to swipe it from your stoop.
Most video doorbells also support person detection, which helps filter out unwanted notifications such as cars passing by. Certain Eufy, Google, and Ring video doorbells even have a Familiar Faces feature, where they can recognize family and friends that you’ve added to the system, to deliver even more customized notifications.
Local storage and battery backup
What happens to your video doorbell if your power or internet goes out? If you want a little extra peace of mind, you’ll want to choose a model that can run on battery power, and is capable of storing video footage locally – whether that’s on the doorbell itself, or on a hub inside your house.
Google’s Nest Doorbell (battery) can store up to three hours of footage locally. The Eufy Video Doorbell E340 also has battery backup and local storage. Ring’s battery-powered video doorbells can also store local footage, but only if you have a Ring Alarm Pro security system. Blink’s video doorbell also has battery backup, and can save video locally to the Blink Sync module — but you’ve got to make sure that device can also get power in case of a blackout.
Subscription costs
Unfortunately, there’s more to a video doorbell than just the cost of the device itself. Most of the best video doorbells require you to sign up for a subscription in order to use many of their features, like the ability to save video footage, or get package alerts. Some companies that have subscription-free doorbells will charge more upfront for their products, but you’ll end up saving more over the long term.
Before you purchase a video doorbell, take a look to see how much it will cost you per year to use the device. For most companies that require a subscription, it’s often more cost-effective to get a multiple-device subscription, so that you can outfit your house with not just a video doorbell, but security cameras as well.
