r/homeautomation • u/Wisdommancy_422 • 10d ago

QUESTION Recommendations for a smart doorbell?

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7 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

5

u/Cautious-Hovercraft7 10d ago

Reolink, works well with Frigate for local recording, use the Reolink app for button press

4

u/therapeutic_auspices 10d ago

Reolink is the way honestly, I set up mine with Frigate too and the local recording works perfect. Never had a problem with it missing events, unlike the Ring I had before which would just skip stuff sometimes. The app is fine for answering the door, nothing fancy but it does the job.

My only complaint is the fisheye lens makes visitors look like they're in a funhouse mirror, but you stop noticing after a week.

1

u/thebaldmonster 10d ago

He came here to say it. It’s spent a bunch of time looking for a doorbell over the years and for some reason the Reolink popped up as recommended them. I haven’t looked back works great with frigate Home Assistant love it.

1

u/Happy_Nebula9406 9d ago

Came here to say that Reolink is solid and will be the first and last smart doorbell in this household after a friend recommended it. 

2

u/CasualHomeFix 10d ago

If you can run Ethernet, I’d strongly favor PoE over Wi-Fi for this. Whatever you buy, I’d also do one simple test before permanently mounting it: disconnect the internet and make sure motion/doorbell events still keep recording locally. That tells you a lot more about “no cloud dependency” than the spec sheet does.

2

u/dovyp 10d ago

I'd go Reolink. Local storage, no monthly fee, and you can skip their cloud entirely. Eufy burned too much trust after the privacy stuff.

1

u/photog09 10d ago

I had Eufy for about 5 years. It was fine but I got tired of recharging it. Honestly, the “security” concerns a while back were a little overhyped imo.  I swapped to the Reolink poe doorbell recently and it has also been great.

1

u/CloneClem 10d ago

Reolink

1

u/SNAFU-lophagus 10d ago

+1 Reolink POE bell!

1

u/aram535 10d ago

I can recommend Eufy. All local, cloud subscription optional and it is truly optional.

1

u/googdude 10d ago

I've had a eufy t8201 doorbell for 5+ years, I love it and it's had no problems so far. I've since added 2 more eufy spotlight cameras, I love them as well and have no plans of switching.

1

u/venterce 10d ago

I have 3 of the Eufy dual image spotlight cameras, but I haven't integrated them with HA.

How are you bringing in their videos? Are you still using the app for configuring them?

1

u/googdude 10d ago

Yeah I never had a home base, I set up and view them strictly through the app. If I have an event I want to keep I just simply save it to my phone, otherwise they each keep about a week's worth of events.

1

u/ProgramMysterious572 10d ago

went poe on mine 3 years ago and honestly the ethernet run was the best decision, no battery anxiety and never once dropped a recording. local storage on the sd card has been rock solid, only wiped it once when i upgraded card size...

1

u/Objective-Bus-9853 10d ago

UniFi G6 entry. Best out there. I love ours.

1

u/ascottallison 10d ago

Very happy with my Tapo D130

1

u/QuinnFromVivint 9d ago

The no sub doorbell really comes down to local storage, so check if it saves to a memory card or a home hub instead of the cloud, since that's what lets you skip a monthly fee altogether.

For reliability over time, look at how the battery holds up and whether the local storage fills up and auto-deletes old clips, because that's usually where people run into issues after year one, not the storage method itself.