The Best Smart Doorbell Cameras
If you want to stop porch pirates and package thieves, a smart doorbell can be a big help. But prices vary a lot, as do video quality and features.
The Eufy doorbell is a top pick because it has two cameras—one pointed straight out and one pointing at the ground to keep an eye on deliveries. It also has great control over motion detection and doesn’t lock away useful features behind a subscription like Ring and Google do.
1. Ring Doorbell Pro 2
The Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 is the most feature-rich smart doorbell available right now. It offers head-to-toe HD video and color night vision, plus it can be wired or powered by batteries. It’s also one of the few to offer something called Bird’s Eye View, which uses radar and satellite imagery to give you an aerial look at your yard for better motion tracking.
This year, it added a feature that lets you send custom Alexa greetings to visitors, and it improved its voice recognition to make it easier to communicate with people at your home. If you have a subscription to Ring Protect, which costs $30 a year, the doorbell can even notify you when a package has been delivered.
The only major downside to this top-rated wireless video doorbell is that it doesn’t play well with non-Apple homes. However, if you’re an Apple household and have an iPad or HomePod Mini that can act as a hub, the Netatmo Doorbell is a decent option. It’s a bit more expensive but it captures video in 1080p and supports two-way audio.
2. Arlo Doorbell
While it’s not the best-looking doorbell camera we tested, Arlo has a well-rounded feature set. It supports Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit (though it requires an add-on hub for Apple integration). It also has a clear, 1536 x 1536-pixel image with a 1:1 aspect ratio, infrared night vision and a 180-degree field of view. Its fisheye distortion is minimal, and it lets you create custom motion-detection zones to avoid getting notifications from windchimes, shrubs and other items on your porch.
Its Foresight feature shows you a few seconds of video leading up to the event, which greatly reduces the number of false alarms. And it includes local storage that’s far more generous than Nest’s three hours — though to get the most out of this feature, you’ll need to pay for an Arlo Secure subscription, which starts at $10 a month.
The doorbell can integrate with Arlo’s security cameras to offer smarter alerts, including for people, animals, vehicles and packages. You can also set custom activity zones, get live calls with two-way audio and answer your doorbell remotely.
3. Eufy Video Doorbell Dual
In a category that’s filled with so-so image quality and low subscription prices, the affordable Eufy best smart doorbell Video Doorbell Dual stands out for its smart features. The main hub, called a Homebase station, offers 16GB of local storage that the company says will last 90 days, as well as person, vehicle, and package detection.
This model also includes a second camera that points downward at your porch floor. This feature isn’t just a gimmick, as package theft is a real problem that can happen to anyone. It can alert you to a dropped package or send Uncollected Package Alerts at a set time of day.
The Eufy Dual supports Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, allowing you to talk through the camera with visitors and answer them from a speaker or a smart display. It doesn’t support Apple HomeKit, however, and it requires a hardwired power connection rather than a battery. It’s also a bit heavier and larger than other models. Installing it is straightforward, albeit not the most renter-friendly process since you have to drill holes in your house (unless you use super strong double-sided tape or Command strips). The Homebase station comes with a mounting bracket, screws with anchors, cable extensions, and more.
4. Ring Doorbell Pro 4
The Amazon-owned Ring is the best-selling smart doorbell and for good reason — it’s reliable, affordable and easy to use. This wired model works with most existing chimes and doesn’t require a hub, like many other video doorbells. It can record in Full HD, records clear audio and offers a variety of features to help keep you informed who’s at the door.
It also has an excellent motion detection system with a wide field of view by day and night, and a three-second video preview that shows what the camera saw before the visitor rang the bell. Other handy features include the ability to choose a custom Quick Reply that plays when someone rings the doorbell, and theft protection.
The only downsides are that it doesn’t work with Android phones (you have to buy a separate Echo device or Google Home smart display), and requires a paid subscription to store videos in the cloud. There are cheaper alternatives, but those lack the Ring’s reliability and ease of use. A more expensive Ring Pro 2 with two cameras and more advanced features is available if you want to spend even more.
5. Wemo Doorbell
Belkin’s popular smart home gear has been around for a while, but this new doorbell represents the company’s first foray into security. The $250 device pairs with Apple’s HomeKit platform to monitor your best smart doorbell front door, providing you with a high-resolution HD video feed and two-way audio. It features a wide 223-degree diagonal field of view — wider than the 140- and 160-degree fields of view from Logitech’s Circle View and Netatmo’s models, respectively.
Its head-to-toe perspective gives you a better view of visitors than other models do, as well as clear images of packages and people in motion. The camera also has a built-in mic and speaker so you can communicate with visitors via voice commands.
Like other HomeKit-compatible doorbells, the Wemo Doorbell provides mandatory two-factor account authentication and end-to-end encryption for your recorded clips using Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video service. If you’re locked into Apple’s walled garden and want to protect your front porch from unwanted surveillance, this is the best option available.
