Like @ronl4625, I have the Video Doorbell v2 and really like it. I bought it within a few weeks of its introduction because of two primary features:
- It has local microSD storage, so no subscription was necessary.
- It can ring the home’s built-in mechanical chime, so it still sounds and acts like a traditional doorbell (important for some household members).
Previous Wyze doorbells didn’t have these features. I had looked at Wyze’s offerings and a few of those from other vendors before buying Video Doorbell v2, but that model was the one that had features I wanted at a price I wanted to pay, so it’s what got me to switch up from a “dumb” doorbell button.
It was not the first video doorbell I installed, however.
A few months prior to acquiring the Wyze Video Doorbell v2, I had installed an Arlo (I think the Essential Wired Video Doorbell) at my sister’s house because that’s what my brother-in-law had bought. That was a fun introduction to them and a learning experience for me.
- Similar to Wyze Video Doorbell v2, this Arlo model includes a device to install in the home’s chime box. With Wyze, it’s the Chime Controller; with Arlo, it’s the Power Kit.
- The view wasn’t what I wanted from the doorbell initially. The doorbell wiring at my sister’s home comes out of a wall that’s adjacent and perpendicular to the entrance. The Arlo included a wedge mount in the kit, but I didn’t like the angle and initially fabricated a different wedge from some plastic bits (I think for flooring?) that my brother-in-law had in his garage. That was okay, but then I did some learning about 3D printing and switched to a mount model I found online (my make shows view comparison photos).
- While Video Doorbell v2 has a capacitor that will keep it running for at least a few seconds after it’s removed from power, the Arlo has an internal battery and will send tamper alerts with video to users’ phones when it’s unlatched from its mount and removed from power. This is cool but also means that you have to wait 15 minutes or so (IIRC from the documentation) for the battery to die and truly power off the device when you want to do a hard reset. That’s annoying, because I needed to reset this thing a number of times while I was initially making and testing mount revisions.
- My sister still likes using it, and I believe they subscribe to Arlo’s services for cloud storage and alerts. I’m not a huge fan of the pronounced fisheye.
I haven’t experienced the Wi-Fi connectivity issues that @ronl4625 and others have described. Mine has been reliable from that standpoint since the beginning. I have had some issues with it, though:
- Although I’ve used the doorbell on a covered porch that faces north, the view would get washed out on sunny days. Wyze added a Wide Dynamic Range option via firmware update a few months after launch, and that was a real improvement.
- Wyze initially advertised that Amazon Echo and Google Home devices could be used as accessory chimes for button press announcements, but this turned out not to be the case, so they “fixed” that by revising their messaging.
[1] - After having this thing installed and working for months, the home’s built-in mechanical chime stopped ding-donging reliably. I don’t know why this is, but I did extensive troubleshooting and Wyze Support’s solution was to send me a replacement under warranty (which was a pleasantly easy process, so kudos to them for that). Instead of installing that, though, I did additional investigation and learned that my chime box had been wired incorrectly when the previous “dumb” doorbell button was installed. Correcting this fixed my original Video Doorbell v2’s problems, so the replacement is back in the box as a spare. (I set it up to make sure it worked, too, and that’s how I learned that the capacitor can still transmit video from the doorbell for a few seconds after it’s removed from AC power.)
I primarily use Google Home to centralize things, though I have a couple of (non-Show) Echo devices, and my experience with receiving announcements—with and without the use of Alexa Routines—from those has been iffy without a subscription (and that’s been discussed by others in several Forum topics). I’ll have to defer to the experience of @ronl4625 and others for better feedback. I can’t test my Video Doorbell v2 with Alexa at the moment because I’m temporarily using a different solution, and my plan is to revise my doorbell’s mount design while I have it off the wall.
I will say that I’ve tried a Cam Unlimited subscription, and I do like the additional benefits that provides. For instance, with an active subscription and Person Detection Notifications enabled in the Alexa app, I can hear an announcement from an Echo speaker even when the doorbell’s button isn’t pressed: “Someone was detected at your Front Door.” (The device’s name in Alexa is “Front Door” in this case.) That’s cool. I’m not trying to sell anyone on subscriptions, but I do enjoy experiencing things like that.
I’ll also say that it’s possible to get announcements on Google Home from doorbell button presses even without native integration support for this by using a Wyze Plug as a logical switch/bridge between Wyze Automations and Google Home Routines. This work-around is well documented in the Forum. Using that, I’ve had a doorbell button press kick off a sequence that streams video to a Google Home Hub, Chromecast HD, and Google TV, probably within 10-15 seconds (sometimes sooner) of the press, and that’s without a subscription. I imagine a similar pathway could be used for Alexa, but I haven’t tried that. The problem I still have is getting people to actually press the doorbell button, though, and that’s why a subscription that adds person detection (and the benefits as a result of that) is really nice.
This is how they “fixed” Cam v4’s “free Person Detection”, as well. ↩︎