The Vivint Doorbell Digicam Professional isn’t low cost at $249, but it surely’s prettier and extra refined than the equally priced Ring Video Doorbell Professional ($249) and the Nest Hiya ($229). Vivint provides among the best professionally put in and monitored sensible house/house safety options available on the market, however you don’t essentially want to purchase your entire system to deploy this doorbell.
You’ll, nonetheless, need to enroll in the ostensibly non-compulsory cloud storage plan, which prices $4.99 per 30 days. With out that plan, you solely see a dwell view from the digital camera (Ring’s doorbells and safety cameras have the identical limitation.) However Vivint will set up this doorbell for you at no further price, even when your own home doesn’t have already got the low-voltage wiring in place that it relies on for energy.
Vivint’s finest doorbell is outfitted with infrared evening imaginative and prescient and a picture sensor that helps HDR—and the digital camera’s picture high quality is great. It has a wider subject of view than both the Ring or Nest video doorbells—180 levels vertical in addition to horizontal—enabling you to see your whole porch (the digital camera has 1:1 facet ratio and determination of 1,664 x 1,664 pixels, however video is streamed in 1080p).
This assessment is a part of TechHive’s protection of the most effective video doorbells, the place you’ll discover evaluations of competing merchandise, plus a purchaser’s information to the options it’s best to think about when buying.
Regardless that the doorbell is put in at a proper angle to my entrance door, it nonetheless affords a view greater than 50 toes down my flagstone entry stroll. There’s a small quantity of fisheye distortion when objects are very near the digital camera, however the wide-angle view lets me see guests head to toe, in addition to packages left anyplace on the porch.
Michael Brown / IDGDiscover the message on the high of the display screen indicating {that a} bundle has been delivered, and be aware that the decision is crisp sufficient that you would be able to learn the brand on the truck within the driveway that’s practically 100 toes away.
Package deal and particular person detection
And bundle detection is likely one of the Doorbell Digicam Professional’s finest options. Along with sending “particular person detected” alerts when somebody comes inside vary of its movement detector, the digital camera can even provide you with a warning when a bundle has been delivered. For those who can’t get to your porch instantly, and the doorbell is in “deter” mode, it’ll sound an alert tone on its speaker (I chosen a “you-who!” whistle) every time somebody approaches your door, inflicting them to look to the supply of the sound and subsequently current their face to the digital camera. Along with the alert tone, a shiny purple LED encircling the doorbell button lights up. You may flip this “deter” characteristic on or off, or you possibly can schedule it to function on a schedule.
Michael Brown / IDGPush notifications provide you with a warning when the Vivint Doorbell Digicam Professional detects an individual or a bundle.
One other exceptionally good characteristic—though it’s non-compulsory and requires your having the bigger Vivint Sensible Residence system put in—is the Doorbell Digicam Professional’s capability to constantly document to an area network-attached onerous drive (a four-channel NAS field, basically, though it might probably accommodate only a single 1TB drive and it might probably’t be used for every other objective).
Vivint calls this product the Vivint Sensible Drive and it operates with as much as 4 of Vivint’s safety cameras (each indoor and outside fashions). There’s no arguing that it’s costly, however there’s additionally no arguing that it’s a improbable choice to have—and it’s unmatched by every other vendor.
Reasonably than document a brief clip solely when movement is detected or somebody rings the doorbell, as much as 4 of Vivint’s cameras document constantly to the drive for as much as 30 days (you get 14 days of clip storage within the cloud with out the drive). Whenever you take a look at the digital camera’s dwell view by way of the Vivint cellular app, you possibly can press a Rewind button to deliver up a timeline of recordings. Dragging your fingertip alongside this timeline scrubs band and forth by means of time of recorded video. At any level alongside the timeline, you can begin watching in actual time or at an accelerated velocity: 2X, 4X, or 8X.
VivintThe Vivint Sensible Drive is an expensive possibility at $249, but it surely delivers steady video recording for as much as 4 Vivint safety cameras with out fear that you just’ll stumble upon your ISP’s information cap.
Markers on the timeline provide you with a warning to detection occasions, and a label seems on the high of the display screen to let you recognize if it’s an individual or a bundle alert. Rewind, fast-forward, and play/pause controls make it easier to shortly find these motions occasions, and there’s a useful time stamp above the timeline and a date stamp above the first video display screen.
Whether or not the digital camera has flagged an occasion or not, you possibly can create a video clip lasting both 30 seconds, 90 seconds, or 5 minutes from any start line on the timeline. You may then both obtain the file or share a hyperlink to the clip. In case your digital camera captured against the law in course of, you possibly can share this forensic proof with the police. Sadly, these clips are not timestamped, an element that would diminish their worth to investigators.
Nest cameras are among the many few different safety cameras that may document constantly, however these units document constantly to the cloud, which might trigger issues for customers with information caps and/or restricted add bandwidth. Vivint’s cameras document solely event-triggered clips to the cloud. My ISP doesn’t presently impose an information cap, however I dwell in a rural space and do need to put up with very sluggish add speeds. Vivint’s official advice is to have at the very least 1.5Mbps of add velocity for every digital camera. Not like Nest, Vivint doesn’t mean you can tailor the standard of the uploaded video stream to cut back its bandwidth consumption.
Michael Brown / IDGA message on the high of the display screen labels this occasion as somebody ringing the bell. Skip again and skip ahead buttons allow you to bounce to earlier and subsequent occasions (the bar to the left of the inexperienced line signifies earlier occasions, and the dot signifies the present occasion).
Movement detection
You may draw a single however irregularly formed detection zone together with your fingertip throughout the digital camera’s subject of view, to dam issues like branches from shrubs and bushes from creating false alerts, and you can too fine-tune the movement detector’s sensitivity. However the digital camera proved so correct at discerning the motion of individuals from different issues—together with animals, for probably the most half—that I didn’t discover the customized detection zones to be all that vital.
There was only one event within the a number of weeks that I examined the doorbell when it misidentified my giant (12-pound) cat as an individual. However that occurred round 2:15 a.m., and solely after he jumped from the porch to a bench after which a 20-inch-high planter. I’ve two different smaller cats, and so they’ve by no means set off an individual alert.
The Vivint Doorbell Digicam Professional appears to be like extra like a standard doorbell than most, measuring simply 1.5 inches vast and 4.5 inches tall. A lot of the rationale for its svelte dimensions, nonetheless, is that it doesn’t rely upon a battery for energy. I believed that will be an issue for me, as a result of it by no means occurred to me to make sure my common contractor included a doorbell once we had our home constructed 12 years in the past. Luckily, Vivint’s installer got here up with a intelligent answer: My eating room is on the opposite aspect of the wall from my entrance porch, so he drilled gap into the outside wall, snaked the doorbell wiring by means of to the junction field internet hosting an AC outlet, and linked it to a plug-in adapter there. (The doorbell can function on 12-24 DC or 16-24 AC adapters that ship a minimal of 1.0 amps.)
Michael Brown / IDGThe Vivint Doorbell Digicam Professional solely as soon as misidentified my (obese) cat as an individual, and that was at 2:00 a.m. (I added arrows to level out the cat and the alert).
The doorbell has dual-band 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) wi-fi adapter onboard. Nevertheless, as a substitute of connecting to your Wi-Fi router, the doorbell connects as a substitute to Vivint’s sensible house management panel and the management panel connects to your router. The doorbell helps two-way audio, and you’ll speak with guests utilizing both your cellular machine or the management panel. By the identical token, you possibly can view thumbnails of each occasion and choose any of these thumbnails to play a recording in a bigger window on both your cellular app or on Vivint’s management panel.
Deep sensible house integration
As with all Vivint’s merchandise, the Doorbell Digicam Professional integrates tightly with the remainder of its sensible house system, together with its new Automotive Guard onboard diagnostic product. Whenever you’re viewing a dwell stream from the doorbell, you possibly can push a button on the backside of the display screen to deliver up the person interface for the safety system, the place you possibly can arm or disarm the system, lock or unlock any of your sensible locks, and open or shut your linked overhead storage doorways.
Michael Brown / IDGWhen an individual is detected, dwell video is streamed from the doorbell to Vivint’s management panel.
It’s also possible to create customized guidelines corresponding to “document a clip with all cameras when an alarm is triggered;” “activate my porch mild when my doorbell detects an individual at evening, and switch it off half-hour later,” and even “document a clip with my doorbell when my automobile is disturbed.”
However as I stated early on: This stage of sophistication, safety, and automation isn’t low cost. The Doorbell Digicam Professional prices $249, plus $4.99 per 30 days for the cloud storage service. The non-compulsory Sensible Drive prices one other $249, and a Vivint sensible house system begins at $599 plus a $99 set up charge (which is usually waived if the corporate is working a promotion). The package consists of the aforementioned sensible house hub, two door/window sensors, a movement sensor, a water leak detector, and a $100 credit score for added sensors. Month-to-month service charges begin at $39 and embody skilled monitoring. For those who select to finance the system buy by means of Vivint, you’ll have to signal a service contract; no contract is required when you pay for the {hardware} up entrance.
If these prices aren’t a barrier, the Vivint Doorbell Digicam Professional is the most effective machine in its class.