Even on a dark, stormy day, Eufy’s HDR-enabled camera was able to produce well-illuminated video of our covered porchway, with decent contrast. The video doorbell is powered by the original doorbell wires. A wide, 160-degree field of view, night vision, and person detection are standard features we’d expect to find on a smart doorbell and they are included here.
Some rings got a full 30 seconds, others cut off after 5 secs, following the call being answered.Setup is straightforward, and we were impressed with the step-by-step directions – each part is labelled with each corresponding step number, making the whole process sort of like a color-by-numbers effort. As we find with most smart doorbells, the audio quality from Eufy’s integrated microphone and speaker was limited, but reasonably clear, without lag or echo.The Eufy Security app itself is mostly well designed and simple to use, although we did notice a number of poorly translated sentences in the user interface that should have been cleaned up during testing. That’s great for letting you see what’s going on with a quick glance, rather than having to open the app.Eufy has some impressive features, considering its relatively low price compared to the competition (it clocks in about $60 cheaper than a Nest Hello).The “quick response” feature is also a good option. During tests, we did encounter some reliability issues with the Eufy Security app when viewing live video from the doorbell. I tried to pair it multiple times and it failed every time. It’s designed for Eufy’s line of home security cameras, so there’s lots of customization here. But where most smart doorbells send recorded video clips to the cloud (with accompanying access subscription), the Eufy Video Doorbell supports local storage. We were also pleased to see the inclusion of cable extensions and wire nuts in the box to simplify connecting the doorbell to our existing wiring. This is presumably to do with the local storage – but if you wanted to check in and see who members of your household have been chatting with at the front door while you were away, you won’t be able to.After 20 days of use we had filled up 90% of Eufy’s onboard storage, so doubt we’ll make the suggested 30 days of storage before it begins overwriting older clips. When the doorbell button was pressed, or the camera detected motion, we received a notification on our phone almost immediately. It’s rated IP65, higher than Nest and Ring. eufy. This includes connecting to Wi-Fi and plugging in the included indoor chime, which you’ll need as your existing doorbell chime will no longer work.If you want to record an interaction after you've answered a ring, you have to tap the record button on the app screen, and the video is stored on your phone’s camera roll, not in the app.