Tapo by TP-Link Smart Video Doorbell Camera with Chime, Battery or Wired, 2K QHD Color Night Vison, No Monthly Fee, 180° Ultra-Wide Head-to-Toe View, Ring Call, Free AI Detection, Local Storage (D225)

Fantastic camera with no required monthly fees! 24/7 recording option too!
I have been waiting on a better doorbell camera option and this camera has met my needs quite well so far. This camera replaces my Arlo doorbell cameras, and before that I had Ring. This, for me, is beating them both quite easily. I bought this the same day it was released with my own money. This is not a sponsored review, I’m just a happy customer sharing my thoughts so far.As background I had 5 Arlo cameras, two doorbells and three cameras just a week ago. Before that I was a Ring user. Ring would be my choice over Arlo, and Tapo over them both.I was able to get this camera installed quite easily, and I absolutely loved that the camera came with a 15 degree angle wedge to point away from the wall, and there is a second wedge included to angle the camera down if needed too. Very nice to have them included, and they worked well. I was for some reason confused on how to reverse the angle wedge as there is only one way for it to mount to the plate and lock in. After looking I found you just press the mounting plate out with a finger and reverse it on the wedge and you’re all set. Guess the manual might have helped me there, but who reads manuals? Apparently me and I’d not be feeling dumb! Included photos to show what I mean for others that might find manuals optional.It comes with mounting tape to just stick on if you’d prefer, screws, a separate doorbell chime I forgot to put on my photos, and everything you’d need. Super complete kit and other than my wedge mounting plate thing I had it setup and working in 5-6 minutes. I had the Tapo app for a couple light bulbs and a smart plug already, so I just clicked the plus in the upper right to add a device and it was super easy. No issues of any kind during setup. Very smooth setup, anyone can get through this easily as it guides you perfectly through the process.After setting up the camera it will then next walk you through connecting the included chime. Also worked fine, no issues. Neat features on the chime are selectable chime tones just by pressing a button on the side of the chime. You can also adjust the chime volume right on the chime. Easy, nothing in the app needed at all to adjust the chime how you want. Plenty loud, first time pressing to change the chime tone succeeded in scaring my cats to death and cause them to seek the security of under the bed so it does work well.Once done I screwed it to my door and I was I business. See a photo I included of the rear of the doorbell, the buttons are a sync/reset button on the left, power button on the right, the middle one is a tamper button. If someone pulls the doorbell off it detects the removal and will alarm. That can be disabled in the app if you want I saw.See photos of my actual images after install, one during the day and one at night. It will do color at night but my door walkway is quite dark with zero light and I opted for infrared as it’s clearer for my area. If someone is detected it will turn on the built in LED spotlight and switch to color mode which works well when a person is there to as the light hits the person lighting up the image better, not quite enough light for full color all the time in my area. I’d need to keep a porch light on I think to make me happy, but infrared is fine. Extremely happy with the image. My only desire would be for them to add HDR to the daytime images. Would make it better in the bright areas at the end of my images I think. 20fps recording day and night!App performance and notifications work amazingly fast. I’m coming from Arlo whose notifications took forever for me. It was so slow to alert on my phone as to be useless. Delivery driver would be driving off before I got the first alert someone came. Sometimes they were totally gone, I would think no one even came but there would be a package sitting there. Gee thanks. This Tapo camera is not slow at all, 3-5 seconds to get an alert in my testing on an old iPhone. (EDIT – This was when on battery power, once hardwired it a virtually instant. Absolutely crazy fast, under a second to pull up live view in the app too!) Subscription is completely optional, you get cloud backups of your videos, and a snapshot in your notifications and not just text. That’s it. Snapshot was critical for me on my Arlo and Ring devices, with this it’s so fast to open and show video I feel I have no need for the subscription at all. That’s a major win for this product. Great AI with people, pet and package detection working well so far in my use, all included and no subscription needed for those features either. You can set separate detection zones for each of the AI detection types, I used the same for all. My detection zone gets the street you can see at the end of my entryway, but I have vehicle detection turned off and have not had a single false alert, or a single person missed on my entryway since installing.I liked this camera so well I purchased another Tapo camera for my back door and the end of my first day of testing. It’s not perfect as I’m sure none are, but this is perfect for me.Cons: It is large. Biggest doorbell cam I’ve ever seen personally. Do not like the black face, would prefer all white to blend in with my door frame better and to keep cooler in the sun. HDR should be added to the camera, seems they could add this in a firmware update easily and I hope they do. They could also include a tiny screwdriver to use on the tiny screws to attach mounting plate to the wedges. They are super small, I had a tiny screwdriver handy so no big deal but I could see some not having one around.All minor quibbles. I can happily recommend this as it is currently. Much better for me than the many others I’ve tried, I hope it works well for you too! I will update again as I use it more and find more things out about it.EDIT – I enabled 24/7 recording now, after hard wiring the camera. You can view the timeline and see recording from anytime you choose. Hard wire is the only way to enable this for obvious battery life reasons, but it works fantastic. Hard wire also causes the camera to catch 10 seconds before the alert was triggered automatically too, so you miss nothing from the event. No fees, 24/7 recording and an AI that has been 100% accurate so far in testing and has filtered out all the cars and such driving by my image? This is surprisingly fantastic even to me as a user, no qualms recommending this to others at all! Hard wire recommended if you can, great when on battery, but even better wired. I bought a $10 power cord from Amazon to power it and plugged it into the porch outlet and hid the wiring.

Quality in 2K
Super easy to install once I figured out what side faces outside on the base. It does need to charge for 6 hours for its first charge and the syncing goes by quickly too.The app will give you step by step instructions with pictures on what to do right after opening the box.It comes w two wedges to extend the visual field and effortlessly allows you to zoom in a good distance.The video quality is exceptionally clear even at night time. You have the option to switch from grayscale to color. You are also able to customize the chime. I’m new to door cameras so I really like this one. Also got a microSD since this is subscription less if you want to go that route.

Good quality
I have had this doorbell camera for around 8 months now. Installation was easy and the app is not complicated to use. Picture and audio is as good as expected. Battery does not have to be charged for at least 3 months when camera is set not activate unless it detects a person. The unit will drain Very Quickly (couple days) if set on live view for any length of time. The remote unit is small and has loudness and different chime settings. I’m thinking of hardwiring it (nice option) so that I can use it for live monitoring.

Quelle caméra! La qualité d’image est spectaculaire. Mais il faut surtout parler de la grande simplicité d’installation! Wow! Quand j’ai vu le guide de démarrage rapide, je me suis dit, “ouais, pas sûr que ça sera aussi simple…”. Bien oui, c’est tellement simple… Une fois l’application en route sur mon téléphone et la sonnette en mode “ON”, tout se fait pratiquement automatiquement; le plus compliqué sera de retrouver le mot de passe de votre réseau wifi, :-)Ce que j’apprécie le plus, franchement, c’est le fait de pouvoir accueillir mes visiteurs tout simplement en répondant à la sonnerie de mon téléphone. Et mes visiteurs me confirment qu’il comprennent très bien ce que je leur dis: le son est excellent, et c’est la même chose de mon côté. La seule chose qui m’a causé souci fut de trouver où se cache l’option ‘antivol’: il s’agit de l’option qui déclenche une alarme dans le cas où quelqu’un essaierait de partir avec votre sonnette. La documentation en ligne qui accompagne la sonnette indique que cette option se trouve dans le menu “Paramètres”, mais il s’agit d’un autre modèle de sonnette… Dans le cas de cette sonnette-ci, il faut aller dans les paramètres, puis choisir “Sonnette”: vous y trouverez l’option Antivol.

Montage makkelijk. Er zijn handige plaatjes bij om de bel in verschillende hoeken aan de muur te bevestigen. Ondertussen 2 weken in gebruik en batterij staat op 95%. Wel best een micro SD-kaartje bijbestellen. De binnenbel is wel enkel geschikt voor een Amerikaans stopcontact, best dus ook een stekkeradapter VS – EU bijbestellen.

Great product very easy to set up and excellent view from camera