SkyBell - Wi-fi Video Doorbell - Bronze

The specs and pictures looked good. The reality was different. Here is a list of problems in their priority order: 1. Long delays in everything. Not consistent ranging from 10 seconds to 10 minutes delays in notifications of motion detection or button press. The unit does detect a person walking by the door almost immediately (light change shows that) but it starts recording with a delay so there is no chance of catching a picture of a UPS driver leaving a package, or worse a thief stealing it. I had a long talk with support and got the usual: how far is the router, try to clear cache, reboot the phone, reboot the router, soft reset the bell. Tried all. My WIFI signal is superb: Link 100%, down 50 mbps, up 8 mbps, strength -47db. Tech support guy agreed, but had no suggestions that actually worked. Even the soft reset of the unit is flaky: sometimes it works sometimes not. It took 4 attempts with support guiding me to get the reset, but delays did not go away. This one is a complete show stopper and the reason for the unit going back for a refund. 2. Support is terrible. Took several redials to even get into the wait queue, otherwise get a message "call back later." Once in a queue the wait is in tens of minutes and support is useless. 3. The Apple version of the app is slightly more stable than Android. Still no good but a bit better and faster. 4. Conversation with a person at the door (if they have enough patience to wait) is half duplex. In other words it is one person at a time. You hold "talk" button of the app and talk, but cannot hear anything the other person may say, release the button and they can talk but will not hear you. This is a $200 product in 2016! Joke. 5. Motion detection creates video clips (regardless of their useless content) which can pile up. Each must be removed individually by hand taking 5 to 10 seconds. According to support "Group delete" is a frequently asked enhancement and they are working on it. Sounds like a simple fix and the product should not have been released without it. 6. To view anything you have to hold your device horizontally. Vertical format does not work. 7. Relatively minor nuisances: no manual comes with the product - all online but the web address in the printed startup sheet is wrong. The power connection screws are tiny and too close together to a point of inconvenience. The mounting screws have Philips slots for a small screwdriver. They actually include one with the product. Good luck trying to attach the bell to wood using that or any other small screwdriver. If you do not have an existing mechanical bell but are installing this bell using a standalone power supply it requires a 10 ohm 10 watt resistor. It is just a few cents item but is not included so you have to run to an electronics supplies store. In summary: way to many problems of different scale. Not a consumer grade product. Expensive and sloppy.

Since I purchased my SkyBell these are the most important problems I have had: - The SkyBell loses its connectivity to the wifi very often for no apparent reason. I have an excellent wifi signal that covers my entire house. All of my other smart devices work perfectly without any problem, except for the SkyBell. When I want to connect to the device, a message often says "try again later" or "live stream cannot be established". It makes the device absolutely unusable as a doorbell and unreliable as a security device. - The SkyBell has an abnormally long connection time. When the device works, it takes at least 15 to 20 seconds for the camera to stream. Most of the time, I have to give up on the device and rush to the door to answer my visitors, who are already waiting and think I'm not home. When there's a warning, connecting to the live stream takes so long to establish the danger has often passed. There's also no guarantee to have both sound and video. - The SkyBell has serious issues with its camera. I often don't get any alert on my phone while the mail person or UPS driver has just left packages at my door. Or, I get too many false alerts while it's clear nobody is around when I'm home and come to check myself. I attempted many times to adjust the sensitivity of the motion sensor but it doesn't make any difference. - The SkyBell customer support experience is awful. The company shows no interest in solving problems. It's very hard to communicate with them. The "live chat" on their website is always offline. If I leave a message, it typically takes at least 24 hours before I get a reply. And, their reply always claims that the problem is with me: for example, my wifi signal, or my electrical connection or ? It's clear my SkyBell was defective from the beginning. For all of these reason, I do not recommend this company and their products!!!

I will start this review by answering the question they I could not find ANYWHERE on the internet. “How long is the delay between the doorbell ringing/motion until you receive a notification on your phone”? The answer: LESS THAN 1 SECOND! Well that’s for the doorbell. Motion takes about 3 seconds. I have been looking at various doorbell camera’s for a while now and I was quite skeptical about this product. I saw various videos about false motion detection but I decided to pull the trigger anyway. Out of the box it seemed too simple to work well. Either the instructions are not good or the detailed instructions were missing from my box. I have a digital doorbell so I had to buy the digital doorbell adapter to make it work. After you do that make sure you set the “indoor chime” option to digital in the settings otherwise it won’t work. The instillation is simple enough. The set up was a BREEZE. It literally took two minutes after I installed it to have it up and running. The picture quality is Awesome. You have the option to choose 480p,720p or 1080p! Pick based on your internet speed. 720 is what I use and it is nice. My friend has a ring bell pro and this picture looks SOO MUCH BETTER. He also can’t set the quality. The main reason this doorbell is not rated higher by most people is the motion detection issue. They have set the motion sensor to off straight out of the box. If you don’t have an ios device you may not be able to adjust the sensitivity of the motion detection. I have mine set to medium and I have yet to get a false detection. I haven’t been this pleased with a product in a while. The only way this could get better is if you had the ability to angle the camera in any direction. This is a small issue (I don’t think any doorbell can do this) which I EASILY overlook.

On January 5, 2018, we purchased our Skybell HD and a TP-LINK - Wireless N300 Wi-Fi range extender to ensure the Skybell required upload speed of 1.5 Mbps at the video doorbell location. Installation of the Skybell HD went just as shown in the Skybell HD installation video. After my wife and I installed the Skybell HD app on each of our iPhones, I walked around the front porch while she tested the motion detection settings of high, medium, and low. So far we like the low setting best. Motion detection works great, we both receive notices on our iPhones, and we can communicate clearly with the person at the front door. We enjoy telling family and friends about our new Skybell HD and showing them “watch live” video on our iPhones. Tip: we were experiencing a black screen after pushing the “watch live” button, but by lowering the image quality from 1080p to 720p (good), no more black screen. Recommendation: If your Internet Service Provider is Centurylink, upgrade your service to download speed of 20 Mbps and upload speed of 5 Mbps and ask for their C1100Z DSL modem. After numerous phone calls to Centurylink customer service and technical support and three DSL modems later we were finally able to upgrade our service to Skybell required upload speed of 1.5 Mbps.

I was doing some research before purchasing and determined that this is a much better value than the competitors. The biggest advantage is that it requires no monthly subscription - once I started using it, I am under the impression that the videos are actually stored on the camera itself - that's why no subscription is needed to store the videos on the cloud. Installation is probably on the easy side - there were glitches, but I was able to figure that out - you basically connect your phone through Wifi to the doorbell, tell it what Wifi to use, then disconnect your Wifi connection on the phone and back to your normal Wifi connection to continue setup. Everything basically runs out of the app, and there is no website to allow access to the doorbell, which I wish they have. I don't have too many complaints about any of the general functionality. Optical quality is very good towards the center of the picture, but the sides are not so - not sure if this has to do with the fact that the sides shown on my doorbell picture are the walls which are very close to the camera. I get notifications on my phone but sometimes it takes a couple minutes for the captured video to show up in my app. The one thing that I still haven't exactly figured out is the sensitivity - it seems like it picks up more activities during the day than at night - I am not sure if this is actually the case or the lighting actually affects the sensibility.

Purchased October 2015, Died December 1016 My family Purchased a Skybell from BestBuy and initially its was great. I never realized how much I would like this addition to our home. Over the holidays the button turned red and it stopped working, no chime, no wifi connection, zero. After talking with Skybell customer service they have told me that the unit is dead. They offered us $60 off a new Skybell HD. The warranty is 1 year, so it lasted just long enough to get out of warranty and died. I'm not going back, we will add a smart doorbell/camera/intercom of some kind, but no more Skybell. If i'm going to pay $200 for a piece of tech that is only exposed to moderate temperature changes (we live in Austin, TX), no direct rain/sleet/snow (its under the eve of our front balcony) and mild use (FedEx and our kids friends) then I expect to get several years out of it. Here's a suggestion for Skybell; even if the camera and wifi die, still engineer it so that the chime works. My bell is hardwired, the previous bell on the house was 30 years old and still worked when i replaced it. Now I just have a brick next to my door...

Sometimes it records, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I get a notification, sometimes I don't. I made numerous troubleshooting attempts, then contacted Skybell Customer Support. This is the response I received: "Our development team has plans to integrate the camera into detecting motion that is more reliable to the user. This should bring improvement to the way the unit is sensing motion in the areas with high heat such as Florida or Texas (to name a few). Additionally, we have plans to add customization to the application with this update such as "video zoning". But for the time being I have placed your SkyBell in queue to receive the pre-alpha version of it to make the motion more sensitive (the customization is not included). The update takes around 5-7 business days. Once the testing for the final firmware is complete, your device will be updated automatically (just like this pre-alpha version)." In other words, Skybell acknowledges that its product doesn't always work. Don't waste your money! Also, I will no longer purchase from Best Buy. I'm outside of their 15 day return window - by six days. Only Amazon, from now on!!

First I would like to emphasize this is not meant to be a security camera as is. It does what is meant to do, when someone rings the doorbell sends a notification to your phone to see who is at the door, also when someone aproches your door and lets you answer wherever you are. I bought 2 of these. Problems: I had to replace my transformer and get a better router (I had 25 devices hooked to the old one and needed the upgrade) Now it works fine. Compared to others, these have no fees, I like the fact that you can see the thumbnails for the videos recorded, Ring does not do that, Nest does record 24 hours a day and you can see the history as a timeline but you pay for that convenience. You can use Skybell a a security camera if you own smartthings and in conjunction with IFTTT as you can have a spare sensor trigger recordings without notifications, this way you won't get false alarms, the skybell app will still send the notifications as it normally would on its own. Pros. Free recording, cheaper than competitors, operates in more temperature ranges than others, easy to instal, 1080P recording, good quality video, price won't cost you a leg and an arm. Cons. Only 2.4 Ghz compatible, needs a strong wifi signal or a repeater nearby.