REOLINKVideo Doorbell PoE Camera – 2K IP Security Camera Outdoor with Chime V2, 4:3 Aspect Ratio, 180 Degree Diagonal, 2-Way Talk, Plug & Play, Secured Local Storage, No Monthly Fee

I had bought into the whole Blink infrastructure, yea I know. Which was comically bad. The doorbell didn't work as a doorbell after one of their many updates, which is kinda an inexcusable fail. The only person that could hear it "ring" was the person that pushed the button. Recorded video and detected motion OK, but was the worst of the Blink products at that. I had one on every outside door (5). Between that and their Floodlight, that doesn't reliably work as a floodlight, I gave up, all going in the bin.That was a Black Friday impulse buy, and bought more of it, as it worked pretty well for what it costs for a while, then they updated it into uselessness. So, a little research this time around, and came across the Reolink, and well, by comparison, it's night and day. As a doorbell, it does what you'd expect a doorbell to do, push the button and it rings, and with the Alexa skill, it rings everywhere, and in my house that's a lot of places. It's like noon in an old clock shop when someone pushes the button. Given that the problem it was intended to solve was a vendor who felt their product was so valuable that it required an in-person direct adult signature to deliver, and the old doorbell gave the false sense than I heard that there was someone at the door, well the Riolink was ordered, delivered and installed before that delivery was re-attempted the next day.So the Riolink costs a lot more than the Blink, but still, not all that expensive. I have also worked with Axis which is the polar opposite. The Riolink is cheap in comparison to those. But the Riolink has a whole lot more in common with Axis than with Blink. I mean it's just a doorbell, but that doorbell has all the same kind of camera configuration options as the Axis cameras had. Not least of which, and maybe this sounds dumb, but the ability to just bring up the camera and watch it if you are expecting something. I don't know how common that is for all the consumer doorbell cams between the bottom of the barrel Blink and the Riolink, but NOT being able to just camp on a cam seemed pretty ridiculous to me. And i can do this on a real screen, on my PC and not be restricted to a smartphone app.All this makes it way better, BUT that's just the tip of the iceberg. It has some pretty impressive integration with Home Assistant, it has actual Ethernet conductivity, and PoE, and it has a pretty impressive image quality. Yea, I had to drill a hole because it wasn't just batteries and WiFi, but I'd rather have wired or wireless any day, worth the effort. Oh and support for local storage.So, the nit picks...The included angle bracket isn't enough and additional one to stack them up aren't available, and unlike a lot of the doorbell cameras there is no aftermarket for such things. I ordered some made for the Arlo cam that many have adapted for this cam, we'll see how that goes. Yea there are a lot of people selling 3D printed ones, but I'd rather just buy something manufactured, even if I have to adapt it.The included chime is a 1 to 1 thing, apparently you can pair to more than 1 chime but you can't pair multiple doorbells to the same chime. It would be nice to have multiple chimes and multiple doorbells and they all just work with all, but I guess not. However the Alexa integration really makes that not so much of a deal as I have an Echo or a FireTV Cube in every room, so honestly the chime doesn't matter so much. The down side of that is that you are no longer local if you are using that skill, from either side, you have to join the cams to the Riolink cloud service and then pair that service with Alexa which is also cloud.Oh and I had initially bought 2, the PoE version and the WiFi version, not really realizing that the WiFi version still needs to be externally powered. It does however also have an Ethernet port, which I wish also did PoE but it doesn't. I had bought a bunch of 24V PoE injectors a while back hoping they would power my EcoBee thermostats (they didn't, AC only apparently) but they work fine on the WiFi version of the Riolink, I guess even the included power adapter is actually 24V DC (not the 24VAC that is typical for doorbell wiring). So apparently AC/DC doesn't matter, though did read somewhere that it's 24V DC or 12-24V AC, so guessing that much more commonly available 12V PoE adapters wouldn't work.Anyway, like I said I had 5 Blink doorbells, which are all getting replaced with these. I have tons of PoE ports in my house, so it's just a matter of getting a cable from A to B. I will be trying Their cameras as replacements for the rest of the Blink stuff as well, so far I am impressed, a few minor gripes, but overall meets and exceeds...

This is great. I really like having the reliability of PoE. It just works. All the time. There are three levels of quality which is fine since I remotely view the content from time to time. I guess if I had one request, it'd be to somehow be able to minimize triggered captures when bugs fly in front of it. The summertime makes a *lot* of recordings. Perhaps a downstream DVR system is needed. I have not tested the zoned motion detection. I reliably get notifications from the app, too.Oh yeah, I am always a fan of better video quality. This is okay but I think higher resolutions are always better. I do not have a need for package detection since I can tell from video/notifications when they arrive.

Much better than Ring! I replaced a ring door bell with this and wish I would’ve done it a long time ago. No more fights with Ring WiFi and yearly fee. Reolink hasn’t let me down yet!

I got a few of these to replace my Ring Elite PoE doorbells. I had noticed a degradation in the video quality, and especially in the motion detection with the Rings. (They would constantly alert on unimportant things beyond the detection zone, and would miss important things within the detection zone.) I replaced both of my Rings with these in late December. Note that the Reolink costs between $75-$100 depending upon deals, while the Ring Elite PoE presently retails for $350, and was $500 when I bought my first one. The motion/person detection on the Reolinks is nearly flawless. It's 100x better than the Rings were. The video quality is also far superior to the Ring. After being unhappy with my two Ring Elite PoE doorbells for many years, I found the Reolink doorbell as a possible alternative and purchased two of them late last year. After I had installed one of them at one location, but before I had installed the second one, somebody ripped the remaining Ring off the house. It was not found, and the Ring did not detect the event. I filed a police report and obtained a courtesy replacement from Ring.Now that you've read the Reolink Pros, and Ring Cons, it's time for the Reolink Cons and Ring Pros::1) The Reolink will not install into a standard j-box. There are some difficult-to-find mounting solutions out there, and I was satisfied with the outcome using one of them on my second install. My first install made use of a weather-proof j-box cover in which I drilled a big hole, and used some two-part epoxy to bind the plastic angle adapter to the cover. It works.2) The Reolink app is a little quirky. It takes some experimentation to find the correct combination of sound settings to get alerts the way you want them. It's somewhat more difficult on Android than iOS. Once you get it right, it far outperforms the Ring.3) If you want to view video of past events, you have two choices: a) Install a microSD card (max 250GB) into the doorbell. b) Use a separate local security appliance, such as a Reolink video recorder, Reolink cloud, or a third-party solution such as a Synology NAS.If using a microSD card, your videos are stored in the doorbell, and if somebody takes it, you will have no record of the event. If using Reolink cloud, you've got monthly fees, not much different from Ring. If using a local security appliance, you'll need some expertise in networking and VPNs (if remote). (After significant effort, I was able to get one doorbell to communicate with my remote NAS over the VPN I already had, so both of my doorbells are now monitored by one NAS.)4) After three months of flawless operation, one of my doorbells developed a hardware failure. It no longer records any audio. It failed during a rainstorm and I think it's because the claimed IP65 water resistance is overstated. Getting Reolink to acknowledge the failure and eventually honor my warranty claim was difficult. I just purchased a third doorbell to install while my failed doorbell is away for RMA repair/replacement. Now I'll have a spare.

Easy to install. I already had a cat-5 cable at the doorbell. Plugged it in. I also had POE at my network cabinet so the camera powered up quickly. Setup was quick and online. I added a 256GB memory card so the Reolink app would be able to sow me video history. This was much easier than the Amcrest doorbell camera of which I had two die on my and only used the doorbell wiring for power.