This doorbell ($199) offers crystal-clear picture quality and integrates with voice assistants. It’s available exclusively at Best Buy. But could it win me over as a video doorbell skeptic? Until recently, I had never understood the need for a video anything to monitor my home. It seemed, frankly, a little paranoid. However, I tried out eufy’s latest just as my anxiety level was ratcheting up over doom-laden pandemic and election headlines. Was civilization about to break down over coronavirus-related toilet paper shortages? Could the remnants of society end up fighting over the last packets of yeast? If so, I reasoned, it might be better to know who was coming to call in the middle of the night.
Good Looks, Great Picture
For the reluctant Mad Max or just regular homeowners, the eufy is a slick piece of tech. The doorbell boasts a sleek all-black design with a front-facing camera and a built-in microphone. It records and streams in 2K (2560x1920) resolution with HDR and in a taller 4:3 aspect ratio that’s “designed to show people head to toe,” the company said in a news release. And that camera is designed to work when things go bump in the night. It’s got all the specs you’d expect in this price range. Weather resistance? Check. Two-way audio, notifications, and voice assistant integration with Alexa and Google Assistant? Sure thing. It also features the ominous-sounding “local A.I. image processing” which supposedly allows face recognition and filtering that can keep pets and vehicles from setting off alerts. There’s no need to purchase an external SD card because the 32GB of built-in storage allows each recording to be saved directly to the device. I found that I was able to capture long scenes of the view outside my door with all that onboard memory. This led to some incredibly boring viewing sessions. Leaves falling from the trees were the most exciting thing I saw.
Hacker-Proof Recordings
I was reassured to know that the video is stored locally on-device with “military-grade” encryption, accessible through the eufy app without a cloud subscription. If hackers ever want to nab leaf videos from my doorbell, they are in for a tussle. There’s one snag, however. The continuous recording feature draws a lot of power so the new doorbell is only available in a hard-wired version. Make sure you really want this thing on your door before drilling holes to put it there. Once committed, installation was surprisingly easy and using the eufy app was intuitive. For people who are super into ringtones, (I’m not judging) the new doorbell also includes an upgraded chime that provides eight different sounds, along with volume levels that you can adjust to your heart’s content. They all sounded very pleasant to my ears. The best part of the Doorbell 2K is its image quality. It might not be big screen cinema ready but it’s startlingly clear for a video doorbell. The company claims that the 2K image is combined with “advanced HDR and Distortion Correction,” ensuring that “every video is recorded in 2x the quality.” I believe them. The leaves that were blowing in front of my door showed up in glorious high definition. I imagine that you could in fact film a halfway decent movie entirely through this doorbell. Pity the screenwriter though. Despite these tempting alternatives, my time with the eufy was well spent. Although I discovered not a single porch pirate while reviewing hours of footage, I did, however, spot a squirrel casing my house. I was left reassured that if things somehow got worse in 2020 outside my door at least I’d have the evidence to prove it.
