It’s difficult to go past smart home security as a way to make you house feel a little safer. While no security system can truly guarantee that your home will remain safe, keeping tabs on your home using a camera can make all the difference for peace of mind.
The problem with home security often comes to “how much you want to spend” and then “how many cameras do you need”. Often the answers to each are connected, because the more cameras you have, the more you not only need to spend on each model, but the more you might need to pay for an ongoing subscription cost.
Subscriptions to security services are often part and parcel of the experience, but they don’t have to be.
We’re beginning to see offerings that pull back on the subscription and focus on the hardware offering, and one such is looking to make a dent on doors with a newly updated doorbell.
Reolink, which previously launched a floodlight sans-subscription services is now updating its video doorbell with much the same, ands also a focus on battery life.
The Reolink Video Doorbell 2nd-gen is largely what you’d expect from a product with its name: a doorbell with a video camera built into the design, like so many other doorbells before it.
Inside, there’s a 4 megapixel camera with a 1:1 square view, covering head-to-toe of anyone who comes a-knocking, including packages complete with on-device AI for people, packages, animals, and vehicles.
The battery life could be the key feature worth thinking about, with a Qualcomm WiFi processor able to max out the battery life to roughly 10 months when using it as a battery-based doorbell. Alternatively, if you know a sparky, you can plug the Video Doorbell 2nd-gen into a hard wired solution, which will keep the battery topped up.
Even if the power goes out, the battery will keep the doorbell working, recording to a microSD card, supporting up to 512GB locally, and away from cloud subscriptions.
A lack of extra services is a key part of what Reolink offers in its security cameras, and the Video Doorbell 2nd-gen keeps that going, maintaining support with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, but skipping the online cloud services, and simply letting you get your data stored locally using your own memory.
“With the Video Doorbell 2nd Gen, we wanted homeowners and renters to have more flexibility without compromising on performance,” said Nick Nigro, Vice President of Sales at Reolink in Australia.
“This flexibility is particularly relevant in the Australian market, where doorstep theft has become a genuine concern for many households, and simply knowing who’s at the door goes a long way toward peace of mind,” he said.
Reolink’s 2nd-gen Video Doorbell is available now, found at the company’s own online store and Amazon for $229.99.
