DoorBird

Happy with our new Doorbird system, and it’s nice that there’s some basic Apple Watch integration, but I wish the app would work as a “Complication” (Apple’s way of enabling access on the watch face) for easier access. The two use cases I have in mind: 1) Letting yourself in quickly as you approach the door, and more importantly, 2) letting in a friend or delivery person who’s at the door but called you on the phone rather than buzzing you via the intercom. You can do this now by finding the app in the app directory, but it would be ideal to have a Complication directly available on the watch face.

So, i have had this for a year now and not impressed. It is finicky. It will disconnected and then i miss parcel delivery’s. Or friends will have to call me to open the door. Just out of the blue. Every once and awhile. I have to switch the power off in the panels and on again and do the whole reboot. That added feature in the app to avoid that, does not work. The thing that really is a bummer is that when someone buzzes, it takes awhile to answer. Run to the phone , unlock the phone, wait for the app to boot up. Most deliveries are gone by then and they throw the package over the fence. Thanks! Grrrrr. I put a sticker on the doorbird to tell people to give me 15 secs to answer. It is not great. I recently activated the recording feature and hate it! I thought maybe i did something wrong. Like most, i do not want to be on notice every minute. Just record the activity and i will look back if needed. Nope. You cannot do it. Either you get a notice and then it records, or you turn the notice off and you get no recordings. I would not recommend this product. Update: well it looks like it has now failed with some kind of network error that they cannot fix on their end and I would be forced to hire someone to open the face of the DoorBird and connect an Ethernet cable to it and my modem to reconnect it to my WiFi? What the crap is that about? So I am done. There is no way I am paying more for this crap when a ring doorbell or better yet Eufy video doorbell can be installed for a 3 rd of the price and work better.

I’ve had a DoorBird at my house for almost two years and I’m very pleased with it. I haven’t had any trouble with it. The app’s interface is simple and straightforward. It has everything you need and nothing more. You open the app and see the door right away, then one tap to answer. Snapshots and history are just as easy to access. The settings menus are a bit complicated, but as a technical person I prefer having more options than less. Once it’s all set up, you never need to mess with the settings anyway. I had a Ring doorbell before this and it was okay, but not great (both device and app). At my new house, the contractor installed a Control4 doorphone and I had him replace it with another DoorBird because the C4 intercom app was not nearly as good.