Amcrest 1080P Video Doorbell Camera Pro, Outdoor Smart Home 2.4GHz WiFi Doorbell Camera (Wired Power), MicroSD Card, PIR Motion Detect, RTSP, IP55 Weatherproof, 2-Way Audio, 140º Wide-Angle AD110-SH

The media could not be loaded. The first part of this review will focus on the doorbell itself, the installation process, and experience using the Amcrest Smarthome App. Then, I will discuss my personal use case, which is adding this doorbell to Apple HomeKit using Home Assistant and Scrypted.The Doorbell:The build quality is good. The housing is metal and plastic. It comes in black, but includes an additional silver faceplate to change the color. The mounting bracket that attaches to the wall is metal. I was impressed by all of the included tools and accessories that came in the box. You get all of the screws needed for installation as well as a screwdriver and drill bit. The screwdriver is important because it has a Philips head at one end, but the other end is torx (star) for the special set screw. This set screw attaches the doorbell to the mounting bracket at the bottom.There was also a chime kit included to enable the Amcrest doorbell to activate the physical chime installed in most homes. I didn't need to install this and I'll explain why later.Installation:For me, installation was a pain in the neck. This isn't totally Amcrest's fault. My installation was always going to be difficult because my exterior wall is made of stone veneer. Stone veneer is ridiculously uneven and hard to drill into. The difficulty was compounded by the type of mounting bracket that the Amcrest doorbell uses but I'll give more details about that in the pros/cons section.Amcrest Smarthome App:After connecting the wires and switching back on the circuit breaker, adding the doorbell to the Amcrest Smarthome App was simple. Once added, the app gives you a full range of settings: Motion Range, Motion Detection Zones, Doorbell Tones, Night Vision, Schedules, and much more. I honestly can't think of any setting that's missing.When someone rings the doorbell, the notification on my phone was pretty snappy (see video). When you open the video feed, you have the option to hang up, talk, or play a prerecorded message (Leave package, Come back later, No visitors). I didn't see an option to record my own voice message.Pros:- I really like the way this doorbell looks. Some smart doorbells are so 'fancy' and overdesigned, but the average visitor to your home may not understand how to press the button. So they just bang on the door, which is very annoying. But the backlit button on the Amcrest makes it very easy to understand how to interact with it.- The star-head set screw is a nice security feature. On other doorbells, such as the Logi Circle, you only need a paper clip to pop the doorbell off the bracket.- Motion and doorbell alerts hit my phone almost instantly, which is very important for smart doorbells.- I like the ability to play pre-recorded messages when someone rings the doorbell. I've used other smart doorbells that do not have this feature.Cons:- The doorbell video is 1920x1080, which is great for most users. But I'd prefer a 3:4 format portrait view like the Logi Circle Doorbell has. Why? Well, with a portrait resolution, I can see packages on my doorstep. In landscape, I cannot.- As stated above, the mounting bracket of this doorbell caused a problem for me. Mainly, because it sits flush up against the doorbell with no space to keep extra wires. The instruction manual photos imply that the extra wire slack can simply be pushed back into the hole in the wall, but this isn't an option on the stone veneer. I had about two inches of wire between the doorbell and wall but nowhere to keep them. I ended up folding them between the mounting bracket and the wall, which meant that I could not securely screw the bracket down. My doorbell is currently hanging on the wall by the wire until I can think of a solution.- I really wish that the doorbell included an extra angled bracket to point the camera away from the door. My doorbell wires are, unfortunately, installed on the wall perpendicular to the door instead of next to the door. So my view of the entry is very limited. An angled bracket would help with this.- The doorbell notifications were snappy, and the stream opened immediately after tapping the notification. But I noticed that just opening the live stream from the Amcrest app wouldn't always work. It would often get to +90% and just stick there.- The set screw head is really shallow. So it's going to fall off the screwdriver about 10 times before you can screw it into the bottom of the doorbell. Magnetizing the screwdriver may help.HOMEKIT / HOME ASSISTANTAs stated above, I use Home Assistant in my home so I wanted to know if I could add this doorbell and have it also work with Apple HomeKit. And it works!! See attached screenshots.Using Scrypted in Home Assistant with the Amcrest plugin, I added the doorbell using the IP address and password that was set in the Amcrest Smart Home App. After the doorbell was added, I selected "Amcrest Doorbell" under 'Doorbell Type' and ONVIF under 'Two Way Audio.' Under 'Extensions' I made sure that 'HomeKit' was selected and I received the 'HomeKit' pairing code.In the Apple Home App, I scanned the pairing code and the Amcrest doorbell was added as a HomeKit-compatible doorbell, capable of ringing my Apple Homepods and showing a snapshot on the Apple TV when the doorbell button was pressed (which is why I didn't need to install the chime kit that came in the box). The live feed opens instantly in the Apple Home App (even faster than in the Amcrest App) and has HomeKit Secure Video recording clips of all motion!Considering the pros and cons, I think that this is a great option for most home owners. And I'm very happy with how well it works in Apple HomeKit!

Installation was fairly easy. The instructions themselves however don't mention any voltage, whether it's AC or DC power, whether a chime is hooked up on the other end, or anything else. It would be nice if this was present in the getting started docs to ensure compatibility.The faceplate has to be taken off to access the buttons or SDcard slot. With the faceplate off, they are not obvious, they are on the right side of the unit and there isn't much in the way of markings. I missed them until I read the manual. This may be intentional such that thieves don't steal your SD card or something, but doesn't help with ease of use. I often set up things like this without instructions. This may also pose a problem if your doorbell is butted up against a wall to the right.The instructions had me download the Amcrest Smart Home app, and "follow the instructions in the app setup". Upon installing the app on Android, I gave it the permissions it requested, but there were no other setup "instructions" to follow, it just dropped me at a login screen. I tried to use the FB login method at the bottom, and it gave a Facebook error saying "App not active. This app is not accessible right now and the app developer is aware of the issue. You will be able to log in when the app is reactivated.", so I would avoid the Facebook login.Upon registering manually via email and logging into the app, I poked around and looked at the Account tab. I noticed that under my profile picture it had a name of "E7499". At no point had it asked me to set up a name, so I found it odd it just assigned me random characters. Just ask me to set up my name. I had to go change it myself, not sure if it's the name of my account or the name of the doorbell device, so I assumed it was me and made it my username. When I went to save the username, the "save" icon is some weird checkmark circle icon I've never seen before, so just know that means "Save".Finally I went to the Home tab and clicked Add Device. It prompted me to scan a QR code, which I had not seen anywhere. It mentioned looking on the faceplate of the device, and I eventually found it on the body of the device UNDER the faceplate after the faceplate had been removed. I assume some people may not even remove the faceplate before attempting setup and this would confuse them, so be sure to remove it.After that, device setup was smooth and pretty easy, so props there. It is worth noting and It would have been helpful for the wifi selection UI to mention that only 2.4Ghz networks are supported, as a lot of people use 5Ghz or even 6Ghz networks nowdays. However, the Amazon listing does mention this prominently as well, so I also give this a pass.The rest of the setup continued to be smooth. For the timezone, I selected Arizona as I live there, and we have our own timezone and do not have daylight savings at any time of the year. Most apps will disable "DST" automatically and gray it out when the Arizona timezone is selected, but this app did not - hopefully it works fine. I continued on and did a cloud upgrade of the firmware. This was also straightforward and worked fine.They have a 1 year free trial of their cloud storage for video which has a rolling time frame, I think of 7 days if I recall correctly. It does require a credit card so you may get a mystery charge in a year if you forget to cancel it. The pricing was fairly reasonable for this service, however, and a 1 year trial is good and lengthly, which offsets some of the increased cost for this vs similar products.Video was clear, and motion detection and zoning works well.The operation of the doorbell since has been fairly straightforward, works as advertised. Note that the power draw is higher than I would like. I tried to run it off a USB power bank rather than doorbell power, and it killed it within 24hrs on a very large battery bank, so AC doorbell power is a hard requirement. This makes sense, as uploading and recording video is a power hungry process.