SwitchBot’s new video doorbell shines in a couple of ways, but fails hard in too many key smart home camera ways.
SwitchBot, the company behind a button-pressing robot that turns dumb buttons smart, has been rapidly expanding its catalog of smart home devices in recent years. Those range from the super niche—things like a smart candle warmer—to the useful and compelling gimmickry of a smart hub with an IR transmitter that lets it act as a Matter-enabled universal remote. For one of the company’s newest products, the SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell, the gimmick is a connected indoor display that acts as a chime, digital peephole, and video storage device, among other things.
SwitchBot isn’t the only company to offer such a combo, but it is the cheapest I’m aware of at $149.99. That’s compared to something like the $380 Eufy Smart Display E10 and Video Doorbell E340 combo or pairing a $100 Google Nest Hub with a $180 Google Nest Doorbell Cam. And it has a lot of good ideas beyond those I listed above.
It’s a shame, then, that the Smart Video Doorbell itself is one of the worst smart home cameras I’ve ever used. Its big problem is that the company whiffed it on the actual video doorbell part. The camera produces muddy, awful video at the wrong aspect ratio, the onboard speakers of both the doorbell and display are terrible, and the whole affair is driven by smartphone software that’s unreliable, at best. Despite it all, I still think this camera might have a place. But that place is decidedly not next to my front door.Good on paper, and nowhere else
I had a number of reasons to look at SwitchBot’s Smart Video Doorbell. Its supposedly 2K resolution video recordings are local by default; it’s battery-powered but can also be wired up; it’s Matter-compatible (with a big asterisk that I’ll get to); it’s got a 165-degree field of view (again, asterisk). If you have a paired SwitchBot smart lock, the Smart Video Doorbell can read the NFC chip on your smartphone or a SwitchBot tracking device in order to unlock it.
The indoor monitor component is what really caught my eye, though. It’s a smallish, square device with a 4.3-inch display that can either be wall-mounted or placed on a table using a built-in kickstand—near a power outlet, though, as it uses a power cable that’s only about four-feet long. Below the display are four buttons, including one to view the camera’s live feed, one to lock or unlock your door (assuming you have a SwitchBot smart lock), and one to pop up a list of generic, robotic replies asking visitors to leave a message or telling them someone will be at the door soon. A feature in the SwitchBot app supports user-recorded replies, so, obviously, I fired up YouTube to grab soundbites from “Angels With Filthy Souls,” the fake movie inside of Home Alone. Then I had my child ring the doorbell so I could answer with them. We laughed and laughed.
The display comes with a microSD card slot already filled with a 4GB microSD card for local recordings, which I think is enough, but the device officially supports up to 512GB memory cards for those who need more.
