... huh?
I was looking for a security camera and a doorbell for my new studio.
I was fed up with receiving these “we couldn’t deliver” cards through the door you know?.
The thing is I didn’t want to spend an arm and a leg on a new camera system or spend
lots of money on a monthly subscription.
Well, looks like I found the perfect fit.
As luck would have it, Imilab contacted me a few weeks ago and said they are launching
this new Video Doorbell.
They have just launched on Kickstarter so this is really fresh off the press for you.
I am Alex and I do down to earth tech reviews.
The Imilab doorbell is super straight forward.
Out of the box, it was extremely easy to install.
A few steps on your phone to set it up and connect it to the Wi-fi, and I was up and
running within minutes!
The hub is very small, but the antenna seems to be quite strong despite the size.
This is a fairly old building where I am here.
I am on the second floor (or 3rd floor if you count the ground floor in your country)
It has very thick walls so it’s really impressive that that the signal is that strong and being
picked up all the way down to the ground floor.
It has a great quality 4 Megapixels camera with 150 degrees wide field of view.
That is really wide!
I am in an industrial area and lots of people coming and going every day and lots of parcels
being delivered.
It has an enormous 5200 mAh battery.
For something so compact, it’s impressive that they managed to pack such a big battery
inside it.
One charge will last approximately 6 months.
You heard that right!
That’s incredible!
What this means in practice is that really…
you don’t need to worry about wiring this to the main power and get an electrician involved.
Because you’re only charging it twice a year, it makes it super convenient in comparison
with other brands!
Having something like this that I can use to not only direct my deliveries but to protect
my property is extremely important.
In the last 3 weeks that I’ve had it, I had no issues with connectivity and I might
actually get a second one for the door upstairs.
But for now I am really happy with the level of quality here.
It has the ability to detect when a person has moved in front of the camera and as soon
as that happens, I get an alert on my phone with a short clip of that event.
This is extremely powerful from a security perspective.
I’ve been unfortunate to have experienced a burglary before so I am quite paranoid,
and having this extra peace of mind is really important to me.
I don’t need this feature but it’s really good, and may be important to you.
It basically allows you to configure key areas of detection.
But what Imilab does which is quite different from other brands is that it can sound an
alarm.
So if someone enters that particular area, the doorbell will actually sound a loud alarm
for 10 seconds.
Again, it’s another deterrent which is great.
It come with a corner kit so you can angle the doorbell easily and the best thing is,
it has IP66 weather resistance.
When I was talking to Imilab, they told me they did a water-resistance challenge and
apparently the doorbell worked well after being frozen for 24 hours!
I am gonna do that test soon and post an update!
But for now, it’s good to know it has that IP66 rating.
In plain English IP66 means its water resistant against powerful water jets.
And being in the UK, we do get a lot of rain…
Now the icing on the cake for me is the fact that it works with Google Assistant and Alexa.
I only use Alexa and that was fairly straightforward to setup too.
When you sign up with them you get 3 months free of cloud storage.
And then, and here is where I think this is brilliant…
You can choose to pay US$ 39.90 per year to keep 30 days of movement recordings.
In practice it means you can go back 30 days to see what happened at any particular time
during those 30 days.
There are cheaper plan for 7 day which is only 19.90 per year.
In terms of what could be better, I suppose something that doesn’t rely on Wi-Fi would
be even better for that belt and braces solution.
For now I have something else for that functionality but maybe in future they could look into having
a 4G option and maybe solar powered too.
These are of course features that would make it more expensive but it would be good to
see in the future.
It would also be good to have a PLAN that is halfway between those, like a 15 day plan
but for now, to be honest with you, the 30 day plan is really good value.
There is a link in the description to the product page which will give you access to
a heavily discounted price.
I will post a follow-up video on this in a couple of months time just to let you know
how its going.
I really think you’re gonna like this playlist I’ve done over here that I’ve done for
you.
And YouTube reckons you’re gonna love this video over here.
Hope to see you over there!
See you soon!