- I have great news for you guys.
The list of HomeKit Secure Video doorbells has now doubled.
We went from one to having two.
That's right.
We now have the Logitech View Doorbell
with HomeKit Secure Video.
Today, I'm going to tell you 10 things
that you need to know about this before you buy it.
Let's jump into the video.
Welcome back friends.
If this is your first time here, my name is Eric.
If you're in this smart home, home automation,
as specially HomeKit, this is the place to be.
So make sure you hit that subscribe button down below.
So I've been waiting for a great HomeKit camera
to come to market.
I've actually tested a few of those on this channel before.
We tested the Yobi, and unfortunately it was just too big.
The footage was not great,
and it did not have HomeKit Secure Video.
And then I tested the Robin,
and although it has HomeKit Secure Video,
there's many other aspects of that doorbell
that the average general homeowner just can't overcome.
And then this past Tuesday on the Apple website,
unannounced, the brand new Logitech View Doorbell popped up.
As soon as I saw it, I ordered it right away.
Luckily enough, they FedExed it to me overnight
and got it Wednesday evening.
And I installed it right away
and I've been using it all week.
Now, spoiler alert, it's pretty good,
but unfortunately it's not great.
So here are my 10 things that you want to know
before you buy it.
Now, one of the very first things I noticed on the website
before I got the doorbell was that the footage
is in vertical format, which they call portrait view,
with a three-by-four format, 1200 by 1600,
with 160 degree field of vision diagonally.
Some companies measure horizontally.
Some companies measure diagonally.
They disclose that they measure diagonally,
which, to me, it's great that's it's 160 degrees,
but personally I'd rather have a horizontal or landscape
field of vision with horizontally 160 degrees
rather than vertically.
Now, that's a personal preference.
I don't know about you,
but I want to see as much as possible
of the front of my house and what's going on,
not just this narrow view.
It's not like we walk around all day
with blinders on like a horse and only can see this.
We want to see everything.
And we don't need to see the sky.
We don't need to see people's feet.
Yes, it's great to see packages.
If you get a lot of packages
and you're concerned about that.
One of the things that you can do is get a wedge
with like a 15% degree down,
and you can see a little bit further down.
But having that horizontal, or having that vertical format,
you're stuck with that for the life of that doorbell.
Just think about walking around like this all day.
Now, on the plus side,
the footage from this camera is amazing.
It is a five megapixel camera, 1200 by 1600.
I gotta admit, it's probably some of the best footage
I've ever seen from a doorbell camera.
It also has high dynamic range, or HDR.
So even in bright sunlight,
if someone is standing at your front door,
you'd be able to see them.
You can see what's happening in the background.
It's not going to be blurred out
or overexposed or underexposed.
With that high dynamic range,
you'll be able to see everything crystal clear.
Now, taking that footage and moving into night,
I got a met the color at night vision
is pretty awesome.
Now, this is the first time I've seen it in a doorbell,
and in most cases, and in most people's homes,
that's going to be fine.
Personally, I keep my outside lights on all night,
and that color night vision is very useful
because I can see 15, 20 feet.
I can see pretty much my whole front yard in color.
But if you're in pitch dark
and you have to use the onboard LED light strip
which is about 4,000 Kelvin, it's not super bright.
You can only see about five or six feet.
So if someone's walking up, you're not going to see them
until they're pretty much on top of the door.
Most cases that'd be fine, but if you have a use case
that you need to see a little bit further,
a doorbell camera with infrared lights
can actually see much further.
Now you're not going to see it as clear,
and you're not going to see it color
but there's infrared lights can definitely pick up
someone 15, 20 feet away, where color camera night vision
is only going to see it five or six feet away,
'cause it's depending on that LED light strip.
One of the things about the LED light strip
is that it will automatically turn on
when the onboard light sensor notices that it gets dark.
And vice versa, when it gets brighter in the morning,
pretty much at dawn, it will turn off that LED light strip.
Also, some people might think that it's too bright at night.
So there is a setting in the home app
that you can totally turn it off,
but unfortunately there's no other settings.
It's either on automatically or it's off altogether.
The doorbell also has a motion sensor
that's exposed to HomeKit.
Unfortunately it's VO based, otherwise known as pixel base,
and a lot of times you're going to get false notifications
'cause you get wind blowing trees and bushes,
even bugs at night or dust at night
can set off that type of motion sensor.
If you use it to trigger other devices in your HomeKit home,
you're going to have things turning on when they should not.
So just FYI, that motion sensor is probably not very useful.
Now, if you happen to have a HomeKit lock,
I've seen in a previous keynote,
we actually had a single option to unlock it
from the video footage.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen that option yet.
I've only seen the two-step process
where you hit the button in the bottom right corner
and then your lock would show up in there.
In that screen, you can edit whatever accessories
you want to quickly access from the video footage,
but is a two-step process rather than that one.
I'm not quite sure if Apple was going to enable
that one-step process.
To me, I think that might be a little bit unsecure,
where you can accidentally hit it
when you really meant to like talk to someone.
So having that two-step process is a little bit more secure.
And when it comes to the physical design of this doorbell,
I gotta tell you it's pretty slim.
It's pretty small.
It's not smallest doorbell I've ever seen.
It's definitely the smallest HomeKit doorbell I've seen.
The height comes in around about 119 millimeters
and the width comes in about 42 millimeters.
So if you have a very thin doorframe,
just measure that to make sure
it's 42 millimeters or bigger.
On the front of the device, you have the camera on the top,
you have the night vision light, you have the status light,
and then you have the push button light.
On the very bottom is the microphone and the speaker.
You also have a release button,
which I'll talk more about in the moment.
And then you have a micro USB port,
which gets hidden when it's mounted.
For some reason, you need to take it out,
you need to charge it up,
or do some type of maintenance on it,
it's all going to be done through that micro USB plug.
And then on the back you have your HomeKit parent code,
and then these little two pinpoints
actually supply power to the device.
They actually connect to the mount itself
where the wires are connected,
which I'll talk more about in just a moment.
It does have full duplex audio.
So once you hit that talk button
you'll be able to talk back and forth
without holding anything down.
You'll have free conversation.
And I gotta tell you, it sounded pretty good,
both on the mic side and also on the speaker side.
How do I sound?
- You sound good.
- All right.
How about, you sound good too, I can hear you just fine.
You look good.
♪ My husband is torturing me ♪
♪ By making all these types of videos ♪
♪ And telling me to be a part of them ♪
♪ But I don't really want to ♪
- Thank you for your help.
I do wish that the speaker was much, much louder though.
But that's pretty much with all video doorbells.
There's not many of them out there I've tested
that are loud enough to hear
with kids playing in the background.
But you know, most people, if they can't hear you,
they're just gonna get closer to that doorbell
and they can hear you just fine because it is clear,
it's just not very loud.
So I wish it was a little bit louder.
Now this is a wired doorbell, so you will need
doorbell wires at your front door for power.
But when it comes to communication, it is a wifi doorbell,
which it does run on 2.4 and also five gigahertz wifi.
The cool things about this doorbell
that I haven't seen in other HomeKit doorbells
is that you can have two streams, both at the same time.
All the other video doorbells that I've tested previously,
if you had one stream, if you had someone
looking at the live view and you had your spouse jump on
and looking at the live view, say someone rang the doorbell,
and both of you looked at the live view,
one of you guys got a message saying someone
already is looking at it.
With this camera though, with this doorbell,
you can both look at it at the same time.
That's right.
You can have two people looking at the same live stream
at the same time.
Now, I tested the three,
and unfortunately three does not work.
It's only limited to two people or two streams.
And when it came to installation, it's pretty easy.
It's just like pretty much every other video doorbell
out there on the market.
One of the things that I did notice
is that on the back of the video doorbell,
there are no screws.
It's just two little, like two little points
that connect to the points on the mount itself.
Now, they did include two mounts,
one Mount that looks straight out at zero degrees,
and a second mount that looks out at 20 degrees.
You can flip that second mount over
to face the other direction at 20 degrees.
Unfortunately, if you need something a little bit more,
a little bit less, that is not available yet.
Now, of course the aftermarket would come out
with their own mounts.
But one thing to keep in mind is that
your wires from your house are actually
tied in to the mount themselves,
rather than the wires going through the mount
and tying into doorbell itself.
So in my particular case, it looks like
I'm going to have to jury rig something
until something comes available.
Now, they say this design of the wire going to the mount
rather than going to the doorbell
is to make it easier to install,
which honestly, that was easier,
where you just push in the wire.
You have to, you know, push in the button on the inside
to push in the wire.
That does make it easier.
But the thing to keep in mind,
something that's easier to install
is also easier to on uninstall or steal.
You take a little pin or a paperclip, push it, done.
No wires, nothing to cut, just out, done.
Now understand, any video doorbell is open the theft,
and it does happen all the time.
Now, the thing to keep in mind with this one
is with that narrow field of vision or that vertical format,
people can walk over to the side, reach around,
and pop this thing off in no time.
And unfortunately, I didn't see any replacement plan
on their website, where like Nest and Ring,
they do have a replacement plan.
Of course you have to go through all the procedure
or the red tape to get it.
I'm sure you have to do a police report.
There probably has to be some footage.
So if something like this doesn't see any footage
of someone actually stealing it,
they're not going to replace it.
So just keep aware of that.
You saw how easy is to take on and take off.
So if you're worried about theft,
this one might not be for you.
Now, they say they can support doorbell transformers
from eight volts all the way up to 24 volts.
So if you don't already have one there,
otherwise known as minus four Fahrenheit
all the way up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
And if you have a 17 volt to 24 volt transformer,
you can go from minus 20 degrees Celsius
to plus 45 degrees Celsius, which turns out to
minus four degrees Fahrenheit all the way up
to 113 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now, there were a couple reports already
saying that people left it or put it directly in the sun,
and unfortunately it overheated.
Now, this is secondhand knowledge.
It's just hearsay.
Don't know if that's true or not.
I live in a cold climate,
and it's been great the last few days, no issues whatsoever.
But they say specifically this cannot go in direct sunlight.
So if you live in a high temperature area
with direct sunlight, this will not work for you.
It does come with a chime kit.
So if you have a indoor chime, if it's mechanical,
you should be good to go.
It's really easy to install.
If you have an electrical chime,
I noticed if you have batteries,
that's not going to work at all.
And then some of the electric ones,
it was a kind of hit or miss
when I was playing around with the website.
So, you know, I would say if you don't have one
that doesn't work with this unit,
you don't need to get one that does.
Just get a bunch of Homepods and Homepod minis,
scatter them out through your house,
and you'll be good to go.
It will ring on all of them all at the same time,
and you don't need to waste time with that old technology.
But if you do, is pretty easy to install.
It actually took me probably about 10 or 15 minutes.
And you know, if it can't fit in there,
you have to mount to the top, it's much bigger than
some of the other chime kits that I've seen.
But if you need it, you gotta use it,
it's the only thing they have.
Now, if you're brand new to HomeKit Secure Video
and you don't know what it is,
it is Apple's recording program
for their doorbells and their cameras.
And you will need a subscription.
Now, if you get a 500 gigabyte iCloud account,
I forget what the cost is,
you can have up to one HomeKit secure Video Doorbell.
But if you get their two terabyte plan,
you can have up to five HomeKit Secure Video doorbells.
What that's going to allow you to do
is to have those five cameras record whatever's happening
and save it on your iCloud account.
Now understand these are clip recordings.
It is not recording 24/7.
It's just going to pick up motion,
and once it picks up motion, it's going to start recording
and then send that to your iCloud account.
That video footage is going to be kept on your iCloud
for 10 days, and that footage is also not counted
against your iCloud account.
So if you have 500 gigs or two terabytes,
that's what you have for other things.
Your footage is counted zero,
for the entire thing, for 10 days.
Now, of course, all HomeKit doorbells,
you can ring your chime on all your Homepods
or just one Homepod.
You can decide which one it chimes on.
Now, if you have the HomeKit Secure Video service,
you're also going to get facial recognition,
and that's going to just go and start recognizing people
in your photos.
And also, if it's not in your photos,
you can name the person.
So next time they come and ring the doorbell,
you know, actually announce their name
on all your Homepods.
If you happened to be watching on your Apple TV device,
it actually have a pop-up when someone rings the doorbell
and it'll display who it is,
and you can press the TV button to see it in full screen.
Now, there's a bunch of other notification settings
in your iPhone depending on if you're home or not,
time of day, that type of thing.
Those are personal to you, so definitely look those over.
There's also a bunch of recording options.
So if you're home and you want the cameras off
or to stream only, you can set that up.
Or when you're away where you want
to stream and record when you're not home,
you can set all that up within Settings.
One of the other settings I do want to mention
in the HomeKit Secure Video is the activity zones.
So you can actually map out the areas
that you want to get notified
so you don't have to worry about those
setting off false notifications.
Now you can set as many zones as you want.
Unfortunately though, you can not overlap them.
You just draw the shape that you want,
and once you're done, you save it.
Also, if you want to invert the zones
and only get notified of things outside of that zone,
you have that option.
Now, when it came to the cool-down period
between those notifications,
I did notice HomeKit Secure Video is about 10 to 30 seconds.
I don't know why, sometimes I got 10 seconds,
sometimes I got 30 seconds,
but what this is is once it triggers a notification,
when is the next time it's going to trigger
another notification.
So if someone, say, for instance,
someone delivers a package and they take off
and then someone else comes within, you know,
those 30 seconds, you might not get a notification.
Now, the likelihood of someone coming behind
exactly 30 seconds or less is unlikely,
but other doorbell cameras out there
and also video cameras have like
three minutes, five minute cool-down periods
where I think that's just terrible.
So having HomeKit Secure Video with only a
10 to 30 second cool-down period is awesome.
All right, guys, so you can see how good this camera is.
I'm super excited.
We have another HomeKit Secure Video doorbell on the market,
and it's super affordable.
The sizing of it is amazing.
It fit most homes out there.
And guess what?
It's only what, $199, $200.
So it's definitely within most people's budget
for a video doorbell.
Now, that being said, I do have some reservations
about this doorbell, which I mentioned in this video.
I do say this doorbell is good, but it is not great.
There's a lot of improvements I would like to see
in a video doorbell with HomeKit Secure Video.
I would love to see one that is
horizontal or in landscape mode,
or even better, some way to choose what format you want.
Why hasn't anyone done this yet?
I think I've seen one phone that can do this.
All right, guys, I'm going to get off my soap box here.
Let me know down below what you think
of that vertical format.
And also that color night vision.
Is it cool or is it not cool?
Let me know down below.
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in my awesome HomeKit series,
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and I will see you on next one.
I'm out.
♪ No, nothing can break me. ♪