Tapo/Kasa (TP-Link) - Tapo D235

Forgot to add my concern about the Tapo and Eufy is they could easily be removed by someone else, unlike the Ring. Also an advantage to me of the Ring and Eufy is their removable battery. Although the Ring uses micro usb which I thought we'd all moved on from years ago!

Thanks for this. Reading replies like this is really helpful as they help to flesh out the ideas I'd already been having about them all. I think overall the Eufy is probably going to provide the best solution for me, albeit with the potential risk of theft. However it is generally a very safe and secure building where I live, so hopefully that wouldn't happen. I've also seen a YouTube vid from Lifehackster who shows you can add an additional screw to the pinhole to make it harder to steal, something I would definitely do. And I've got to agree about the Tapo. It is very thick, tall and heavy. The Eufy is slimmer and not quite as tall, and also looks shorter still because of the cutaway at the bottom for the lower camera.

Feels like I'm the lone warrior here recommending Tapo 😅 I have the D235, and it's great. It does cover head to toe, but you need to be strategic with placing it to ensure it covers the toe area you need. I like the ring-to-call feature — instead of just a notification, I get an actual phone call. A doorbell press is important, so I think a call demands immediate attention, unlike a pop-up that you might miss. The lag is mimimal - it was the fastest among the ones i compared (Eufy e340 and Reolink). I did a similar test like you've done - i bought all three and returned the Eufy and Reolink. Reolink seems to have a lot of fans but it performed so poorly compared to the Tapo. It was significantly laggy and the app was bad. Tapo's app is so much more refined and polished. A few reasons I didn't go with Eufy are 1. No 24x7 recording (You'll need it sometimes if you don’t have a dedicated camera in the front) 2. No RTSP support and 3. Eufy has a history of lying about it's encryption. You can read about it online

D235 will ring mech chime but needs to be in battery mode with hardwires charging battery and ringing the chime. It's a good doorbell cam.

Just got the Tapo D235. Pretty good and value for money. Otherwise I think the Tapo D230S1 is good as well

Tapo D-235 hard wired for 24/7 recoding, including a distinctive ring tone at your cell during calls

As a simple solution, a Tapo D235 for example includes a built in battery, whilst supporting being wired. It will keep itself charged to 80%, and records (constantly) to a local SD card. It also supports being run entirely locally after activation if you really wish, though not desired in your circumstances. You can also turn on the LED to show whether you're using the camera or not, or have it constantly off. You can optionally buy a Tapo H200 Hub, record to that, and also use it as a Backup network connection by plugging it into a network device that supports 4G/5G; although ideally your main router should be upgraded to support that instead. A lot of Asus routers support 4G/5G backup over USB for example. Of course you'd need a UPS or some sort of battery powered solution for those backups.

I tried the d235 version of the tapo previously, the battery version, it's frickin huge, you could throw it at some ICE and do some real damage

Tapo D235

For multiple reasons, I'll list the advantages and disadvantages + my personal views to let you decide. **Advantages for Tapo over Eufy:** 1. Eufy E340 does not have 24/7 recording. Tapo does have 24/7 recording. 2. Eufy requires 16-24V, I have 15.5V. Tapo requires 8-24V 3. Eufy E340 has 8GB internal storage. Tapo allows you to put up to 512gb sd card. 4. Tapo was half the price of the Eufy where I live. 5. I keep hearing mixed reviews about Eufy E340, but I don't hear as many negative reviews about the Tapo, but this could just be due to Eufy E340 being more popular. 6. Tapo comes with a chime, Eufy does not. **Advantages for Eufy over Tapo:** 1. No subscription required for rich notifications. I really wanted rich notifications, so I ended up paying for Tapo subscription. However, I'd need to buy the subscription for 4.5-5 years before it matches the price of the Eufy. 2. Dual camera system, this has advantages but I've found head to toe shows everything. 3. Tapo has fisheye lens, which many do not like but you get used to and feels like normal now. 4. Tapo does work with Alexa, but takes a long time to load or is unable to load at times (but this could be due to my location). Google does not have this issue. I'm not sure if Eufy connects straight away or not. 5. Eufy overall looks more 'premium' in terms of build, but the Tapo's build quality isn't that bad and probably better than most options out there. Overall, I've found the Tapo to be a pretty good doorbell that is able to detect correctly 90-95% of the time but you have to adjust the motion area otherwise it will have a lot of false positives. I personally turned off motion detection and just kept on person + package detection, that combination worked really well for me. At times, it will detect people as packages especially if they are kids, so that is a weird thing but as long as it detects something, I don't mind. The 24/7 recording is very nice as well. The app itself is ok, nothing special but does the job. Another option I'd look at is the Reolink head to toe option as well. You can get rich notifications via a work around called "Pushover", which is an app ($5 for lifetime subscription). It is the cheapest option by far and seems to do a good job even has 24/7 recording. However, I live in Australia and there was a massive delay (15 seconds) for Pushover notifications to come through. If you live in the USA, this isn't an issue and they should come around 3 seconds. It also did not work with Alexa due to my region, but works ok for American users. Otherwise, I'd have probably gone with that option tbh

> The only downside is that unless you want to purchase cloud storage via subscription, the micro sd card for storage is in the camera. If you get a h200 tapo hub or other Tapo hubs (Pretty cheap new and very cheap used), you can connect it to your router, add a sd card to it, then set it up so it stores all recordings into the hub. I also had a strange glitch, where when sd card (in the doorbell) was full, it would stop 24/7 recording even though loop recording was on. I no longer have this issue now that I'm using the hub

I ended up going with tapo d235, has pretty much all the features I wanted and so far has quick and accurate motion detection - person/pet/vehicle. Has clear talk through as well on both sides The only downside is that unless you want to purchase cloud storage via subscription, the micro sd card for storage is in the camera. So if someone takes your camera they also take the card. But obviously there are safety features built in and the data is sent to you over the app which you can download. Personally, from my very limited smart doorbell experience, I highly recommend!

Another plus one for Tapo

Cheap with above avg quality and no subscription? People on here will recommend Reolink, seems to be the subs favorite. However I've been using Tapo products for a bit now and love them. They have everything you want, doorbell, cameras (would recommend the wired one but also have bettery ones). Price to value is realllllly good. Subscription optional, but they all have the ability to store video to the SD card. "Ai" features just mean they can recognize a person/dog/car etc. Would recommend.