Eufy Video Doorbell E8222C11

Excellent product. Happy to recommend – THE GOOD: Product feels well made. I had some glitches setting it up but it generally works well. You do have to create an account with Eufy but there are no subscriptions or ongoing payments. Video, images and sound are stored locally but inside the house, not on the doorbell which means that if someone damages or steals your doorbell they won't get your images. You can stream live video from your doorbell and also view recorded events from your phone. I believe there's an option to store recordings in the cloud (which I suspect will cost) but I have not explored that. I particularly like the "human detection" feature which means you don't notification of animals or trees blowing in the wind.

THE WEIRD: The product is feature rich so you should expect some complexity with the options however the menu options on the app are less than intuitive. Eg: The product has two parts (and this is a quote from the setup guide) "The video doorbell at your door" and "The wifi doorbell chime in your home". Once I figured that out I named the first "Door" and the second "Bell" which helped sort out a few issues however while both devices appear on the list when you select the "Devices" tab while under the "Security" tab, there's only "Bell" which apparently refers to both. There are mode profiles, eg "home" and "away" which is good. You don't want to be hearing the "human approaching" alarm and recording video every time someone walks past the camera if you're home. When you configure the "away" profile for "Bell" you only get options for "Door". I'd like to stop the Bell (in the house) from chiming if I'm away but apparently I don't. To switch profiles, I'd expect to see one screen with all the profile options, (Home/Away/etc) the active one highlighted, so at a glance you can see the current setting and the one you want. There is such a page but to get there you go to the security tab where you see a "Group Control" page with two prominent options, "I'm Staying" and "I'm Leaving". There's also an option to create a new control group and at the bottom there's "Device Control" which says "Door bell Home>". Apparently "Home" means that the "Home" profile is active and if you click on "Home" you see the other options. Another Eg: There are two "notification" menus. One pertains to app notifications to your phone. The other pertains to what (doorbell) events you get notified of (via the app) and how. Web searches on "how to" tell you about the second, but not how to get there.

THE BAD: I couldn't get live stream working (see who's at the door). It would record video. It would send me notifications. I could view recorded videos through the app, but not live. I sent the support team an email and got instructions on how to view live videos. Even though it was exactly as I had tried before, this time it worked. I've since discovered that the reason it worked then and not the first time is a bug in the app. Exit the app (press the Android back button twice) and restart it and live stream works again. I've had to do this a couple of times. I considered taking off one star for the weird and the bad but support made up for it.

SUPPORT: Support has been excellent. I submitted a query via their online form. I had to upload proof of purchase. I received a reply email within the hour - most helpful. I replied with another query and again the answer came promptly.

IN SHORT: The user interface in the app sucks, however there are limited things you'll want to do with a video doorbell depending on your personal bent and you'll soon figure out which direction you have to poke your tongue to get what you want. After that it all works, and it works well.

Edit - after a year's use: It may depend on your phone specs and the performance of the Internet (both at home and wherever you are) but on my budget phone (A series Oppo) there's a delay in getting notification on your phone. It helps to have unrestricted background processing set for the app but that does chew battery noticeably. I have used it to talk to courier drivers but I've also missed a few. Geofencing is on the menu but it's still in "beta" mode, ie not officially supported as yet. It's a way of setting the operation mode dependant on whether you're home or not - it'll be brilliant when it works. It doesn't affect my rating because I didn't know about it when I bought it. In short: Still happy.