Tapo Video Doorbell (D235) review: A ringing endorsement

If you’ve ever ordered a package online, you know how frustrating it is when you need to sign for it. Unless you have a particularly tenacious postie, chances are you’ll get one ring of the doorbell and then a collection slip if you don’t answer in the next few seconds. The Tapo Video Doorbell helps to ensure you’ll never miss a visitor again. Instead of sending a single notification to your phone, it calls you. From there, you can tell them you’ll be there in a sec, or you’re at the office and to leave a slip. Revolutionary. 

Even though installation might be a thorny process, especially if you’re playing with brick, it’s worth the trouble.

Tapo offers a basic and premium subscription, for $3.99 and $4.99 a month (per device) respectively. This is useful if you’d like some extra cloud storage or videos to be filtered based on what’s detected (like pets versus vehicles). We love that it’s not a necessity, and you get most of the fun features described on the tin without the cost of a monthly subscription. 

When it comes to home tech, not everyone has the same wants and needs. If you dont have a huge backyard or a long driveway, you won’t prioritise a security camera with floodlights. If you don’t own pets, you won’t buy a camera with a treat dispenser feature. Not everyone wants to (or can) mount a doorbell by drilling holes, especially if they live in a rental property. If you’re like me and don’t want to jeopardise your bond, you’ll find the included 3M adhesive helpful for renter-friendly assembly. 

If you’re mounting your doorbell onto brick, you’ll need more than 3M tape. I found the doorbell combined with the bracket caused a distribution of weight that wasn't strong enough to hold onto my brick wall. I assume it would hold better if you stuck it straight onto the door frame or used extra tape, but that wasn’t an option for me. So I enlisted the help of my trusty friend, Blu-Tack. Even with the extra hold, I still found it routinely fell. Unfortunately, the best-case scenario here was to do away with the extra weight of the bracket. Which is a shame, because I truly loved how much of my patio I could see with the wide angle.

If you’re not in a rental, it’s worth going the traditional drilled mounting route. The best part about owning a smart doorbell is having an all-seeing eye over your porch. It can protect you in case of an emergency, and help you catch porch pirates red-handed, but it can’t do that if it’s on the floor. Aside from an easier setup, you’ll also gain access to 24/7 recording. You’ll want cloud recording or a 128GB microSD (at least) for this. If you’re not a fan of the 24/7 recording, you can easily toggle the privacy function in settings. 

To maximise the doorbell’s view of your porch, have a squiz at the instructions in the box. This will help you understand whether the straight or angled wedge bracket is best for you. Even without the angled bracket, I still have an almost perfect view of my patio via the camera.

Not that you’ll be looking at it all that much, but the design of the Tapo Video Doorbell is sure to catch your eye. The matte black front is understated and stylish, especially combined with the simple white back. You can change the colour of the LED light around the bell button in the middle portion of the doorbell, or you can turn it off. Even though it’s chonky with the combined weight of the brackets, the doorbell itself is quite light. 

The camera is ultra-wide at 180 degrees and boasts a crisp 2K resolution. It comes with features like full-colour night vision, IP66 water and dust resistance, and motion detection. Like every other company at the moment, it uses AI to detect your pets, people, and vehicles. 

That said, if you want it to detect anything other than people and motion, hop into the app and turn pet, vehicle, and package detection on. Before tuning this on, I thought there was a defect with my doorbell because it didn’t detect my pet, even when I put his nose up to the camera.

Without a doubt, my favourite part of the Tapo Video Doorbell is the ring-to-call feature. Once somebody approaches your door and rings the doorbell, it doesn't just send you a notification–it sends a call through to your phone. As someone who always has their phone on silent, I often miss single notifications that come through. The call makes it impossible to ignore, so you’ll never miss a postman again!

If you’re away from home, or you don’t want to give a salesperson the time of day, you can select a personal response to play from your doorbell. You’ve got a few to choose from, like ‘please leave the package on the doorstep’. If you’d rather create your own response, you can do that too. Just select your response of choice from the drop-down menu in the app. 

Unfortunately, smart home integration isn’t all the way there with smart doorbells yet, but the Tapo Doorbell does you integrate with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and IFTT. This means that when someone presses your doorbell, it can trigger other devices. For example, you can set an automation for between the time you normally arrive home. Once your doorbell detects motion (that signals your return), you can program your Alexa to welcome you home, your lights to turn on, and your coffee machine to start brewing. 

The Tapo Video Doorbell makes it easy to answer the door and protect your home from intruders. If you suspect someone who’s approached your door has less than pure intentions, you can record the footage and it’ll be uploaded to your microSD, or straight to the cloud if you have a membership. We love that the Tapo Video Doorbell is one of those products that doesn't require a subscription. Sure, it might be nice to have some cloud storage, but it’s not a necessity. You still get all the features and perks of a smart camera but without the monthly price tag. 

The Tapo Video Doorbell is a king amongst men. It’s jam-packed with smart features that are genuinely useful to have, like smart home integration, the ring-to-call feature, and motion detection. You don’t need a subscription to access the myriad of features they have on offer, either. Even though you might experience a bit of trouble with the installation (especially if your home is brick), the ring-to-call feature alone is worth it.