mvayaskAqara’s new Video Doorbell G4 ($119.99) has a plethora of features that are truly remarkable. However, it’s not without its drawbacks. Let’s start with what it lacks. There is no native package detection, motion zones, or HDR imaging, which makes it difficult to see faces clearly on sunny days. Its 16:9 aspect ratio doesn’t capture the entire front porch, and its IPX3 weather rating might not be sufficient for a long summer in South Carolina.
But here’s the good news. If you can live without these features, you’ll be delighted with the free cloud video storage, free smart alerts, free facial recognition, and free 24/7 recording when hardwired. Most companies charge monthly fees for these essential functions, but the G4 includes them all at a very reasonable price of just $120.
This smart doorbell also works seamlessly with Apple Home, Amazon, Alexa, Google Home, and its own vast smart home ecosystem (which supports Matter). It has entirely local processing of video, and facial recognition can trigger individual smart home routines based on who is at the door. It can even play customized ringtones. Yes, your doorbell can serenade you with your favorite song when you come home.
The G4 is the first battery-powered buzzer to work with Apple Home and one of only three in the US that supports Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video (HSV). This adds smart alerts – for packages, animals, and vehicles – plus motion zones through the Apple Home app and cloud storage through iCloud. (Although, in my testing, the doorbell never once detected any packages because it couldn’t see most of my porch.)
The G4 has 1080p video, a 162-degree field of view, and a horizontal 16:9 aspect ratio. While these specs are somewhat outdated compared to some of the more advanced video doorbells on the market that offer better video quality and a square aspect ratio for a better view of the front door, it still performs admirably. Most of them have HDR imaging, allowing you to clearly see the faces at your front door, which the G4 unfortunately lacks and suffers for.
But no other doorbell under $150 that I have tested has free cloud storage, smart alerts, facial recognition, and continuous recording. The G4 is also one of only two doorbells I’ve tested that can be either hardwired with a battery backup or run entirely on battery power (the other is the Blink Video Doorbell). I always recommend hardwiring when possible for the best performance.
Aqara claims that the G4’s six standard AA batteries should last approximately four months. (I was at 60 percent after two weeks of heavy testing.) The G4, like almost every other battery-powered doorbell, misses a few seconds of motion as it “wakes up” before it starts recording. This means it catches the person when they are at the door, not as they approach it. When wired, it began recording as the person walked up to the door.
Free locally processed smart alerts include optional facial recognition and alerts for people, motion, and “loitering” – a person standing at the door but not pressing the doorbell. An indoor chime box / Wi-Fi repeater – a small USB-C-powered box with a speaker grill – is included with the doorbell. It acts as the device’s brain and can house a microSD card (up to 512GB) to enable 24/7 local recording, a rare feature in video doorbells.
Even when connected to your doorbell wiring, the G4 Pro will not ring an existing indoor chime. But the included chime box is very loud, so you won’t miss any visitors. (You can adjust the volume in the app). Compatibility with Alexa, Apple Home, and Google Home means using any smart speaker as an indoor chime. In testing, this only worked with one brand of speaker at a time (it worked in whichever ecosystem I had set up first). I couldn’t get all the Nests, Echoes, and HomePods in my house to chime simultaneously (that’s probably a blessing).
As mentioned, there are no native smart alerts for animals, vehicles, or packages; you only get them if you add the doorbell to Apple Home (more on that later). The G4 uses PIR motion detection, with a 120-degree horizontal and 80-degree vertical sensing range. PIR is susceptible to false alerts, and I got several “people” notifications that were actually the shadow of a tree branch. You can adjust the motion sensitivity, which helps reduce false alerts, but you can’t set up motion zones in the Aqara app (only privacy zones), so you can’t focus on a smaller area to avoid being alerted every time a tree branch moves in the wind.
The G4 supports live streaming from the camera to the Aqara app, Apple Home app, Amazon Alexa app, and any compatible smart display – including Nest hubs and Echo Shows. Short six-second motion-activated clips are stored in Aqara’s cloud for free, and / or you can enable local recording to a microSD card. Two-way audio is full duplex. It suffered from some artifacting, but I could easily communicate with visitors. Uniquely, you can mask your voice through the Aqara app, choosing from Uncle, which my daughter said made me sound like her dad, and Robot or Clown – which both sounded like a little kid’s voice.
Night vision is based on IR and a bit washed out, making it almost impossible to identify faces. A lack of HDR imaging meant that, on my backlit porch, daytime footage was often in shadow and images were dark, especially compared to footage from Google’s Nest doorbell and Ring’s Pro 2. If you live in an apartment with well-lit corridors or don’t have any overhang over your door, this won’t be a problem for you. But for everyone else, being unable to make out faces unless they come close to the camera is likely to be a deal-breaker.
I was very impressed with the speed of the G4. It processes videos locally, and alerts for motion and doorbell presses arrived on my phone almost instantly – both through Apple Home and Aqara. The Aqara app responded quickly, and I could review the video immediately. (The notification opens to a live view, but I could click on the recorded video below to see the clip.)
Live and recorded footage was clear, and while there isn’t much zoom – and, as discussed, faces are hard to see in certain situations – the quality is good for this price point. The biggest issue is that the doorbell only records for six seconds at a time. It will record multiple events almost concurrently, and you can manually initiate a recording, but six seconds doesn’t show you much. (Aqara tells me it will add the option to extend the clips to 12 seconds.)
When hardwired and with 24/7 recording enabled, I could go into the Aqara app and switch to Playback to view all recorded footage if I needed to see more. I couldn’t scroll in real time as I can with the Google Nest Doorbell wired (which has 24/7 recording for a fee). While I could go to each motion event, indicated by a colored line on the timeline, this was a bit fiddly and it jumped around a lot. Saving clips from here is also awkward (you have to initiate a recording of the recording), and navigating the various places where videos are stored in the app is not intuitive.
I don’t particularly like the design of this doorbell, especially compared to Google’s and Ring’s doorbells. It’s a large, rectangular chunk of gray plastic on your doorjamb. The build feels plasticky and cheap, and I wonder if it can withstand any serious elements. Its IPX3 rating means it can handle a light water spray at a certain angle. Most other doorbells have higher ratings. Aqara even recommends mounting it under a porch or cover of some sort, which, as noted above, will make it harder to see faces. One solution here is to automate any lighting around your door to turn on when motion is detected – something you could do through any of the ecosystems Aqara connects with, including its own.
The G4 doorbell is also very wide and long to accommodate the six AA batteries. If you have a narrow doorframe, it might stick out awkwardly, if it fits at all. While there was room on my doorframe, a brick wall protruded past my door, and with the G4 flush to the edge, I couldn’t get to the screw needed to attach the doorbell to the mount. This should be on top or bottom, as with every other doorbell I’ve tested.
Other than this minor quirk, installation and setup were very simple. The doorbell and chime box come pre-paired to each other, and I just scanned the code on the chime to connect the doorbell to Wi-Fi (2.4GHz only) through the Aqara app. It also connected it to Apple Home simultaneously (using an iPhone). From the Aqara app, I could connect it to Google Home and Amazon Alexa, and it worked in all four apps simultaneously. Aqara also promises the doorbell will work with Matter when the standard supports cameras (but that could be a while).
The chime needs to be plugged into power and be close to the doorbell. It is a Wi-Fi repeater, and the doorbell will not work without it, as I discovered when someone unplugged it. The doorbell and the chime come with preattached adhesive, so you can peel and stick them if you don’t want to mess with screws or wiring. Aqara includes a wedge mount in the box if you need more angle to capture your front door.
To try continuous recording, I had to hardwire the doorbell to my existing doorbell wires (handily, the batteries can stay in and act as a backup in case of a power outage). I also had to insert a microSD card into the chime box and then turn on recording in the Aqara app’s settings. This took a while to figure out as the Aqara app is not well designed and is a bit of a wild world with endless menus and countless options. Once I found it (Settings > More Settings > Doorbell Settings > SD Card Storage > Record Mode), I could choose from recording only on activity, recording continuously, or disabling recording.
In addition to voice disguising, the G4 has some other unique features:
Another way to get around the six-second recording limit is to connect the doorbell to Apple Home (if you use an iPhone) and enable HomeKit Secure Video. The doorbell works in Apple as a battery-powered or hardwired doorbell and records unlimited motion-activated videos to your iCloud account, where they are stored for up to 10 days. To use HSV, you need an Apple Home hub (HomePod or Apple TV) and the 50GB iCloud Plus plan or higher, starting at 99 cents a month.
HSV adds smart alerts for vehicles, animals, and packages to the G4 as well as people plus motion zones. As mentioned, I didn’t get a single package alert in my testing (despite receiving multiple packages). I put this down to the fact the doorbell’s view barely catches a small corner of my porch, as Apple’s alerts for vehicles and people did work in testing.
There’s also the option of enabling facial recognition using my Photos Library. This sent alerts saying who was at the door fairly consistently – although not confidently: (“someone who might be Sarah Ferguson is at the door”). If you have an Apple TV or Apple Watch, alerts show there too, and you can see a live view of your doorbell feed on your TV.
However, in testing, the HomeKit integration was unreliable. This isn’t unique to Aqara; I have had multiple issues with cameras losing connectivity in HomeKit and missing entire motion events. But it just seems worse here. The doorbell consistently showed “No Response” on the homescreen of the Home app, despite working when I clicked through (most of the time). It sometimes missed motion events entirely. I approached the door with a large package to test HomeKit package alerts, and the camera didn’t even see me in Apple Home (the Aqara app caught the whole thing). This wasn’t a one-off, either. It’s hard to tell if this is on Aqara’s side or Apple’s, but it doesn’t matter; it’s a frustrating experience.
On the plus side, Apple has built in lots of tools for managing cameras, including the option to have them all turn off when you arrive home. The camera can also detect activity using its motion sensor even when the camera is disabled, which is useful for smart home automations. (The motion sensor is exposed as a separate trigger in Apple Home.)
As well as these useful privacy options, HSV is also a secure way to store video footage (it’s right there in the name). Video is processed locally on an Apple Home hub and stored in your personal iCloud account, it’s end-to-end encrypted, and only you have the keys. Aqara’s app sends footage to the cloud, and you can’t turn it all off, even if you use the local storage option. The company tells me it does plan to add the option to disable all cloud recordings in a future update.
Additionally, while Aqara’s facial recognition feature (entirely separate from Apple’s) is stored and processed locally on the device, to display and label a face in the app, it has to connect to the cloud server. All of this means that if you’re using the Aqara app, you can’t use the doorbell entirely locally.
If you are looking for a battery-powered Apple Home-compatible doorbell that supports HomeKit Secure Video, the Aqara G4 is the only option (unless you use third-party services). As a wired doorbell, not only is it significantly cheaper than the competition (by a whopping $80) but it’s also the only one to offer 24/7 video, and you can make up for those HSV issues because it has its own app.
The Belkin Wemo ($250) and Logitech ($199) doorbells have similar connectivity issues and missed motion events as the Aqara but don’t have another app to fall back on. They do offer a clearer view of my porch, however. Plus, package detection worked. Arlo’s wired doorbell and the Netatmo Video Doorbell are compatible with Apple Home and have their own apps but don’t support HSV. The Arlo is a good option if you want a more user-friendly app, but you pay $4 monthly for anything other than a livestream. Netatmo’s doorbell also records locally and doesn’t use the cloud, but it costs nearly $300.
Outside of Apple Home, the competition gets tougher. The Google Nest Doorbell wired is $180 and has many of the same features as the Aqara: free smart alerts, local processing of video, free clips (but only over the last three hours), and the options of 24/7 recording and facial recognition. You pay for those last two, and there is no local storage. The Google buzzer has a better design, and its app is a lot easier to use. Plus, its package and facial recognition is very good, and the video view sees your whole porch in a higher resolution.
On the cheaper end, the Blink Video Doorbell is both battery-powered and hardwired, has local storage (with a separate $35 hub and USB stick), and is only $50. It lasts much longer on its two AA batteries (up to a year) but has the same 16:9 aspect ratio and 1080p video. It also doesn’t offer any alerts outside of motion detection, and there’s no free cloud storage (a subscription starts at $3 a month). Ring’s newest battery-powered doorbell – Battery Doorbell Plus – looks promising. (I’ve not tested it yet.) It has a more complete field of view and better video quality. For $180 plus $4 a month, you get people and package alerts and cloud storage.
These options are also much easier to use thanks to cleaner, less confusing apps (although Blink’s could use some work). But if you are comfortable with a more complicated – and more powerful – app and want to play with custom ringtones, tailored automations based on facial recognition, and all of the other options the Aqara ecosystem brings, then the Aqara G4 is definitely worth considering.
Photos and videos by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
