With a smart video doorbell, your front door’s communication skills go from 1980s landline to a modern smartphone. Combining a motion-activated camera with a microphone, speaker, and doorbell, a doorbell camera sends alerts to your phone to show you who’s calling without you having to open the door or even be at home. Whether you’re curled up on the couch, hard at work in your office, or sunning on a beach in the Bahamas, a smart doorbell camera keeps you in touch with what’s happening on your doorstep.
Technology
The Edge of Intelligent Photography
Octobers excite us at Halide HQ. Apple releases new iPhones, and they’re certain to upgrade the cameras. As the makers of a camera app, we tend to take a longer look at these upgrades. Where other reviews might come out immediately and offer a quick impression, we spend a lot of time testing it before coming to our verdict.
This takes weeks (or this year, months) after initial reviews, because I believe in taking time to understand all the quirks and features. In the age of smart cameras, there are more quirks than ever. This year’s deep dive into Apple’s latest and greatest — the iPhone 13 Pro — took extra time. I had to research a particular set of quirks.
“Quirk”? This might be a bit of a startling thing to read, coming from many reviews. Most smartphone reviews and technology websites list the new iPhone 13 Pro’s camera system as being up there with the best on the market right now.
I don’t disagree.
But I must admit I don’t take photos like most people. An average iPhone user snaps a picture in Apple’s Camera app, and… I work on my own camera app. I take photos in both Apple’s app and our own — and that lets me do something that Apple’s can’t: take native RAW photos. These shots let me poke and prod at the unprocessed photo that comes straight out of the hardware. Looking at the raw data, I’ve concluded that while Apple has taken more than one leap forward in hardware, they’re in a tricky position in software.
The Importance of Processing
When you take a photo on a modern iPhone — or any smartphone for that matter — you might like to think that what you saw was what you captured, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The zero’s and one’s that your sensor sees would mean nothing to the human eye. They require interpretation. For example, some of the colors your camera sees can’t be represented on your screen, so it needs to find something close. Some bits of processing are creative, like adding contrast to make things “pop,” while other decisions are to compensate for the weaknesses of the hardware, like noise.
Consider this underprocessed iPhone photo:
This noisy shot didn’t come from an iPhone 5— this is from an iPhone 13 Pro. This image, which is a ‘raw’ capture, is much noisier than what you’d get from a dedicated, full-size camera. Why? Physics.
Consider this series showing the evolution of Canon’s cameras over more than half a century:
You’ll notice that while technologies come and go, and even the medium changes (this camera, while externally similar, moved from 35mm film to digital), the camera stayed a similar shape, and most importantly, size.
Technology always strives for miniaturization. Your iPhone is enabled by smaller and denser chips with more power than the large desktop computers of decades ago; your iPhone screen is a higher resolution than most TVs, packed into a tiny 5 inch size, and your camera, too, is only a fraction of the size of a digital camera from years past.
Unfortunately, cameras are limited by the laws of physics. A larger lens can collect more light and produce a ‘depth of field’ that we find appealing in portraiture. A larger sensor means less noise and more detail. An inconvenient truth of phone photography is that it’s impossible to make the camera smaller without losing quality. But smartphones have a powerful advantage over their big brothers: the magic of processing. Today, the most cutting edge research (including our own at Halide) in photography is in an area called Computational Photography.
Putting the ‘Smart’ into Smartphone Photography
Around the time of iOS 4 (yes, twelve years ago), Apple introduced an ‘HDR’ option to their camera app to address the most common technical challenges in photography: capturing really bright and really dark stuff at the same time.
When taking a photo, clouds in the sky get so bright that the camera only sees a white shape. If you turn down that brightness, you’ll the shadows turn black, losing details. While the human eye can see both the clouds and shadows at the same time, an iPhone 4’s sensor has less “dynamic range.”
In fact, this “high dynamic range” problem has existed since the early days of photography. Experienced photographers dealt with it by taking multiple photos of different exposures and patching them together. iOS 4 solved it with an HDR mode you could toggle on and off. This toggle was important because…
Automatic edits on photos can go wrong. When there are object in motion, the ‘merging’ of photos creates artifacts, or ‘ghosting.” This all worked out with smarter algorithms, more powerful chips, faster memory, and an iPhone that could simply take photos so fast that there were fewer gaps in photos.
Fast forward to today, and your iPhone goes way above and beyond HDR. It has not been a setting you can toggle for a while. When you take a photo now, the camera on the iPhone will merge many shots to get your final result. Today, your camera essentially always ‘edits’ your photos for you. And exactly how it edits them… is a bit of a mystery.
Apple, famous for its secrecy, doesn’t divulge their secret editing sauce. We know it brightens faces while retaining texture in them, it smoothes the sky and brings out color and clarity in the landscape, and in low light, it can smooth over noise while keeping the details of a sweater intact. It’s a miracle of engineering, pulled off in the blink of an eye, thanks to in-house chips optimized for these processes.
It’s safe to say that most camera users benefit from this. While these ‘edits’ can be accomplished by experienced photographers, experienced photographers make up less than 1% of iPhone users. In practice, that means that these edits are part of the camera. To review an iPhone camera’s for most people, the computational processes are as important (if not more important) to assess as the hardware.
What’s A Camera?
And with that, you can see why it is becoming increasingly important to define what we refer to when we talk about a ‘camera’. If I talk about the camera you’re holding, I could be talking about the physical hardware — the lens, the sensor, and its basic operating software in the case of a digital camera — or I could be talking about the package. The hardware with its advanced, image merging, hyper-processing software.
Smartphone cameras really should be judged by that package. The software has become such a disproportional part of the image quality that we can no longer separate the two; if we do, the resulting image is often less than useful. But it’s not purely qualitative: Choosing a lens or a type of film stock can be a creative choice. With smartphones, choosing whether or not to trust in the computational magic or not is rapidly becoming one, as well.
While all the shots in this review come from an iPhone 13 Pro — and the results seem even better than all previous generations— only some of these photos omit the processing of Apple’s Camera software.
As this software begins to make more and more creative decisions for us, and we are able to opt out of it, we should judge it as critically as we would any other component of the camera. And that’s exactly what I will be doing in this review.
This year’s iPhone 13 Pro saw upgrades across every bit of camera hardware, save for the front-facing (aka selfie) camera. Let’s tackle them one by one.
The 26mm Wide Camera
The iPhone’s primary camera, or ‘wide’, has gotten a larger sensor and a ‘faster’ lens, which means it lets in more light. This allows for shots with less noise in low light, even before the system applies its processing.
Its wide angle continues to be the most versatile, so it makes sense that it’s the go-to camera for most shots. It’s reasonable, then, that Apple continues to invest in making it the best camera in the array. Every iPhone generation sees it improve.
Here are some comparisons against previous generations: the iPhone X, 11 Pro, and 13 Pro. I shot in ‘native’ RAW, which doesn’t apply any smart processing, and cropped in to highlight the details.
It’s harder to make out details on the iPhone X, as it exhibits a lot more noise. While the jump from the X to the 11 is noticeable, the move to the 13 Pro is much less so, despite having a faster lens and larger sensor. It’s possible there is a lot more detail that the sensor and lens can resolve, but we can’t really tell — possibly it’s because the sensor resolution has been the same 12 megapixels since the iPhone 6S, which launched seven years ago.
The iPhone’s go-to 12 megapixel resolution has not been a particularly limiting factor to me, a pretty hardcore iPhone photographer, for the last few years, but we can start to see diminishing returns as Apple sinks such tremendous investments into the camera hardware and processing.
Don’t be surprised if the next iPhone improves the resolution — to, say, a 48 megapixel sensor. Perhaps one reason that Apple has held out is that such a bump in resolution would require 4x the processing power to perform the same computational magic. That’s a lot more data to process in the blink of an eye.
The 13mm Ultrawide Camera
2019’s iPhone 11 added a new trick to our camera bag: the ultra-wide camera. Its super-super wide GoPro-like field of view allows for dramatic captures, and saves us from difficult decisions around what gets cropped in a shot.
The biggest challenge and tradeoff in ultra-wide cameras is distortion. As the image reaches the edges of the frame, the lines start to curve, distorting geometry and shapes. Most are familiar with so called ‘fisheye’ lenses — they produce very “round” images.
The ultra-wide in the iPhone still produces a ‘square’ shot, but at the edges things can start to look… a little weird:
Post-processing produces a less-distorted image, but sometimes you might enjoy the effect. Shortly after the iPhone 11 launch, tinkerers found a way to disable these corrections to see what the image looks like before processing:
This extreme example shows the importance of ultra-wide lens corrections. This camera relies more on processing than any of the other cameras to produce usable images.
In the iPhone 11 and 12, I found it useful to have the ultra-wide in my pocket— way more useful than the iPhone’s Panorama Mode— but I still mostly avoided it. It was ‘fixed focus’, which means there is no way for the lens to adjust what is sharp. It was designed so all of the frame was in focus. This caused smudgy images, trading clarity for a wider field of view. I never felt like it produced great shots, particularly when compared to the excellent Wide camera.
The iPhone 13 Pro addresses all of this. Without exaggeration, this might be the most significant jump in an iPhone camera since the iPhone 3GS added video.
The ultra-wide’s sensor is significantly larger, the lens aperture is much wider, and the lens can now change focus! It’s still a smaller sensor than on the Wide, and it still distorts and softens an image at the edges, but overall, it creates spectacular shots with pretty good sharpness. This is no mere upgrade, this is a whole new camera.
You can take a shot from your point-of-view and even get your legs in it, and it’ll be sharp:
Thanks to having real depth of field, you can now take separate your subject from its background. Its larger sensor and faster aperture gives you real background blur (‘bokeh’) without the need for Portrait mode!
Oh, and that adjustable focus unlocks a new superpower…
Macro
One extra bonus we got thanks to the ability for the camera to alter its focus is a borderline bizarre close-focus distance. This new camera module can come up to about half an inch of a subject and still render it sharp.
While this allows incredible fresh perspectives at the world, it’s even cooler when applying some magic to it. An existing macro-capable camera is one thing, but as a camera app developer we couldn’t help but push it a bit further. When we released an update to our app with fine-grained focus control and AI upscaling, we found that it can also be applied to this already-Macro-capable camera, creating a sort of microscope:
This new camera package is supremely powerful, and it has incredible potential with smart processing as we show here with a feature like Neural Macro.
This seems like a slam dunk of a camera upgrade, yet most reviewers ran into issues with this camera. And the issue they had was with the camera being ‘smart’.
In The Switch
We can conclude that this iPhone packs a hugely powerful set of cameras in its Wide and Ultrawide cameras, but to your average user, there is only one camera; the one they shoot with. The iPhone’s camera experience is cleverly designed like this: it was carefully crafted to eliminate the complexity from a traditional multi-lens photography setup.
As an experienced photographer, if I pack three lenses for my big camera, I’m going to consciously choose between them. I think about the tradeoffs between each lens, like edge-blurriness vs field-of-view. iPhone’s camera app wants to make that decision for you. You don’t open up your iPhone camera and choose a lens; it just works. The iPhone will choose a lens, even if you don’t. And it can even switch between them, whether you choose to… or not.
When this intelligent switching works, it’s like magic. The camera behaves and works better than a set of separate cameras. You don’t pick between them*; the Camera app has been programmed with incredible intelligent adjustment to ‘seamlessly’ switch between them. This is how you can zoom with this big wheel all the way from a 13mm to a 75mm lens:
*unless you use Halide or other apps that enforce a more strict choice between cameras
There are two ways this can work: it can work like true magic, where the camera will behave and work better than a set of separate cameras, and there are times where this can confuse with its ‘intelligent’ switching, creating a jarring transition when users have no idea why it is happening.
For example, on previous iPhones with dual camera systems, each camera had limitations in focus. Your wide angle lens (1×) could focus closer than the telephoto one (2×). So if you tried to take a photo of something fairly close, the iPhone always took the photo with the wide angle lens and cropped in, even if you had picked 2× in the app. It’s hard to argue with this decision, as it’s better to have a lower resolution photo than one out of focus.
But it also confused Halide users who wrote in to ask why we can’t focus on objects as close as the first-party camera. If you truly force one lens, you’ll discover that it has limitations. We had to break the news to them, like parents with older kids having a talk about Santa: that ‘close focusing telephoto’ was not real. Cover the telephoto camera with your finger, and you will find that it still somehow worked. What was this dark magic?
It was a made-up camera that Apple created virtually to fool us all.
And that brings us to that little ‘Macro-gate’. Previously, it never really made sense to switch to that ultra wide camera. Now that it can, various people tweeted and many reviewers were flummoxed to see their camera jump erratically when focusing close between points of view:
The cameras on the rear of the phone are closely spaced together, and when they are focusing on something nearby, switching between them creates a ‘jump’ in the image. This can’t be fixed easily with software or cropping; it’s a concept known as parallax. If you look at your nose and close one of your eyes, and then the other, you can see your nose jumping around. The illusion of the ‘one camera’ is broken, and no amount of processing can fix this.
The source of friction here is that users know what they want, but in an ultra-simple interface the ‘smarts’ of image processing and camera selection have to predict it. If the system assumes correctly, great. But the more complex this system becomes, the more you run into times where a seamless transition can start feeling like a choice that is being made on your behalf.
In Halide, we simply have a Macro mode. You toggle it to jump to the closest focusing lens (and we throw in some AI enhancement magic too). Apple avoids this sort of complexity in their camera app, but relented in an iOS 15 update, making it a setting.
Don’t get us wrong: we still think their goal— magical and transparent switching— is the best for almost all users. But Apple runs into an unenviable challenge — a camera app that works for users of all skill level. We design Halide to serve slightly more experienced photographers, all the way up to seasoned pros. Apple wants to serve the entire population of Earth, from pros to your parents. This requires much more advanced ‘magic’ to bridge these gaps.
Unfortunately, this is a place where the ‘magic’ illusion failed and instead started to get in the user’s way.
The 75mm Telephoto Camera
And that brings us to the final camera and my personal favorite: the telephoto camera. Introduced in the iPhone 7 Plus, the telephoto was always a fantastic way to get a closer shot from a distance, and longer focal lengths are particularly great for portraits and artistic photography.
Apple made a small step to this major leap in the iPhone 13 Pro with last year’s iPhone 12 Pro Max. Instead of its smaller 12 Pro sibling, the Pro Max came with a 2.5x (65mm equivalent) telephoto lens, sacrificing a little bit of light for a little bit of reach. While I liked it, I found it awkward overall. It wasn’t enough reach for me to really enjoy, and I missed having the extra sharpness at 2x. The step was just too small.
No more half measures: iPhone 13 Pro and its larger brother, the iPhone 13 Pro Max, pack 3x (77mm) lenses. Unfortunately, however, Apple did not bless this camera with the upgrade of all the other cameras. Its sensor remains disappointingly the same size. This is a serious problem.
Virtually all telephoto lenses make a serious sacrifice: light. For example, on the iPhone 12 Pro, the wide angle lens had an ƒ/1.6 aperture, its telephoto had a narrower ƒ/2.0, allowing in less light. Less light translates into more noise and/or motion blur, making it hard to get a sharp shot.
This year, this gap is even greater. The iPhone 13 Pro’s wide angle camera has an ƒ/1.5 aperture, while the telephoto has an ƒ/2.8, for even less light.
What this means is that the camera that was lacking a bit in terms of clarity, noise and sharpness in previous iPhones has gotten… a bit worse.
Yes, the tradeoff was clear: we get reach. In bright daylight, you do get some fantastically sharp shots you previously simply could not get.
But it’s also clear that there’s more processing than ever happening in these photos:
This is the nature of zoom lenses and shutter speeds. When you shoot handheld, the more you zoom, the more susceptible you are to motion blur due to the subtle movements of your arm holding the phone. As a rule of thumb, when shooting handheld you should set your shutter speed to twice the focal length of the lens. The telephoto camera on the iPhone 12 Pro Max had a 65mm focal length, so the math worked out to 1/130th of a second. With the iPhone 13 Pro’s 77m, that works out to 1/144th of second. To keep track, that’s three times more than the ‘regular’ Wide camera.
1/144th of a second is also less time of exposing, or letting in light. Less light makes it challenging to get a great shot.
The iPhone does have one tool to help it get the shot in that short moment. It can make its camera sensor more sensitive. What ends up happening is that your iPhone needs to crank up its ISO level, which translates into more noise. That means the iPhone’s post processing is going to include more noise reduction than ever before, because the shots are so noisy:
In my testing, a lot noisier than the iPhones that came before it.
A regression in noise quality between iPhones isn’t new. There have been iPhone camera generations with heavy, noticeable processing: the iPhone XS notably had some confused reactions at launch from people who thought their skin was being smoothed by the new Smart HDR process, when in reality it was just merging images for a better shot. The reason for the excessive smoothing? The cameras were producing better shots, but with more noise. Increased processing per-shot required more exposures, and the only way to capture extra shots was with more sensitivity.
This phenomenon has returned in the iPhone 13 Pro. This time your camera applies a “beauty filter” to leaves on a tree.
To make matters worse, the transparent switching between cameras rears its head once more here. As the telephoto camera is much less sensitive to light, the Camera app is very conservative in assessing when its image is clear enough to be usable.
That means many shots, even in daylight, actually come from the wide (1×) camera, and then cropped by the camera app.
While there is an admirable amount of detail recovered here, the second shot here is not taken by my telephoto lens — it’s just a crop of the regular Wide lens, chosen because the lack of light at night makes the telephoto lens less usable for quick handheld shots.
This issue is made worse by the greater difference in focal length between the wide and telephoto cameras. In prior years, it was only going from 1× to 2×. Now, the system crops by a factor of 3×. Now consider that the megapixel count isn’t exactly pushing boundaries, when you crop it by that much, you end up with, well…
Apple is doing some funny things to avoid pixelation. In the image above, it ‘fills in’ details in the Speed Limit sign’s text fairly well, keeping it legible. Other areas, however, are modified in seemingly bizarre ways, even making the suspension cables of the bridge disappear around lampposts for inexplicable reasons:
This is where a frequent problem I run into with the 13 Pro. Its complex, interwoven set of ‘smart’ software components don’t fit together quite right. The excellent-but-megapixel-limited Wide camera attempts to ‘hide’ the switch to the telephoto camera, creating a smudgy image. Intelligent software upscaling is stepping in to make the image look less pixel-y, which alters the look off the image significantly — it resembles a painting more than a photograph when blown up.
When switching lenses, I have to hope the camera will switch to the actual telephoto camera, but if the sensor can’t collect enough light, the image suffers from an ‘overprocessed’ look. The image is either an upscaled crop from the Wide camera, or a very heavily noise-reduced frame from the telephoto sensor.
I was a big fan of this shot I took with the telephoto camera:
Many people on twitter felt it looked like a ‘painting’, however.
I can see why: in this low-light scene, the image from the telephoto is getting heavily smoothed. I have to give major props to how much detail is both retained and enhanced, but the image does end up looking unnatural. Focusing on details makes the image look a bit too smudged:
Compare this to a pure (not in-camera processed) RAW image from the same telephoto camera, and you can see why Apple made this choice:
This is where visible noise enters the shot, something Apple’s camera fights hard against. I personally don’t mind it so much. In fact, I think in a dark scene, it adds to the texture, creating a more ‘realistic’ image than the smoothed-over rain shot.
In the end, this is a creative choice. Apple is doing true magic with its processing; it gets very usable, detailed images out of a very small sensor with a lens that just can’t collect the light necessary for great handheld nighttime images. This is without even considering the wild processing that Night Mode enables. If you are a photographer, you should be aware of this processing, however — and make an informed decision if you want to use it or not.
I’ve made up my mind after a few months: For me, the iPhone’s processing on iPhone 13 Pro is simply too heavy-handed at times.
A confusing moment arose when iOS developer Mitch Cohen thought his iPhone camera had replaced a poor woman’s head in a photo with a mess of leaves:
In the end, it turns out this was just a trick of the eye. But the processing on iPhone photos does make the leaves look smudged; the way edges are enhanced and smudging is applied over the shot to reduce noise makes it hard to really makes sense of the image. This is a tell-tale iPhone 13 Pro photo: no noise, but a lot of ‘scrambled’ edges and an almost ‘painterly’ look to the whole thing:
I have taken to going about picking my processing. In the daylight, I will often shoot with our camera app set to native RAW. Shooting in this way will skip most of the aggressive noise reduction and detail enhancement that are omnipresent in iPhone 13 Pro photos. The slight grain is appealing to me, and I enjoy the slightly less ‘processed appearance’. At night, I will opt for the magic that helps me get great shots in the dark: Night mode, ProRAW noise reduction and detail enhancement.
Being conscientious of the magic in computational photography helps me appreciate it so much more.
As I mentioned earlier, the most important creative choice we will have to start making as photographers is to choose the amount of processing on our images by our cameras. If we can make such a choice, at least. Sometimes, the choice is made for you.
A final example of iPhone’s computational processing being hard to avoid:
Since iPhone 12 Pro, Apple has introduced its own RAW format for shots. Previously, taking RAW photos meant you lost out on all of Apple’s magic and powerful image-processing — photos often required lots of editing when shot in RAW vs. JPG. Images were noisy and lacked dynamic range; after all, in regular JPG shots the highlights and shadows were brought out through taking multiple exposures. Enabling ProRAW gives users a way to get this smart processing, with all the flexibility and image quality of a RAW file.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t let you *opt out* of some of this processing. My biggest issue is not being able to opt out of noise reduction, but on iPhone 13 Pro there’s a far bigger issue. Even if you enable ProRAW in the first party camera, switching lenses in Apple’s Camera app does not mean it will actually switch to the proper camera. Several shots I captured in telephoto mode resulted in a cropped ProRAW image coming from the wrong lens:
Yes, I am aware: This isn’t an iPhone-exclusive problem. The Google Pixel, too, opaquely switches between cameras when it deems it necessary, offering as little as a 0.3 megapixel crop of another camera even when shooting in “RAW.”
The only solution — outside of using an app like Halide — is to watch your viewfinder closely after you change your subject, to see if the camera has switched. This can take up to several seconds, unfortunately.
We find this crosses a border that computational photography shouldn’t cross in a professional context. RAW capture should be explicit, not a surprise. In a RAW capture format, the camera should honor user intent and creative choice. If the user picks a lens— even the ‘wrong’ lens— the software should use that lens. If the ‘Camera’ considers that to be a mistake, I don’t want it to stop me from taking the photo. I want to make my own mistakes. As they say: creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
I understand the first party camera isn’t meant for professionals, and you can still get great photos out of this camera. I still believe that Apple is in a hard place: the Camera app has to work for every single iPhone user, from the novice to the seasoned photographer with decades of experience.
There’s a paradox in the relationship between hardware and software: it’s easy to make smarter software with bad hardware. The decisions are black and white. But as the hardware gets more sophisticated, the decisions involve more shades of grey. How can science quantify an acceptable level of noise or motion blur, when so much of this depends on artistic intent of each photo? As the complexity of computational photography grows, so grows its dominion over our creative decisions, and I am increasingly finding myself at odds with the decisions it makes.
I think that as this trend continues, choosing what level of software processing to allow to your camera’s data is increasingly going to become the most important creative choice in photography.
Closing Thoughts
iPhone 13 Pro is a big shift in iPhone photography. Not only are the cameras all upgraded in significant ways, but Apple’s adaptive, clever computational smarts have never been so powerful. Touching every aspect of the photographic experience, you might be surprised to at times become aware of its power and limitations alike.
If you’re coming from an iPhone 12 and don’t take a lot of photos, you may not see a leap in quality, because so much is now determined by the existing processing which was already fantastic on the previous generation. However, the iPhone 13 Pro makes other leaps forward — with physical upgrades in the ultra-wide camera and 3× telephoto camera. Unfortunately, that magical processing sometimes works against the hardware.
If you’re a serious photographer, the iPhone 13 Pro is a brilliant camera — and you will only begin to scratch the surface of its potential with its built-in software and processing. When using apps like Halide or other third-party applications, the possibilities really begin to present themselves. Apple here has laid the foundation; much like with the LIDAR sensor that was added in the previous iPhone, the camera improvements here lay the groundwork for software to perform magic.
The only thing you need to add is your own creative vision.
All images in this review were shot on iPhone 13 Pro by Sebastiaan de With.
Technology
The best video doorbell cameras
I’ve tested more than 30 video doorbells, and while there’s no one-size-fits-all — like a smartphone, it’s a personal choice — I have thoughts on which are the best of the best and which work well for specific use cases.
My most important advice is that if you have existing doorbell wires, use them. Wired doorbells are generally cheaper, work better, and are more compact, so they tend to look nicer.
If you don’t have wires and don’t want to pay for an electrician to run them, try using an AC power adapter (Ring and Google Nest sell their own; you can also find generic ones). But if all else fails, I’ve got a couple of recommendations for good battery-powered buzzers. Just plan to pick up an extra battery when you purchase, or factor in removing it from your door every few months to charge it for a few hours.
Best doorbell camera
Video quality: 960x1280p, 6x zoom, HDR / Smart alerts: Person, package, animal, vehicle, and facial recognition ($) Aspect ratio: 3:4 / Field of view: 145 degrees diagonal / Power options: Wired / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz / Storage: Cloud and local / Subscription fee: $8 a month / Works with: Alexa, Google, SmartThings
The Nest Doorbell Wired (2nd-gen) is one of only two video doorbells in this list that can record 24/7. Scrolling through a continuous timeline view of everything that’s happened at your front door is super helpful and means you won’t miss anything. This, along with a low price, good video quality, the ability to tell you what and who is at your door, and some free recorded video, make it the best doorbell for most people.
The Nest Wired is also the best video doorbell that works with Google Home, and the best for protecting your packages. Its proactive package watch feature tells you when a package arrives and sends another alert when it’s gone. In my testing, it worked very well.
Unlike many competitors — such as Ring and Arlo — Google doesn’t charge you for smart notifications. The Nest Wired will tell you if it’s a person, package, animal, or vehicle at your door for free. You also get free activity zones to cut down on unwanted notifications, and three free hours of event-based recordings, thanks to its local storage and local processing.
You can, in theory, use this doorbell without paying a subscription.
But three hours isn’t enough time to be particularly useful. And the $8 per month ($80 / year) Nest Aware subscription is very expensive compared to some single-camera subs from competitors. However, it does cover all your Google Nest cameras for less than competitor multi-camera offerings and adds 30 days of event-recorded video storage, plus Nest’s excellent Familiar Faces feature that tells you who is at your door, mostly reliably.
If you want that 24/7 recording, you need to up it to $15 per month ($150 / year), but again, this subscription applies to all Google Nest cameras you have — the company has an indoor, indoor/outdoor, and floodlight camera.
The Nest Doorbell Wired is essentially the same as the Nest Doorbell Battery. It costs the same, has the same tech specs, and looks identical beyond a size difference. But there is one key hardware change: the Nest wired is a true wired doorbell, which means it runs directly off your existing doorbell wiring.
Because it’s wired, it can record continuously, which the battery version can’t. The wired power also means it’s faster and more reliable. Plus, as with all true wired doorbells, it catches more footage at the beginning of each event (about three to four seconds) — so avoids the back-of-the-head problem many doorbells suffer from, where the camera takes too long to wake up to catch the visitor as they approach.
On paper, it doesn’t have the best specs; the Arlo and Ring Pro 2 look better technically. But you do get 960 x 1280 pixel resolution and a 6x digital zoom. And video quality is very good, thanks to some digital trickery. A 3:4 portrait aspect ratio and 145-degree field of view meant I could see my porch from top to bottom and a fair amount from side to side.
On-device AI makes the Nest speedy with notifications, and it delivers rich alerts to both your phone and watch. These are interactive, allowing me to press and hold the video to see a clip and activate one of the three pre-set quick responses. It’s also quick to call up live video.
Nest’s doorbells and cameras work with Nest smart displays and speakers to show and/or tell you who is at your door, and with Amazon Alexa smart displays to see and talk to your visitor. Recently, Google also updated its Pixel Tablet so you can use it to pull up a livestream from a Nest video doorbell to see who’s at your front door; they also work with Samsung SmartThings, but there’s no native integration with Apple Home.
There are a few quirks. There’s no reliable way to snooze notifications from the doorbell, and if you use multiple Nest speakers or displays, they’ll all announce your visitors. Not great if you have a Nest Mini in your kid’s nursery. It also doesn’t work with the Nest app, only the Google Home app, but following a big redesign last year, the app handles video playback very well, and you can now use a doorbell press to trigger an automation — such as turning on a light in the hallway.
Best battery-powered doorbell camera
Video quality: 1536 x 1536p, HDR, color night vision / Smart Alerts: Person, package ($) Aspect ratio: 1:1 / Field of view: 150 degrees horizontal, 150 degrees vertical / Power options: Battery, wired trickle charge, solar / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz / Storage: Cloud and local (with Ring Alarm Pro) / Subscription fee: $4.99 a month / Works with: Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings
If you have no choice but to rely on battery power, the Ring Battery Doorbell Plus is the way to go. At $149.99, it’s still expensive but offers a head-to-toe view and high-quality video resolution, giving you a clear picture of what’s going on at your door.
The Plus also has color night vision and was more responsive than any other battery doorbell I’ve tested. It pulled up a live view in under four seconds, compared with upwards of 10 seconds for most others.
As with other battery-powered doorbells, there’s no pre-roll. If catching people as they approach your door — not just at your door — is crucial for you, you might want to consider the new Battery Doorbell Pro ($229.99), which adds pre-roll and improved motion detection. I am currently testing this and will add it to the guide shortly.
Battery life isn’t great, despite the “Plus” name. It lasted two months with all the features turned on except for extra-long recordings (the default is 30 seconds, but it can go up to 120). This is about the same as Ring’s previous Ring 4 and less than the Eufy Dual. You can tweak settings on either doorbell to reduce power consumption, but then you have to give up features like HDR (which makes it easier to see faces) and snapshot capture, which takes a picture every five minutes to give you a better idea of what’s been happening at your door.
On the plus side, Ring uses swappable batteries. The Plus uses the same $35 Quick Release ones as Ring’s battery-powered cameras. This makes it much easier to keep your doorbell charged — just have a second on hand charged and ready to swap in when you get low (they’re easy to charge with a USB type-A cable, and one is included). Most other doorbells require you to take them down to recharge.
But — as with all Ring doorbells — there are no animal or vehicle alerts, only people and packages (for a fee). It’s also 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi only, which is a disappointment, although I didn’t have any connectivity issues in testing.
Other features include pre-recorded quick replies and the option to set a motion alert schedule, plus live view and two-way audio. You need a Ring Protect Plan for recorded video, as well as people-only mode and package alerts, which cuts down on unnecessary notifications. Both of these were very accurate in testing. A subscription starts at $4.99 a month. Home and Away features are also behind the paywall, which makes it fiddly to automatically turn off your cameras when you’re home without coughing up some cash.
The Plus also works with Ring Edge, a local storage and processing option that requires a Ring Alarm Pro smart hub and a Ring Protect Pro subscription ($20 a month). This also adds cellular backup through its built-in Eero Wifi system, so it can keep your doorbell online if both the power and internet go out.
The Plus can announce visitors on Echo speakers and automatically initiate a two-way audio/video call on an Echo Show. It won’t work with your existing chime unless you wire it (which also trickle-charges the battery), but Ring sells a plug-in chime.
Finally, it’s worth noting Ring recently introduced a new entry-level doorbell camera, the Ring Battery Doorbell. It also runs on batteries and offers a head-to-toe view like the Plus, but it offers lower-resolution, 1080p HD video. You can also can’t remove the batteries. We’ve yet to test the doorbell, but we’ll update this guide with our thoughts when we do.
Best budget doorbell camera
Video quality: 1080p / Smart alerts: none / Aspect ratio: 16:9 / Field of view: 135 degrees horizontal, 80 degrees vertical / Power options: Wired or battery / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz / Storage: Cloud or local with a Sync Module / Subscription fee: $3 a month / Works with: Amazon Alexa
The Blink Video Doorbell is the best cheap doorbell with the option of no ongoing fees. And while it works as a wired doorbell, it’s also a good option for a battery-powered buzzer, as it can go up to two years on two AAs. I don’t love this doorbell, as video and audio quality are not great, but it’s cheap, it gets the job done, and that battery life is phenomenal.
The Blink lacks a lot of bells and whistles (no smart alerts or quick replies, only 1080p video, and a standard 16:9 aspect ratio), but the basics are here — motion-activated recording (with a max of 30 seconds), alerts, live view (with caveats), night vision, motion zones, and two-way audio. If you want to pay $50 (often less) to have a camera at your door and be done with it, get the Blink. If you pay $10 a month for a Blink Subscription Plus Plan, you can also get access to Blink Moments, a neat app feature that stitches together relevant clips from multiple cameras into a single video. That should make clips easier to share and see at a glance, but we’ll share our thoughts on the feature in the coming weeks.
I only recommend buying the Blink with its wireless hub, the Sync Module 2.
The biggest selling point for Blink is the feature that makes its similarly inexpensive security cameras so attractive: up to two years of battery life on two AA lithium batteries. The company has developed a super energy-efficient chip that will power its cameras longer than any other doorbell I’ve tested. (I managed almost a year with very heavy use).
Uniquely for a battery-powered doorbell, the Blink can also be a true hardwired doorbell. When wired, it will activate an existing chime (something neither the sub-$100 Ring nor Wyze doorbells can do) and provide constant power — not just trickle charge. This means it can wake up faster than a battery-powered buzzer and catch your visitor as they arrive. Wiring also adds on-demand two-way audio and live view (otherwise, you can only see the stream if there’s a motion event at the doorbell or someone presses the buzzer.)
The lack of an on-demand live view on battery power would be a deal-breaker, but I only recommend buying this doorbell with its wireless hub, the Sync Module 2, which also enables on-demand live views plus adds free, local storage. (You can get a live view with a subscription, too, starting at $3 a month). The extra $35 for the Sync Module 2 should pay for itself compared to a monthly subscription, and for a total of $85, this is still less than Ring’s similar offerings (you will also need a USB stick to store the videos on).
The Blink comes in white or black and, because it uses AA batteries, isn’t as huge as most battery-powered doorbells, making it a more discreet option. However, it is a giant pain in the neck to install; make sure to follow the video instructions Blink provides closely to save a lot of frustration.
The biggest drawbacks are lower video quality and poor audio quality (it can be staticky, and it’s push-to-talk — not full duplex), short recording length, and no smart alerts. The app is also a bit tricky to navigate. It doesn’t work with Google Home, but it works great with Alexa, and you can see a live view on Echo Show devices and use any Echo speaker as an indoor chime.
Best doorbell camera without a subscription
Video quality: 2K HD, 4x zoom / Smart Alerts: Person and packages, facial recognition Aspect ratio: 4:3 / Field of view: 160 degrees horizontal / Power options: Battery, wired trickle charge / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz / Storage: Cloud / Subscription fee: none / Works with: Amazon Alexa, Google Home
If you don’t want to pay any monthly fees but want a feature-packed doorbell that records footage for free, the Eufy Dual is the best, thanks to a second camera at the bottom that records the doorstep. But it’s expensive.
There’s no charge for smart alerts that spot people and packages, and innovative AI features are free, too. These include facial recognition and “Package Live Check Assistance,” which frames any packages in a blue box and collects recent events around the delivery for quick viewing, and an Uncollected Package alert, which has the doorbell check for packages at a designated time, alerting you if you forgot to pick something up.
Important Note: In late 2022, Eufy suffered some security vulnerabilities, which the company was not transparent about. We temporarily removed our recommendations while the company worked on a fix. While the security flaws appear to have been resolved, the company’s lack of transparency is something to consider before purchasing a Eufy camera. You can read more about the issues and Eufy’s solutions here.
However, as a battery-powered doorbell, the Dual has the same problem as others. No pre-roll footage means you may not see the person as they approach your door, only when they’re in front of it or walking away. But its onboard machine learning, AI-powered smart alerts, and motion detection that uses both PiR and radar mean no false alerts. And those two cameras give you a blind-spot-free view of your front door area, one in 2K and the other in 1080P.
Battery life is good, better than the Ring Plus, lasting about three months based on my testing (it claims 3 to 6 months). But you have to take the whole doorbell down to charge, which is a pain.
Best wired video doorbell that works with Amazon Alexa and Ring
Video quality: 1536 x 1536p, HDR / Smart alerts: Person, package ($) Aspect ratio: 1:1 / Field of view: 150 degrees horizontal, 150 degrees vertical / Power options: Wired / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz / Storage: Cloud and local (with Ring Alarm Pro) / Subscription fee: $4.99 a month / Works with: Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings
The Ring Pro 2 — previously my top pick — is the best-wired doorbell camera that works with Amazon Alexa and integrates with Ring Alarm and other Ring cameras. It’s more expensive than the Nest Wired — which also works with Alexa — but its video is higher quality and much brighter.
It has an ideal square aspect ratio for a full front porch view, speedy notifications, and impressively accurate motion detection using three separate sensors — radar, video analysis, and passive infrared. It also has a nice slim design and multiple faceplate options to fit your decor. But there’s no free video recording, no option for 24/7 recording, and the smart alerts are limited to people and packages only.
The Ring Pro 2 does work with Samsung SmartThings and while it doesn’t support Apple Home, it can be integrated with extra hardware. There’s no support for Google Home.
A true wired doorbell, Ring Pro 2 has alerts for packages and people (but not for vehicles or animals), color night vision, dual-band Wi-Fi, and smart responses (which let your doorbell talk to your visitor for you). The Ring app is excellent. There are pages of settings you can tinker with, and the timeline view to scroll through your recordings is very good.
The Pro 2 will work with existing doorbell chimes, plus Ring sells a plug-in Chime and Chime Wi-Fi extender that can help boost connectivity while providing a selection of fun doorbell tones. Of all the doorbells I tested, this had the best range and connectivity, and built-in, full-color pre-roll helps ensure you don’t miss any crucial action.
As with a lot of doorbell cameras, the Pro 2 can use Echo smart speakers to announce when there’s somebody at the door. Ring doorbells can also automatically pull up a live feed of your doorbell on an Echo Show or Fire TV-enabled television when someone presses the doorbell. This gives you an instant video intercom in your home — a super handy feature.
The downside is that the Pro 2 is expensive. Although it recently dropped by $20, its subscription fee — the Ring Protect plan — went up to $4.99 a month (or $49.99 a year). This adds recorded footage, smart alerts, and an extra six seconds of pre-roll video, which, in lieu of 24/7 recording, provides plenty of time around motion events to catch all the action. The digital zoom is good, but not the best on offer — Arlo wins that race with a whopping 12x.
The Pro does work with Ring Edge for local storage and processing of videos, plus the option of cellular backup. But you need a Ring Alarm Pro and Ring Protect Pro subscription for this ($20 a month, which includes professional monitoring and recorded video), although compared to $15 a month for just video services with the Nest, it’s a good deal.
Best doorbell camera that works with any smart home
Arlo’s first-gen wired video doorbell has excellent video quality, wide smart home compatibility, extensive smart alerts, and a square aspect ratio for spotting packages. It suffers from some connectivity issues, requires a subscription for recorded video, and doesn’t have 24/7 recording but does include a pre-roll feature.
Video quality: 1536x1536p, 12x zoom, HDR / Aspect ratio: 1:1 / Field of view: 180 degrees horizontal / Power options: Wired / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz / Storage: Cloud / Subscription fee: $7.99 a month / Works with: Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, Apple Home (with an Arlo Hub)
If you use more than one smart home platform or are looking for something that’s outside the Google or Alexa ecosystem, the Arlo Essential Wired Doorbell (first-gen) is a great all-around choice with wide smart home platform compatibility. The company recently launched a second-gen model that’s battery-powered with optional wired trickle-charging, but it doesn’t work with Apple Home, so the first-gen is the one I currently recommend.
For less money and with more features than the Ring Pro 2, Arlo’s video doorbell adds native Apple Home support and works very well with Google Home. It’s one of the few non-Google cameras you can view live feeds from in the Google Home app and it also works with Amazon Alexa. But note it doesn’t support HomeKit Secure Video, and you will need to pick up the Arlo SmartHub ($100) to integrate with Apple Home.
If you are already using Arlo cameras or its security system, this is an easy add. It also has smart alerts for people, packages, animals, and vehicles, a handy square aspect ratio, and a 180-degree field of view that gets the whole porch. Plus, it has the same high video resolution as the Pro 2.
There is also a built-in siren for scaring off a package thief or neighborhood cat and a backup battery (it only lasts for a few minutes). Courtesy of its wired nature, it has a pre-roll that captures your visitor as they approach. Arlo’s wire-free option doesn’t have this and suffers from that back-of-the-head problem.
However, the Arlo is not as fast or reliable as the Nest Doorbell Wired. It isn’t as quick to send alerts or pull up a video feed and struggles when placed farther from the router. If you don’t have a good Wi-Fi signal at your front door, the Arlo isn’t for you. There is no option of a chime Wi-Fi extender as with the Ring Pro 2, and it only works over 2.4 GHz — both the Ring Pro 2 and Nest Wired can use 5 GHz.
Arlo’s doorbells cost less and offer more but aren’t as reliable
A subscription plan is pretty much a necessity since, without it, all you get is a live view. Starting at $7.99 a month ($89.99 annually), Arlo Secure adds smart alerts, automatic geofencing to turn your camera off when you arrive home, 30 days of rolling cloud video storage, interactive notifications, quick responses, and activity zones. (Ring doesn’t charge for activity zones.) But there’s no option for 24/7 recording, which is available on Arlo’s non-doorbell security cameras.
The Arlo is a nice-looking doorbell and comes in all-black or black with white trim. It works with your existing chime and can use Amazon Echo or Google Nest smart speakers to notify you of a visitor; plus, Arlo sells its own plug-in chime with a choice of ringtones for $50.
Finally, a unique feature about the Arlo doorbell I really like is that when someone presses the button, the notification arrives like a phone call — as opposed to a pop-up. This makes it less likely you’ll miss a visitor, plus the doorbell will prompt them to leave a message if you do.
A great wired doorbell camera for Ecobee users
Video quality: 1080p, 8x zoom, color & IR night vision / Smart Alerts: Person, package Aspect ratio: 3:4 portrait / Field of view: 187-degree diagonal / Power options: wired / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz / Storage: Cloud / Subscription fee: $5 a month or $50 a year / Works with: Amazon Alexa, Apple Home
The Ecobee Smart Doorbell Camera is a great wired doorbell camera and the only one that can use an Ecobee thermostat as a video intercom — a very neat feature. It sends fast, accurate alerts for people and packages, and thanks to radar detection and computer vision motion detection, it never once sent me a false alert.
The Ecobee has a comprehensive 187-degree diagonal field of view that lets you see top to bottom and side to side and offers decent 1080p HD video. A subscription is required for viewing recorded video, $5 a month / $50 a year, but alerts for people and packages are free.
One quirk is there is no option to get an alert if there is motion at your door, only for people or packages. This does cut down on the number of alerts you get, but I’d like the option to turn motion alerts on, mainly so I can know when my dog has got out and is sitting at my front door (as there are no animal or vehicle alerts). The doorbell does record all motion (if you subscribe) — for up to two minutes. So you can go back and view those events, but you won’t be get notified about them.
The video doorbell works with Apple Home and can ring a HomePod as a chime (as well as your existing chime) and pull up a live view on your Apple TV. But it doesn’t support HomeKit Secure Video, so you have to pay Ecobee’s subscription fee if you want recorded videos. It also works with Amazon Alexa, but there’s no Google Home integration. If you have an Ecobee thermostat in a convenient location, this is an excellent option.
Best wired doorbell camera for Apple Home
Video quality: 1200x1600p, HDR, 5x zoom / Smart Alerts: Person, packages, facial recognition Aspect ratio: 3:4/ Field of view: 178-degrees vertical, 140-degrees horizontal / Power options: Wired / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz / Storage: Cloud / Subscription fee: $0.99 a month, iCloud / Works with: Apple Home
The new Wemo Video Doorbell from Belkin is the best doorbell that works with Apple Home and its HomeKit Secure Video feature. This is Apple’s service that stores recorded video securely in your personal iCloud account, so you don’t have to pay any additional subscription fee. You do need an iCloud Plus plan (starting at 99 cents per month) and an Apple Home Hub to view any captured clips.
The Wemo doorbell is fast and secure. It has decent 1200 x 1600 HD video quality, HDR, and a circular view that shows the whole porch (although with a rather discombobulating fish-eye effect). But it’s better than the other wired HomeKit option, the Logitech Circle View.
The Wemo is easier to install than the Logitech. Both share the same simple software setup. (Thanks to relying entirely on the Apple Home app — there’s no compatibility with the Wemo app or any other smart home platform). Thanks to HKSV, the doorbell recognizes multiple motion events (people, packages, animals, and vehicles) and can also identify faces and announce exactly who is at the door on a connected HomePod or HomePod Mini. However, there’s no option for 24/7 recording.
The Wemo is very, very quick. Button push to a notification to pulling up live video is under five seconds.
While daytime footage was good, night vision isn’t, and I had some issues with it missing motion events and sending false alerts for people due to its reliance on pixel-based motion detection (others use PIR and radar detection). However, the Wemo was very, very quick, with the speed from a button push to a notification to pulling up the live video being under five seconds. It’s even quicker if you use the interactive notification on your device (through which you can talk to the visitor). And that speed makes up for some of its failings.
All things considered, it’s the best choice for a wired doorbell compatible with HomeKit Secure Video. However, if you don’t mind paying a subscription fee, Ecobee’s video doorbell is a better Apple Home option overall.
Read my full Wemo Video Doorbell review for more details
Best battery-powered doorbell camera for Apple Home
Video quality: 1080p / Smart Alerts: Person, facial recognition and person, facial recognition, packages with HSV, / Aspect ratio: 16:9 / Field of view: 162-degrees horizontal / Power options: Wired or battery / Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz / Storage: Cloud and local / Subscription fee: 7 days free cloud storage or $0.99 a month with iCloud / Works with: Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home
If you don’t have the option of wiring and / or you really want 24/7 video recording, then Aqara’s G4 is a good option for Apple Home users. It’s the only battery-powered doorbell that’s compatible with Apple Home, and it works with HomeKit Secure Video. It runs on six standard AA batteries and can be hardwired to support 24/7 video recording (through Aqara’s app, though, not in Apple Home). It’s jam-packed with features, but it’s probably best suited for those who live in apartments as its landscape aspect ratio means it can’t really see packages at the doorstep, and it’s not very weather-resistant.
At $120, it’s the least expensive HomeKit option and pairs with the Aqara U100 smart lock (which also works with Apple Home and Home Key) for a nice, fully Apple Home-compatible setup on your front door — if you are okay with the black, high-tech look.
The downsides of this doorbell include a 16:9 aspect ratio (a problem if you want to see packages on your porch), no HDR imaging, which delivers pretty bad video quality, and a finicky Chime box that has to be plugged in inside and near the doorbell. That Chime also houses a microSD card, which is required for 24/7 recording. Unfortunately, the G4 can’t ring an existing electronic chime, but the Chime box is plenty loud, and you can customize the heck out of the sounds,
The G4 shares all the same HKSV features as the Wemo, including smart alerts for people, packages, animals, and vehicles, facial recognition, and the option to announce who is at the door on a connected HomePod or HomePod Mini (you need an Apple Home hub to use this in HomeKit). It responded just as fast as the Wemo to doorbell rings and motion alerts, but I’ve had some connectivity issues. Plus, occasionally, I got an overheating warning while testing in May — and that was before the heatwave we experienced in South Carolina this summer.
A benefit over Wemo and the other HomeKit Secure Video options is that Aqara has its own app, which has a ton of innovative features, including custom ringtones for different people, a voice changer, and the option to have your smart home devices react depending on who is at the front door.
The Aqara app is also where you access 24/7 video, a really nice feature to have, especially for free — Nest charges $15 a month for it. The implementation here is spotty, and video quality is not great, but it will do in a pinch.
The Aqara doorbell works with Google Home and Amazon Alexa, unlike the Wemo, which can only be set up through the Apple Home app. Aqara has said it will be updated to support Matter when (and if) the new smart home standard works with video cameras.
Read my full Aqara Video Doorbell G4 review for more details
Other doorbell cameras I’ve tested
I’ve tested dozens of video doorbells, and many popular models didn’t make the cut because they rely on battery power. Doorbells that can’t be hardwired tend to start recording too late, so you see a lot of back-of-the-head shots. The standard Ring Video Doorbell (second-gen) — which was recently replaced with the longer-lasting Ring Battery Doorbell — misses those first few moments and has to be removed to charge. The same goes for the Google Nest Doorbell Battery, which had connectivity issues that were a major pain point in testing.
The Wyze Video Doorbell Pro has some impressive features for its price, and if you hardwire it, you do get pre-roll video. However, a five-minute cooldown period between recordings, unless you pay for a subscription, is an inexcusable amount of time that negates its offer of “free recording.” Plus, Wyze has had some major security issues in recent months (and years).
I also tested the Arlo Essential Video Doorbell Wire-Free, which does have a removable battery but doesn’t work with Apple Home, unlike its wired counterpart, and takes too long to wake up to catch the visitor as they approach.
The Wyze Video Doorbell Pro has a 5-minute cool-down period between recordings unless you pay for a subscription.
As for other wired options, the Ring Video Doorbell Wired is a budget buzzer at just $60, but it won’t work with your existing chime and doesn’t draw the same amount of power from those wires as the Ring Pro 2, making it generally less reliable. Without HDR, its video quality is spotty, and its sister brand Blink beats it to the Best Budget spot in terms of features — including better battery life and free local storage options. Granted, the Ring can record for longer than 30 seconds and has package detection, but you have to pay for those features.
The Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell has some interesting features, including entirely local storage (to an included microSD card) and free person recognition. It also works with Apple Home (but not HomeKit Secure Video), but a weirdly narrow field of view and poor video quality let it down — not to mention that $300 price tag.
Other Apple Home options we tested include the Logitech Circle View Wired, which, while fast, is expensive, only works with Apple Home and frequently dropped off my Wi-Fi network.
There are also doorbells built into smart door locks. I’ve tested the Lockly Vision Elite and the Eufy Security S330 Video Smart Lock, and both are very expensive and work better as door locks than doorbells. But if you have a specific need for this device (e.g., you have nowhere else to put a doorbell camera), then they are useful for at least seeing up the nose of whoever is at your door, if not much beyond that.
Doorbell cameras I’m currently testing
One of Ring’s newest video doorbells — the Ring Battery Doorbell Pro — brings the company’s excellent radar motion detection to its battery-powered doorbell for the first time — which should cut down on nuisance notifications compared to the Battery Doorbell Plus. The $229 buzzer has all the important features of the wired, top-of-the-line Ring Pro 2, including dual-band Wi-Fi, color pre-roll, color night vision, and noise-canceling audio, but in a battery package. It’s looking like a great alternative to the Pro 2 if you can’t use wires. Read about all the Doorbell Pro’s features here.
The Arlo Video Doorbell (wired/wireless) is the second generation of the Arlo doorbell included in this guide. However, the new doorbell doesn’t have the option of wiring only; instead, it’s a battery doorbell you can wire to trickle charge the battery. You can choose between a 1080p ($79.99) or 2K ($129.99) resolution, and it features a 180-degree field of view and an integrated siren. This price gives the Blink a run for its money with the added option of vehicle, animal, and package alerts. But these require a paid subscription ($7.99 monthly), and there’s no local storage or continuous recording. It does work with both Google Home and Amazon Alexa but not Apple Home.
The $60 Kasa Smart Doorbell (KD110) from TP-Link comes with a plug-in chime and 2K video quality, free person detection, and the option of local storage to a microSD card. It’s a wired doorbell with a 160-degree viewing angle and works with Amazon Alexa and Google Home.
The Reolink Video Doorbell is a wired doorbell with the option of POE and local storage to a microSD card or FTP server. Starting at $99, it offers 2K video, comes in black or white (with two different fields of view, horizontal or vertical), and includes a plug-in chime. Free person detection, pre-roll, dual-band Wi-Fi, and no subscription fees are great features, and it works with Google Home and Amazon Alexa.
Reolink also recently introduced the Reolink Battery Doorbell, the company’s first battery-powered option. The company says its 7,000mAh battery should last five months with “typical usage,” but you also have the option of connecting it to wiring or using it with existing door chimes. It offers head-to-toe footage, records 2K video at 15fps, and captures footage locally to a microSD card up to 256GB in size, meaning you don’t need to pay any subscription fees for cloud-based storage.
FAQ: Smart doorbell cameras
Wired vs. wireless doorbell cameras: what’s the difference?
Wired video doorbells use existing doorbell wiring attached to a doorbell transformer and chime box to provide continuous power, so they don’t need to be recharged. Most won’t work when the power goes out, but some have small batteries to keep them going for a few minutes in the event of a power outage. If you don’t have existing wiring, you can use an AC power adapter (Ring and Nest sell their own; you can also find generic ones).
Battery-powered doorbells, also known as wireless doorbells, are powered by a rechargeable battery. Because they don’t have continuous power, they have to wake up first when they detect motion before starting to record. This often results in a clip only catching the back of the person’s head as they walk away, which is not super helpful if you’re concerned about porch pirates. True wired doorbells don’t have this problem, and most will reliably catch all the action.
Many doorbells that advertise themselves as wireless and run on a battery can also be hard-wired to your existing doorbell wiring. But these are not “true” wired doorbells. Your home’s electrical power isn’t powering them. Instead, in almost all cases (Blink being the only exception), the battery is being “trickle charged” by the power from the doorbell wiring. This means that without any extra features, they simply don’t react as quickly as true wired doorbells. It’s science, people.
What is aspect ratio on a doorbell camera, and why is it important?
Aspect ratio is arguably more important than video resolution when it comes to video doorbells. This spec tells you what shape of video you will get, whether it’s top-to-bottom or side-to-side, whether you’ll see your doorstep and the whole of the visitor or just a head-and-shoulders shot. Common aspect ratios include 4:3, 3:4, 16:9, and 1:1.
Aspect ratios are always written with the horizontal number first. If the first number is smaller than the second number, then the image will be taller than it is wide, or “portrait orientation.” If the first number is larger than the second (as in 16:9), then the image will be wider than it is tall, or “landscape orientation.” If both numbers are the same, as in 1:1, it will be a square view.
My recommendation is to go for a square view when possible, but if you have a wide porch area — and would like to see people approaching from the left or right, as well as straight on — a 4:3 or 16:9 might suit you better.
How to install a video doorbell camera
Battery-powered doorbells are easy to install and generally just require screwing the mounting bracket to the area around your door. Some come with the option of tape strips, so you don’t even need to get out the screwdriver.
Wired doorbells require a bit more effort. And while you can choose to pay around $100 for a professional to install it, if you have existing doorbell wiring, it’s a simple job.
I’ve written a step-by-step guide to installing Ring video doorbells, but, in general, the steps for any wired doorbell involve the following:
- Turn off the power to your doorbell wiring
- Locate your indoor chime and connect the chime power connector that came with the doorbell (this helps to facilitate power to the new doorbell)
- Remove your old doorbell
- Attach the mount for your new doorbell using screws or double-sided tape (some have the option of an angled wedge to get a better view of the person in front of the door)
- Attach the doorbell wires to the connector screws on the doorbell
- Attach the doorbell to the mount, either with screws or by snapping it on
- Turn the power back on
Pro tip: Before installing any doorbell, download the manufacturer’s app and check the instructions — some cameras need to be paired to the app before mounting them.
Photos by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
Update, September 20th: Adjusted pricing, added a mention of the Ring Battery Doorbell, and noted several other updates throughout the article.
Technology
NYT Strands today — hints, answers and spangram for Saturday, September 21 (game #202)
Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.
Want more word-based fun? Then check out my Wordle today, NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know the answers.
NYT Strands today (game #202) – hint #1 – today’s theme
What is the theme of today’s NYT Strands?
• Today’s NYT Strands theme is… I’ve got the music in me!
NYT Strands today (game #202) – hint #2 – clue words
Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.
- STUD
- DUNE
- ETCH
- RATE
- TARE
- STONE
NYT Strands today (game #202) – hint #3 – spangram
What is a hint for today’s spangram?
• Temple of music
NYT Strands today (game #202) – hint #4 – spangram position
What are two sides of the board that today’s spangram touches?
First: left, 5th row
Last: right, 3rd row
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM.
NYT Strands today (game #202) – the answers
The answers to today’s Strands, game #202, are…
- ARENA
- STADIUM
- NIGHTCLUB
- THEATER
- FESTIVAL
- SPANGRAM: CONCERTVENUE
- My rating: Moderate
- My score: 1 hint
I’ve marked this one as moderate simply because I couldn’t get started without a hint; the theme clue of ‘I’ve got the music in me!’ seemed too obtuse, despite the fact that with hindsight it was really rather obvious. Once I asked for help and was given ARENA it all became much easier, and I ticked off the likes of STADIUM, NIGHTCLUB and THEATER with no issues.
How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.
Yesterday’s NYT Strands answers (Friday 20 September, game #201)
- RHYME
- VERSE
- METER
- STANZA
- SYNTAX
- DICTION
- SCANSION
- SPANGRAM: POETRY
What is NYT Strands?
Strands is the NYT’s new word game, following Wordle and Connections. It’s now out of beta so is a fully fledged member of the NYT’s games stable and can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.
I’ve got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you’re struggling to beat it each day.
Technology
A Big Day for Small Things
The iPhone 13 Pro features a new camera capable of focusing closer than ever before—less than an inch away. This opens a whole new dimension for iPhone photographers, but it’s not without surprises. Let’s take a tour of what this lens unlocks, some clever details you might miss in its implementation, why its “automatic” nature can catch you off guard, and much more. At the end, we have a special surprise for you — especially those not using an iPhone 13 Pro.
The Wonderful World of Macro
So what is ‘Macro’, anyway? “Extreme closeup photography” is a mouthful, so photographers needed a shorter name. You’d think ‘micro’. You’d think anything but macro, since that actually means ‘big.’ Well, ‘macro’ came from an article written in 1899 about high magnification photography. The author called anything magnified more than 10× “photo-micrography,” and anything less was “photo-macrography.”
122 years later, we’re still stuck with that term. Sorry.
If you’re a beginner photographer, you might ask, “What’s so special about a macro lens? I already have a zoom.” Well, all lenses have a minimum focus distance, the closest a lens can get to its subject and still focus on it. It’s a principle that applies to any lens; if you bring your finger close to your eye, you’ll struggle to focus at a certain point.
The iPhone 13 Pro’s telephoto “zoom” lens has a minimum distance 60cm (about two feet). Let’s take a photo of my Apple Watch’s crown from that distance.
Now we’ll just crop and blow up the crown in our favorite image editor…
Not great. Let’s repeat the experiment with the wide angle lens of the iPhone, which can focus at 15 cm, about six inches.
As you can see, while a telephoto lens works great at taking photos from afar, it slightly underperforms against a wide angle lens that can get up-close. Now let’s use a macro capable lens at 2cm, less than an inch.
Wow. I can see every detail of every scuff and scratch. I need to take better care of my stuff.
Macro lenses let you see ordinary objects in a completely new way. You can get lost in the feather of a peacock…
Peek through the eye of a needle…
The page of a book becomes a landscape of fibers stained with ink…
This lens is like a window to a hidden world, and that’s why we’re excited to have this power on a phone we carry around all day. But macro photography on iPhone isn’t technically new. For years you’ve been able to buy lens add-ons (“secondary lenses“) which act like reading-glasses. These dongles cost anywhere from $10 to $125, but even the most expensive ones can’t match the real thing.
On a technical level, the problem is that these lenses reduce the depth of field— how much of your image is in focus. The closer you focus, the slimmer that in-focus area gets. Adding another lens on top of this makes it even slimmer. You can deal with this problem on regular cameras; adjusting the aperture increases the depth of field. Unfortunately, all iPhones have fixed apertures, so there’s nothing you can do.
Compare the true macro lens on the left to a lens attachment on the right:
Too much blur and too little depth interfere with macro shots. When you take a photo of a bumblebee, you usually want the whole bee in focus, not just the top-left corner of its eyebrow hairs. This is such an issue with extremely small subjects that advanced macro photographers go out of their way to increase depth of field through techniques like focus stacking.
The next problem are the slight imperfections in lenses. The colors in light refract differently when passing through glass, causing what is known as chromatic aberration. These create subtle color shifts and fringes along edges. If such imperfections exist on built-in lenses, iOS can automatically remove them because it know about these lens characteristics. It just can’t do that for accessories.
On top of that, from a purely practical perspective, it’s annoying to carry around dongles that you need to attach and detach from dedicated mounting hardware on your phone. There’s the old saying, “The best camera is the one you have with you,” and the same is true of lenses.
The Gotchas
While macro on the iPhone 13 Pro is a huge leap forward, it’s not without surprises.
If you push it to its limit and try shooting from an inch away, you’ll find it tricky to find a good angle because suddenly the iPhone itself casts a shadow on your subject. On top of that there’s that shallow depth of field at the absolute minimum distance. So don’t feel like you have to focus at the absolute minimum. An extra inch can make a big difference.
Another challenge is that macro is only available on the ultra wide lens. This isn’t a popular lens for everyday photography because of how it warps subjects. This is the full photo of my watch from earlier.
The first party camera defaults to cropping the image as if it were shot with the wide-angle camera. The question is whether most users will notice that it isn’t a “true” 4k image — it took the shot, zoomed in on it, and cut the rest off!
Believe it or not, Apple has pulled off silent cropping for years. If you tried to focus on something too close for the telephoto lens to handle, or the scene just requires more light, the iPhone quietly switches over to the wide angle lens and crops it to make the image look like a telephoto shot.
This is a very clever feature, because explaining minimum focus distance and lens properties is for blog posts like this, not a Camera app on an iPhone that lets people take photos. Photographers might disagree, and that’s fine: Apple’s designers and engineers don’t build the camera app for 1% of photographers. They build it for everybody on the planet.
This brings us to this year’s annual iPhone controversy: the jarring transition to macro.
What are we seeing here? The wipe-transition and jumping around is caused by the Camera app switching lenses, much like we saw with the telephoto lens earlier. Your ‘main’ iPhone camera can’t really focus all that close, but the new macro-capable ultra-wide camera can. Once Camera detects that you’re not able to get the shot with the selected camera, it swaps in the camera that can.
That isn’t great, but we think the backlash is a bit much. Let’s take a detour to explain what Apple is going for.
A long time ago, anyone who wanted to drive a car had to know a little bit about shifting gears. We call that ‘manual transmission’ now. That changed with the automatic transmission, which freed drivers to think about driving in a more abstract sense: press the gas pedal, go faster. The automatic transmission is an abstraction.
Now imagine you spent your entire life driving an automatic transmission in an area without any hills, so you’ve never heard your car change gears while applying the gas. One day you take a road trip to San Francisco. The first time your car climbs one of those steep hills, it shifts into a lower gear, and your engine makes a very loud sound. It would feel a bit jarring. “Why is my engine freaking out?” But after a while, you’d get used to it.
Let’s go back to talking about cameras and human vision. At a distance, objects shift less when you move. Objects up close shift a lot more.
If you’re trying to take a macro shot, by its very nature, your subject is close to the camera. When you switch lenses, an inch feels huge at that distance. Sometimes iOS masks the switcheroo by repositioning the new image to overlap the old one, and translating the new vantage point into position. Look closely at the seam at the bottom of this video…
This effect helps smooth things out, but doesn’t seem to happen all the time. If they work out the kinks, it’s possible that our brains will just get used to this transition like we’re used to the sound of our cars changing gears.
Some folks are complaining about the very nature of automatically switching lenses, and we get that. While testing these features in the first party camera, there were a few times I fought with the system to get the composition I wanted. I’m sure that’ll improve with updates, but I don’t envy Apple’s position. They could build a system that works 99.9% of the time, more than enough for the billion people using the app, but it will never be 100% perfect until it’s psychic.
That brings us to our niche. We aren’t constrained the same way as Apple’s camera. We build Halide, and we built it to give advanced photographers full control over their camera, rather than abstractions. When you press the 3✕ button, you always get the zoom lens. No switcheroo here.
Using the macro mode on iPhone made us think — what can we do as a camera app to make macro photography absolutely fantastic on iPhone for the less casual user? We quickly figured it out: we had to build a dedicated Macro Mode into Halide. Surprise: we used it to capture all of our macro photos in the post. Double surprise: This is actually a launch announcement!
Introducing Halide 2.5’s Macro Mode
Today, we’re launching Halide 2.5. It’s a big update with one of the coolest features we’ve ever packed into the app. We were close to just calling it Mark III, as with our huge update last year — it’s just that significant.
What makes Halide 2.5’s Macro Mode so special? For one, it brings Macro capabilities to all iPhones. Let’s dig in.
A Tour of Macro Mode
Unlike the built-in camera, we decided to really make Macro photography a deliberate ‘mode.’ Of course the ultra-wide camera in Halide will still automatically focus on very-close subjects, but a separate mode unlocks some very powerful tools and processing specific to macro.
To start, tap the “AF” button to switch from auto focus to manual focus. Since Macro is often best done with the focus fixed to a close subject or with some adjustment, Macro Mode lives in the manual focus controls. To then enter Macro Mode, tap the the flower icon — the universal symbol for macro. Ours is a tulip, because our designer is Dutch. They’re funny like that.
Entering Macro Mode, smart things start to happen in Halide. To begin, Halide examines your available cameras and switches to whichever one has the shortest minimum focus distance. Then it locks focus at that nearest point. You can tap anywhere on screen to adjust focus; unlike our standard camera mode, we configure the focus system to only search for objects very close to you.
If you’d rather adjust focus by hand, we increase the swipe-distance of our focus dial so you can make granular adjustments down to the millimeter. To nail that focus point, Focus Peaking draws an outline around the sharpest areas of your image. You can set it to automatically trigger when adjusting focus, or you can turn it on and off.
As we mentioned before, you usually want to crop macro shots. But if you just try to blow up your image in an editor, as we showed earlier, you’ll end up with a blurry or pixelated result. Not great.
We knew we could do better, so we’ve packed the science of super resolution into a feature we call Neural Macro. We trained a neural network to upscale images in a way that produces much sharper, smoother results than what you typically get in an editor. It’s available on all iPhone with a neural engine— anything made in 2017 or later— and it produces full 4k resolution JPEGs at either 2× or 3× magnification.
The results are incredible; here are two unedited photos taken with the fairly humble iPhone 12 mini, which has no macro lens:
This Neural Macro stuff sounds advanced and cool, but we understand that some of our users are purists. A mode like this does alter your image. We respect choices: If you change your mind about the cropped and enhanced version later, the crop is only saved as an edit in your camera roll. You can always go back to the un-cropped version by opening it up in the iOS Photos app, tapping “Edit” and “Revert.”
Oh, what about RAW files? RAW files are RAW, and we respect that. They are left untouched and unprocessed. That means that shooting in pure RAW will just give you the extra control of Macro Mode, but none of the fancy Neural Macro technology. In RAW+JPG mode, you get the best of both worlds, with an unprocessed RAW file and a Neural Macro enhanced JPEG shot.
That’s Macro Mode. Even if you don’t have the iPhone 13 Pro, you can now take cool Macro shots. This photo was shot on an iPhone 12 Pro:
But you can also use Macro Mode with the iPhone 13 Pro’s macro-capable lens, and those results are mind-blowing. Your macro camera becomes almost like a microscope:
Suffice to say we absolutely cannot wait to see what kind of shots our users will take with this — iPhone 13 Pro or not. We think it’ll enable photography of a whole unseen universe around us.
This wraps up a really big update that supports the latest and greatest. We packed a lot of quality features into this update for iOS 15, iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro. Overall, we’re super happy with the APIs Apple launched to support the new hardware.
All those goodies are out now, with Macro Mode — available to all Halide users, including the folks who bought Halide 1.0 over four years ago. When we introduced Halide Mark II last year, we gave that huge upgrade away for free for our existing users, with a year of free updates to boot. To those early supporters, this is a gentle reminder that this is the last month of free feature upgrades. While your Halide Mark II app will continue to work and keep all its features, if you’d like to keep receiving major updates like this, you should check out our renewal options inside Settings. We’re even running a sale!
For all of those just joining us: Halide Mark II can be tried for free for 7 days, and we offer a subscription or pay-once option. Check it out here!
Closing Thoughts
As photographers, we find the iPhone 13 Pro’s new macro capabilities an absolute joy. From a value perspective, this camera outperforms bulky lens accessories that cost over $100, and you’ll never leave it at home in a sock drawer. With this new Macro Mode in Halide, we hope many users discover the simple pleasure of photographing the little things around us.
We’re not nearly done yet: We are still deep in our research on the iPhone 13 Pro camera. Check in soon to see our full report, including how the 3× zoom stacks up. Stay tuned.
In the mean time, we’d love to see what you’re doing with Halide’s Macro Mode. Tag your photos #ShotWithHalide for a chance to be featured on our Instagram. Til next time!
Technology
Electric vehicles race combustion cars in ‘battle of technologies’
At the Montalegre circuit in Portugal, electric vehicles and combustion engine cars are racing against each other in an FIA-championship event for the first time. The FIA, or International Automobile Federation, is the governing body behind some of the biggest motorsport championships, including Formula One. Billed as the “Battle of Technologies”, the FIA World Rallycross Championship sees both technologies compete on equal terms, with each vehicle having advantages and disadvantage that must be balanced in order to win races.
Rallycross races take place on mixed-surface racetracks, and while the electric cars have instant torque, and about 100 more horsepower, giving them an advantage on long straights, the internal combustion engine (ICE) cars – which run on sustainable fuel that is made of “70% of sustainable components”, the fuel manufacturers say – are around 160 kilograms lighter, giving them better handling around corners.
“The battle of technologies just adds a little bit more excitement to what we already call the most exciting world championship that we have within the FIA,” says Arne Dirks, managing director of FIA World Rallycross.
After going fully electric in 2022, the sport has been struggling to impress its long-term base of combustion fanatics, and following a fire in 2023 that destroyed two electric cars, the format needed a rethink. “The fire certainly didn’t help our sport,” says Dirks, “of course, it influenced the decision to go that way”.
So, despite Dirks telling New Scientist in 2022 that the electric transition meant “the old sport doesn’t exist anymore”, combustion engines are back. This time, however, the teams can choose their technology. Currently, about half the paddock has retained electric vehicles. “[The]combustion engine is technology of the past,” says Susann Hansen, team manager at Hansen Motorsport, who elected to stick with electric cars this season. “For us, it was not only a business decision to go into electric. It was also a personal belief that we need to do something. That I can look my children and my grandchildren in the eye to say we have done something,” she says.
For Dirks and others in the paddock, this is only the start of what is possible. “The battle of technologies is at the moment EV cars against ICE’s, but I think as a championship, we should be open also to new technologies,” he says.
Topics:
Technology
Thought Bubble: Four Exciting Ideas from CES
The ringing in of a new year was quickly followed by the ringing in of a new era of technological innovation at CES 2023. Brands across categories unveiled their latest, greatest, and most forward-thinking solutions to consumer pain points.
Here are a few innovations introduced at CES that stood out to Mintel’s tech and media experts:
Brian Benway, Research Analyst – Gaming and Entertainment
Sony showed several interesting new pieces of hardware at CES 2023, including their take on an accessibility controller, tentatively called Project Leonardo. However, the bigger reveal was the much anticipated PlayStation VR2. With Meta/Oculus/Facebook seemingly on a cooling-off period after laying off 11,000 workers shortly after revealing its Meta Quest Pro, Sony’s sequel product could be poised to take a more dominant position in the Virtual Reality space. Featuring 4k visuals, intelligent eye-tracking that almost makes a player’s vision another controller, and an adjustable wide field of view, the product is a feature-rich match for the PlayStation 5. With that said, it still requires a matched PlayStation 5, bringing the total price tag for this experience closer to the Meta Quest Pro cost level. Starting with a digital-only model PS5 at $399, adding the VR2 hardware for $549 brings the entry-level experience to $949. That’s without factoring in additional costs such as controller charging, high-quality audio options, or even games.
Speaking of software, Horizon: Call of the Mountain is reportedly as amazing a VR experience as the current VR gaming king Half-Life: Alyx, but in order for PlayStation VR2 to reach these heights, Sony had to forgo backward compatibility with previously purchased titles. Sony, and the budding Virtual Reality industry in general, continue to reach great heights of technological achievement, but may continue to be brought down by the equally great costs for the foreseeable future.
John Poelking, Research Manager – Tech, Media, and Telecom
One of the most important advancements at CES 2023 wasn’t a device or a service, but a new standard called Matter. Matter was developed in collaboration with many big brands (including Apple, Google, Samsung, and Amazon) to create a consistent standard making it easier to set up and connect a wide range of devices. Matter also connects devices locally so it doesn’t need to go through the cloud, cutting down on latency. A new standard like this should also encourage innovation from brands that won’t need to worry as much about cross-device compatibility.
Smart home systems have become more instrumental in consumers’ lives as the technology powering them has become more intuitive and less expensive. The promise of a more cohesive cross-brand ecosystem could lighten the pain points of a disjointed ecosystem, and create more justification for internet providers to include new smart home hardware in upcoming promotions.
Jenni Nelson, Research Analyst – Tech and Media
The most buzzed-about home health tracking devices at CES 2023 are going down the toilet – literally. At least four different monitors were on display that claimed to monitor biomarkers in urine in order to provide a nearly-instant snapshot of the user’s health. The most popular in terms of press coverage is Withings wifi-enabled U-scan prototype. U-Scan is a flat, circular device that hangs over the front edge of a toilet, much like toilet bowl cleaners. It can sense when someone is urinating, prompting a pump to pull a small amount of urine into the unit. Inside is a cartridge with many microfluidic assays which are then run in front of the device’s infrared scanner to check gravity (ie chemical particles), pH, Vitamin C and ketone levels. Results and actionable insights are shared via Withings’s Health Mate app. The cartridges are refreshed after each use, and the company claims the device is smart enough to distinguish between users in the same household. Currently, there are two cartridges in the works: one to measure nutrition and hydration, and another to track menstrual cycles.
It hasn’t yet been approved by the FDA, so a US release will follow Europe’s, which is scheduled for Q2 2023. The most basic model will cost about $500 with replacement cartridges around $30. As personal health tracking matures, moving beyond a smartwatch or ring is the next step – wearable devices have reached their limit in terms of what biometrics they can track without piercing the skin. Given that urine analysis is already widely used to detect a plethora of illnesses, a home-based version isn’t far-fetched. It could be a game changer for those monitoring kidney and liver diseases or diabetes, either for themselves or for others within the home. It could also cut down on the number of clinic visits and lab tests among patients, freeing up time, effort and expense for both patients and the healthcare industry alike.
Nicole Bond, Associate Director – Marketing Strategy
While new TVs with enhanced specs and capabilities are nothing new for CES, start-up Displace TV flipped the script by delivering a new kind of “wireless” TV that has opened the door to the next chapter of TV device advancements. The 55-inch 4K TV promises to alleviate the burden of wire clutter and deliver a truly innovative experience for at-home entertainment. The Displace TV will be powered by a proprietary hot-swappable battery system, weigh less than 20 lbs, bypass the need to permanently damage walls with a mount, and provide the flexibility of multiple screens operating at once to deliver a completely innovative role of TV in the home. The start-up’s innovation uses active-loop vacuum technology to stick to any wall, and can be moved around the home at the user’s preference. While sticking a TV to a wall and trusting that it stays put may make some consumers nervous, the appeal of not having to deal with cord management is likely universal.
The device is also modular, meaning it can be used in a combination of multiple Displace displays to form customizable TV sizes. The flexibility and aesthetic appeal of the new device mark a shift in the role of TV in the home. Not only is it about having the best specs, but it is also now about the entire user experience from start to finish. It puts control back in the hands of consumers, and opens the door to immense opportunities to change the way TVs have been perceived. Displace has addressed common consumer pain points while innovating based on modern technology to truly build out a one-of-its-kind (for now) experience with a household staple. It pointed to how the future of TVs can and will evolve to better serve the needs of consumers at home. Notably, LG also presented M3—a wireless, port-less 97-inch OLED TV that would also operate on Wi-Fi 6 and offer a cordless appeal. Despite its teaser, LG did not mention the price or release date of its wireless model, which suggests it may be a ways off. Meanwhile, reservations for Displace TV are open, and are expected to be available to ship by late 2023.
If you are a Mintel client, please reach out to your Account Manager for additional information and key takeaways from CES, otherwise for more information on how Mintel experts can help your brand strategize future initiatives, click here.
Technology
NYT Strands today: hints, spangram and answers for Saturday, September 21
Strands is a brand new daily puzzle from the New York Times. A trickier take on the classic word search, you’ll need a keen eye to solve this puzzle.
Like Wordle, Connections, and the Mini Crossword, Strands can be a bit difficult to solve some days. There’s no shame in needing a little help from time to time. If you’re stuck and need to know the answers to today’s Strands puzzle, check out the solved puzzle below.
How to play Strands
You start every Strands puzzle with the goal of finding the “theme words” hidden in the grid of letters. Manipulate letters by dragging or tapping to craft words; double-tap the final letter to confirm. If you find the correct word, the letters will be highlighted blue and will no longer be selectable.
If you find a word that isn’t a theme word, it still helps! For every three non-theme words you find that are at least four letters long, you’ll get a hint — the letters of one of the theme words will be revealed and you’ll just have to unscramble it.
Every single letter on the grid is used to spell out the theme words and there is no overlap. Every letter will be used once, and only once.
Each puzzle contains one “spangram,” a special theme word (or words) that describe the puzzle’s theme and touches two opposite sides of the board. When you find the spangram, it will be highlighted yellow.
The goal should be to complete the puzzle quickly without using too many hints.
Hint for today’s Strands puzzle
Today’s theme is “I’ve got the music in me!”
Here’s a hint that might help you: where you go to watch a musical performance
Today’s Strand answers
Today’s spanagram
We’ll start by giving you the spangram, which might help you figure out the theme and solve the rest of the puzzle on your own:
Today’s Strands answers
- ARENA
- STADIUM
- THEATER
- FESTIVAL
- NIGHTCLUB
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