Better than Ring? This video doorbell has all the benefits and no monthly fees (and it’s $30 off for Presidents’ Day)
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What’s the deal?
The subscription-free Lorex 2K battery-powered video doorbell. For easy installation, I prefer a battery-operated option, so I got the battery-operated option. More importantly, Lorex ditches the typical paid subscription model for a flat hardware fee. Is it worth it? Let’s find out.
Having your phone tell you who’s at the door in real-time and being able to talk to them when you can’t answer the door is life-changing, I tell you. The Lorex 2K video doorbell does this and more, as it boasts a 2K video resolution with HDR, no monthly subscription fees, and a battery option with an easy-to-install set of brackets to give you the viewing angle you desire.
Maria Diaz/ZDNET
Once the doorbell is installed, there’s not much else for you to worry about. One of my favorite things about this video doorbell is the lack of monthly fees. You can store your video recordings on the 32GB MicroSD card included and offload them whenever you need to bring your doorbell in to charge. If you’re using a wired installation, I’d keep an extra MicroSD card to swap out now and then to keep your video doorbell recording the events that matter to you.
The Lorex app is also easy to use and navigate. It allows you to check your notifications, look at the live feed, change your doorbell settings, and check your event history. Lorex is a renowned security camera maker, and the app lets you access other Lorex cameras you may have at home in one place.
The doorbell also features Person Detection, making it easy to skip false alarms, as you won’t get notified when a spider crawls over your video camera or the trees in your yard sway in the wind.
The biggest problem with this Lorex video doorbell is that the image, though good quality at 2560 x 1920 resolution, looks distorted due to the 164-degree field of view. This would be fine for more affordable doorbells, but one worth almost $200 should offer a better visual experience.
People can look distorted in the images, which isn’t a big deal if you’re using the doorbell to see who’s at the door, but it does bother me when I rewatch the recordings. As you can see in the comparison above, my Lorex doorbell shows a stretched image compared to the screenshot from the Eufy doorbell, as evidenced by the elongated UPS truck.
It also doesn’t include a chime kit, meaning you’d have to buy it separately or forgo the battery feature and use it with your home’s existing wiring to use your current chime box. The Lorex Chimebox
The small LED at the bottom of the Lorex 2K Wi-Fi Battery Video Doorbell.
Maria Diaz/ZDNET
The built-in LED is an underrated feature and one of my favorites. It is helpful when you arrive home in the dark and can use some brightness to find your keys. I also like that it might deter intruders, as the light turns on when the camera detects movement.
ZDNET’s buying advice
Even if I’m not a huge fan of the wide-angle image it captures, I like quite a few things about the Lorex 2K Battery Video Doorbell
