SkyBell Wi-Fi Video Doorbell Version 2.0 Classic (BRONZE)

I purchased the SkyBell prior to leaving on a month long business trip, so that I would have a way to let people believe I was home if they came to the door while I was gone. I chose the SkyBell over other similar products because of its feature set, its simple design and because it was powered by the transformer that powered the existing door bell. In this regard the Skybell met my expectations and performed to expectations, which should have made it worth the price I paid for it ($198.00). The installation of the SkyBell was straight forward and a direct replacement for the existing door bell button. Attaching the SkyBell to my network and getting it to send a signal to my iphone was much easier than expected and for that it should have received five stars. Overall I was initially very satisfied with my purchase of the SkyBell and it seemed to be meeting my needs and expectations.As I stated at the beginning of the review, I purchased the SkyBell because I was going out of town, but I forgot to mention that I was leaving the day after the SkyBell arrived, so the time I had to install it and finish everything else prior to leaving was limited. After the installation, I noticed that the picture looked a little fuzzy, but I didn't have time to fuss with it and had to move on for the day. I left for my month long trip, arrived at my destination and was finally settled in to my hotel room, so I decided to check out my new toy and look out from my front door. The first thing I noticed was that when I was connected through the cell phone carrier and not attached to my home network, it took quite a long time for the video to come up on my cell phone. In fact I had to close the application and restart it in order to get the video image to appear. I thought that it could be a slow cell connection at first, so I connected to the hotels high speed network link and had the same problem. I also noticed that the video image was even worse in the evening, so I contacted my son and asked him to stop by the house and clean the camera lens with a microfiber cloth, just in case I left a finger smudge on the lens while installing it. My son stopped by the following day and cleaned the lens as I asked, but then I noticed a new problem with the connection speed. I asked my son to not ring the door bell when he arrived and to just stand in front of the door for a few seconds so I could check out the motion trigger system. He did as I asked and the delay was so long, that he had to call me and let me know he arrived, and then the door bell rung on my phone, which as a good half minute after his arrival. After the connection was made the propagation delay was as expected and he would move and I would see the movement about 3 to 5 seconds later. The problem is with the delay before you receive the ring on your phone and then by the time you answer the ring and it make the connection. That total time can climb to over one minute, which is a problem if someone is lingering on your porch or if you are expecting to be notified that UPS just delivered a package. I had my son simulate that exact situation and by the time I received the ring and answered it, he was gone and out of the picture. The good thing is that it did pick p the motion and ring my phone, but there was no way I could ask a delivery person to leave a package in a inconspicuous location before he had already left. Now granted, there is a lot of wireless signal happening here and some delay is to be expected, but I believe that some of this delay is do to the cloud servers that SkyBell has set up to capture and send the video, which is just not quite fast enough to allow the operation I just described.Now back to the image quality and the reason I can not give the SkyBell a five star rating. After having my son clean the lens, I still could not see a clear image on my little iphone screen. I decided to contact the manufacture and see if I just received a bad SkyBell that was not adjusted (focused) properly before shipping from the factory. The manufacture asked me to send a copy of the image to them for review, which I did after collecting a daytime and nighttime image. (See attached photos) The response I received from the manufacture was just an admission that their product was not capable of producing a clear image, because it was a VGA quality camera. I don't know about everyone else, but when I was a much younger man, NASA landed astronauts on the moon, with what could be considered a sub-VGA quality camera and they sent back over wireless radio transmission a better quality image than the two pictures I have included here for your own judgment. I believe these two images are suffering from very poor optical quality, not the sensor quality. And if other video doorbell manufactures can install HD quality imagers for the same price as the SkyBell, then maybe you will want to see the reviews on them and make your judgment on what is the best value for your dollar.Now again as I stated at the beginning of my review, I was out of town for a month and could not remove the SkyBell and send it back to Amazon, so now I am stuck with it, so I will use it as is because I spent near $200.00 for it and I just don't want to throw away money by purchasing a different product that may or may not meet my expectations. It is my hope that SkyBell and the others will continue to develop this technology, because I really think it is a great product concept and that SkyBell has really put a lot of thought into the functionality of the system. If they could upgrade the optics for a better image quality and get the cloud service they provide to react a little faster, then this would be a six star product for sure.

We are not able to view our front porch from inside the house. So years ago I installed a Doorbell Fon so we could communicate with people at the door without opening it. This device works well with our landline phones, but you can’t initiate a conversation from inside the house if someone at the door knocks instead of pressing the doorbell button. The device also lacked video and WiFi. So I added a Logitech 750N WiFi camera that sends high quality video, but does not support voice communications. The camera could not be mounted outdoor, so its night vision feature is useless.I looked around for a video doorbell with the following features:• High quality video to my iPhone (IOS) and cloud storage• Video and voice that can be initiated either from the doorbell or cell phone• An outdoor mounted device with motion detection and night vision• Interface with existing house wiringOf all of the video doorbells, Skybell seemed to have the best reviews. So I purchased it. Although the Skybell has some excellent features, I am now returning it, because its implementation is considerably less than I expected.The physical installation was very easy. Skybell advises some pre-checks to make sure the device will work well. I judge this to be a good precaution, to avoid wasting a customer’s time. My pre-checks were all ok.Before beginning the installation, I removed my Doorbell Fon and re-enabled my old analog doorbell. The physical installation of the Skybell was quite easy, only requiring direct replacement of the doorbell switch with the Skybell switch and its mounting bracket. Unlike other reviewers, I did not have a problem with the setscrew that locks the Skybell to its mounting bracket. The hole in the Skybell is small and guides the setscrew tool directly to the screw top.Setting up the Skybell to work with my home WiFi network was more tedious. According to the manual, after the Skybell has been attached to the house wires, it powers up and, after about 10 minutes, a cell phone should be able to detect the Skybell’s own Wifi network “Skybell…” For me, it took about 40 minutes before the network appeared in the list of WiFi networks. I then was able to connect almost immediately. From there, I used the Skybell iPhone app to identify my house WiFi SSID and password to the Skybell. Although the app said it might take several minutes, Skybell still did not have a connection to my home WiFi network after about 30 minutes. The support information on the web site said to try again from the beginning, which I did. This time, the “Skybell…” WiFi network appeared almost immediately, and the home network connection was successful after about 1 minute. The app advised waiting about 10 minutes for the latest firmware to be installed. I gave it one hour before proceeding.On first use, the doorbell seemed to work well. After pressing the Skybell button, the Skybell beeped and the analog doorbell chimed, and almost instantly a push notification displayed on my cell phone, which also beeped. Upon answering my cell, I had a fairly immediate connection to the Skybell video and push-to-talk audio. Audio was satisfactory, with only a little time delay. The video however, was highly unsatisfactory. It was a very blurred image (see photo). Faces were not recognizable. As others have noted, my call to tech support was immediately handled, and the tech advised me about doing a “soft-reset”, which I did. The reset had no effect on the video quality. I snapped a picture through the Skybell app and emailed it to the tech. He said the poor video quality was due to a sunny front yard with the Skybell under a darkened alcove, raising havoc with its night vision feature. This havoc resulted in pink trees and yellow grass. However, later at dusk, with the yard and alcove about the same brightness, the video color improved but the picture was as blurry as before.I tested the device several times while I was on a cell phone call. I got push notifications from the Skybell in about ½ of the tests. The iPhone will not allow a conversation with the Skybell while a cell call is in progress. However, when I exited the cell call, I could not communicate with the Skybell unless I completely stopped and restarted the Skybell app. The Skybell tech advised that this is also a problem with the iPhone, but I found it is not a problem with other iPhone apps that use the microphone, like Voice Memo.A few other issues:1. Although the Skybell advertises motion detection, this detection is currently limited to 12 to 16 inches. I find this pretty useless, but Skybell promises improvements are coming.2. Other reviewers pointed out a problem where the Skybell rings with motion detection, a sound that might scare or disturb visitors. They requested a setting to optionally turn off the Skybell ring. In the Amazon ad, a Skybell feature is listed as “silent doorbell mode”, which I assumed was a feature to deal with this request. However, the tech said the option would only suppress the interior chime, not the Skybell tone. For me, it did not suppress either the interior chime or the Skybell tone.3. For me, the cloud storage does not exist. The app screen that is supposed to display the saved videos is completely blank. The tech said to wait a day and retry. I did. Still blank.On paper this is a good video doorbell with all of the features I need. But it does not work well. I am returning it to Amazon and am hoping for Skybell to release a new version that overcomes some of these problems. I admire their great tech support, and I like their idea for the product. So I would consider doing business with them in the future. But for now, I am back to my original Doorbell Fon and Logitech camera.

Good stuff

Habe die skybell im august 2017 gekauft,brauchte ca 5 tage bis sie lief jedoch,seit dem 4.09.2017 hat der hersteller einfach den server still gelegt so das wenn man das klingeln verpasst nicht mehr später später schauen kann wer es war ,der hersteller hat mir geschrieben das er dieses model nicht mehr unterstützt,das ist eine riesen Frechheit

Thank you for contacting SkyBell Technical Support.Unfortunately because we do not distribute directly to Europe, we would not be able to offer a replacement in Topsolute's absence. The only other international distributor I am aware of is ADI Global, however I do not think they are able to offer replacements for devices not directly purchased from them either.Apologies for this inconvenience.Finger weg von das Teil: TopSolute gibt es nicht mehr, es gibt seit Kurzem kein andere Händler mehr in Europa und deswegen kannst Garantie vergessen. Sehe oben Antwort von Skybell Vereinigte Staaten

Ich habe das Teil seitdem ich es im Jahre 2016 3 Mal bisher austauschen müssen, denn es ist nicht langlebig... Man druckt auf den Knopf und es gibt keinen Ton. So verpasst man wichtige Packete, da der Bote denkt, niemanden ist zuhause.Die Verbindung mit de Smartphone lief auch nicht ganz reibungslos... aber ok.Ansonsten braucht man gute Internetverbindung, damit das Gerät gut funktioniert.Insgesamt war ich vom Gerät enttäuschst, denn es hielt nicht einmal 7 Monate am Stück.

Obwohl alle Voraussetzungen erfüllt waren (mechanischer Gong, WLAN in Reichweite, diverse Tage angeschlossen) war bei 3 Artikeln keine Funktion gegeben.Bei der ersten Klingel wurde kein WLAN zum Einrichten aufgebaut.Bei Nummer 2 und 3 ließ sich die Klingel Problemlos einrichten. Es ließ sich jedoch nie ein Videobild übertragen.