August Home's New $199 Doorbell Cam Pro With HD Video and Built-In Floodlight Now Shipping

I have the previous, non-Pro, version of this. I’m sort of “grudgingly satisfied”, I guess. They advertise that you can answer your door remotely and talk to whoever’s at the door, but in practice by the time I get the notification, launch the app, and the app connects to the camera, they’re gone. Mebbe that’s my laggy, 3-year-old iPhone 6 Plus, but I don’t think so. I will say that even on mine the camera is good and captures good images, especially of the guy who nonchalantly looked over my UPS package before he walked off with it (the nice video, and still images from it, led to nothing, naturally).

When I bought it they claimed “future HomeKit compatibility”, and when I emailed them said they were hardware capable from the beginning and it would just be a future software update, once they had the manpower to get it done. That was a year ago; never happened.

I think the floodlight is the circle in the upper left corner of the device, not the illuminated logo in the center. Mine has the illuminated logo. Is the floodlight a visible-light LED? That shines in your visitors’ faces? Hmm. Woulda thought they’d use IR.

My last comment on the thing is that it is not obvious to all visitors that it’s a doorbell (switch) at all. Mine is the dark brown version, and people don’t seem to understand it’s a button they can press. It doesn’t say “press me” in any way. I made this comment to August too; guess they didn’t believe me.

It looks like this is the only video doorbell on the market that doesn't also use an IR camera.

Ahem. SkyBell HD. Full color at night.

Oh, and monthly fees with SkyBell HD = $0.