Smart Video Doorbell Comparison

We provide you everything you need to know to choose the right smart home doorbell for you house. Below we have both reviews and comparisons of the top smart home doorbells organized below.

We have also included DIY Smart Doorbell Installation tips and common posts on issues that often arise when installing a smart doorbell such as if you need to replace your transformer for your Nest Hello or Ring Pro Doorbell.

Guide To Choosing The Right Smart Doorbell

A smart video doorbell is a great investment for you home that will increase the curb appeal of your home and provide you with upgraded security for your house.

What Are The Top Smart Doorbells?

We cover in depth below and provide all the resources you need to determine what doorbell is best for you in the posts below but some of you can’t wait and just want the answer so here it is:

Best Smart Doorbells If you Have Existing Doorbell Wiring

Nest Hello Smart Video Doorbell or Ring Pro Doorbell: Tie read below

I personally have a nest hello installed in my home, and both the Ring and Nest have many overlapping features and are both extremely capable doorbells. If you are considering hard wired doorbell I recommend both of these doorbells and you won’t go wrong if you choose either of them.

The Nest Hello Doorbell and the Ring Pro Doorbell a surprisingly similar but they have a few differences that set them apart. Rather than elaborate on the features that are pretty much the same between the two were going to point out the major differences here and if you want to read our full reviews of each doorbell you can do so in one of links below.

Ring Pro vs Nest Hello Recording Plan

The Ring Pro works on event based recording meaning when the smart doorbell detects motion it records that event. This means that rather than a 24/7 continuous recording stream it will save smaller clips detecting motion. This means it uses less data on your wifi network and will not bog it down as much as a Nest Hello might. Typically over a month of use a Ring Pro uses 10-20x less data than the Nest Hello. If your internet provider caps your data usage or your worried about slowing down your network the Ring Pro is a great option.

The monthly cost for a Ring recording plan is $3/month or $30/year. The nest recording plan is $5/month or $50/year. If you are planning on installing a lot of cameras, ring offers an unlimited storage of as many cameras as you can install for $10 a month or $100/year. Their unlimited plan also comes with a lifetime warranty and free replacement if your Ring is stolen.

The Nest Hello has 24/7 continuous recording meaning that is always streaming video to the cloud 24/7. This means you have a continuous recording of everything, like the clouds slowly drifting over you home. But this also means that your Nest Hello Doorbell is sending lots and lots of data to the cloud, which on the highest resolution can be more than 300GB per month. If you are at a 1,000GB cap you might want to either lower your resolution or up your internet plan. If you have several nest cameras in addition to the Nest Hello Doorbell your going to want to make sure that you have a robust wifi system and a speedy internet provider connection.

I have xfinity internet and have yet to meet the data cap with my Nest Hello, and enjoy the 24/7 footage that I can scroll through almost like a timelapse of the day.

Video Quality, Face Recognition: Nest Hello & Ring Pro

Both doorbells have great video quality, and you can set motion zones on each video doorbell to alert you to motion in a specific field of view. However the Nest Hello does have one specific feature that the Ring Pro does not have. The nest hello video stream is backed up by AI face recognition software that can identify familiar faces like your family members or let you know if a stranger is picked up by the nest hello.

Works With Alexa & Google Home

Both the Nest Hello and Ring Pro doorbells work with Alexa to display live video feeds from your front door.

Conclusion: Nest Hello & Ring Pro Are Both Great!

Both the Nest Hello and Ring Pro are capable doorbells and will do a great job protecting your front door. If you want to save a little money in the long run with subscription fees the Ring Pro is the way to go. If you want the face recognition features or you already have several other nest devices the Nest Hello is your best option.

Nest Hello at Home Depot: Same Day Pick Up

Best Smart Doorbells If you Have Existing Doorbell Wiring

If you don’t have any existing wiring for your smart doorbell or you are looking to add wiring so that you can use a Ring Pro or Nest Hello we do have an in depth guide on how to install new wiring and a transformer for your powered smart doorbell.

Related Post: How to install wiring and everything you need for a smart doorbell installation

But if you don’t have any existing wiring and you want to add a smart doorbell to your front door there are a few options buy the one we recommend is the Ring 2 Doorbell. The Ring 2 Doorbell has a rechargeable battery pack and we recommend that you get an additional rechargeable battery pack so you can easily swap the batteries when they are running low. Depending on usage we have seen that the Ring 2 Doorbell batteries last anywhere from 1-6 months.

The Ring 2 doorbell has less resolution than the Ring Pro but still offers good picture quality and all of the other same features as the Ring Pro. It is very important that your Ring Pro has a good strong wifi signal, which will make the battery last longer. You can either upgrade your home wifi system to our favorite wifi system the Eero, or get a Ring Pro Wifi Chime that will increase the network signal to your Ring 2.

The other nice thing about the Ring 2 is that if you do want to add a transformer and power to the Ring 2 in the future you can do so. If you add a transformer and power to the Ring 2 it will make the response time quicker and can eliminate your need to change batteries.

Please note that a battery powered doorbell will connect slower to your network and have a little bit of a lag compared to a fully powered doorbell. If you have existing wiring we strongly suggest you use a doorbell that is hardwired like the Ring Pro or Nest Hello

Ring Pro vs Nest Hello

We compare the Ring Pro & The Nest Hello head to head to give you detailed rundown of all the smart doorbell features from the top 2 doorbells on the market.

Ring 2 vs Nest Hello

The Ring 2 Smart Video Doorbell is Ring’s battery powered smart doorbell vs the Nest Hello fully wired smart doorbell.